It's been a big apple year and a big part of the lawn didn't make out so well...

I would advise anybody with a giant apple crop from one singular apple tree that they don't really have time to harvest or clean up as it happens to:

• not let the apples just lie there if you can help it, because they become a tripping hazard



• not just shuffle the apples to the side because you don't have the time and mental bandwidth to plan an apple solution and you resist bending over and picking up each individual apple by hand



• absolutely not leave the apples in a pile that is conveniently located to the tree, rather than being your compost heap, because they will compost themselves and become harder to move

Additional notes:

• Rakes are not very useful for pushing or sweeping the apples into a pile



• Shovels and pitchforks are not very useful for moving them around on the ground either, but they're better than rakes



• A pile of apples is not something you can just stick a shovel or similar flat scoopy thing into and move a scoop at a time, like hay or snow or sawdust or manure or even leaves. The individual pieces are too big and offer too much resistance, and then they want to roll off, but they're too big to stick to each other so the pitchfork can only grab whichever ones it directly spears through, and same with a rake.



• I'm thinking golf clubs or croquet mallets would be the way to go. And you'd probably want one of those big flat plastic snow-scoop things to use as a dustpan. You could whack and roll them into a dustpan or onto a tarp and use that to drag them or pour them into the wheelbarrow for transport to the compost heap. This is just a theory though, because we don't have anything like those.



• If you're forced to pick them up by hand and drop them into the wheelbarrow, pad the bottom with grass or leaves first because otherwise once the bottom is covered with apples they will all just bounce off each other and back out if you toss them even slightly too hard.



• Also in the last case it helps if you know how to aim and throw things (well), which neither Wax nor I do.