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***

After school on Monday, we hauled boxes out to the orchard, and Amy and I put on the picking bags. I climbed to the top of a ladder and turned around to face everyone. "Okay, it's very important to pick them with the stems still on. Don't just pull. You have to be careful. Everyone but me and Amy will stay low and take their own box and fill it."

There were mumbles of agreement. I turned around and grabbed my first apple. I pulled its stem but discovered it took a kind of twisting motion to get it off the branch. It was definitely harder than just yanking on the bottom of the apple. It took about ten minutes to pick all of them within my reach. I looked over at Amy. She seemed to be naturally twisting and pulling without much effort. I moved my ladder over to hers.

"How's it going?" I called over to her. "Having any trouble with the stems?"

"No, not really," she answered casually.

I continued to watch and tried to imitate her hands. No matter how much I tried, I never seemed to be able to balance like her. I had to constantly grab on to branches to keep from tipping over. After another ten minutes, my bag was full and pulling me over to one side. I lowered myself carefully down the ladder and walked toward the nearest box. Placing the bag inside, I unclamped the latch at the bottom and let the apples spill out. There was a satisfying rolling and thumping sound as they hit the bottom of the box, which ended up about two-thirds full.

Before going back up the ladder, I walked around to see how the others were doing. Lisa and Jennifer were very carefully removing single apples at a time from the tree and placing them in a box. They were painfully slow but paying attention to their stems.

Michael's box was almost full. I looked through the apples inside.

"Where are the stems? Not one of them has a stem!" I said very loudly.

"It's easier to pick them without stems," he said with a shrug.

"Yeah, I know it's easier, but it's the wrong way! Lisa, remember this box. It's the one that says 'pears.' You should try to sell this first so they don't sit around very long. And please, Michael, pick them with the stems!"

I looked over at Sam, who had been watching with a guilty look on his face. When I saw his almost-full box, I could see he had a good mix of apples with and without stems. I looked at him, shaking my head.

"I'll be more careful," he said, looking away.

"It is kind of hard," I replied. "The girls seem to be better at it."

We continued working around the first three trees until they were almost cleared of apples. By the time it got dark, we had filled sixteen boxes with Golden Delicious, which had turned from green to a yellow-green color.

"I'm starving," said Amy, and that was the cue for everyone to stop working.

I left my bag on a ladder. "I guess that's a pretty good start and we got a lot more boxes per tree than I was expecting. At least you'll have something to sell tomorrow," I said to Lisa.

"What price are we going to start with, then?" Lisa asked.

This felt like a very big decision. It all seemed like guessing and hoping. "Let's go with $12 like we talked about and see what happens."

***

On Tuesday we all helped load the sixteen boxes on the wagon and walked alongside as Sam drove the tractor to the road. Lisa unrolled her banners and set them up next to the car, and we arranged a few boxes facing the road with their tops off.

"Okay, well, this is it," I announced. "We're ready for customers. It kinda feels like we need a drum roll or a ribbon to cut."

"So good luck, you guys," said Amy, cutting me off. She waved to Lisa and Jennifer, and then started walking toward the orchard. "I'm getting off the road before my friends see me."

"Just yell if you need anything or have any problems," I said, trailing Amy.

"So $12, right?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah," I replied, shrugging.

Amy, Michael, and I followed the tractor back into the orchard and started picking again. "You sure the girls can handle everything by themselves?