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Harvesting Citrus Joyce and I are camped in Lake Louisa State Park on US-27 south of Clermont. The campground is fairly new and includes 50-amps, water with central dump station, paved interior roads and several lakes, $23.31 per-night: N28° 24.194 W81° 33.386'. We would have been in a cheaper PPA Campground but there wasn't a Pass Port America Campground in the area.
Lake Louisa State Park is fairly close to Disney World as in around 25-miles. It is a nice clean campground with no shade trees in the campground area. It has a lot of hiking trails and equestrian trails, several lakes and preserves several thousand acres of the sand hills forming the northwestern edge of the Lake Wales Ridge. The Lake Wales Ridge is what makes the backbone of Peninsular Florida. It contains the high ground on the peninsular although high ground around here is only 300' above sea level. The high ground is sand hills, remnants of ancient sand dunes. When these sand dunes were being created the ocean covered most of Peninsular Florida. Corals flourished in this shallow tropical sea for thousands if not millions of years. Today the remains of that coral shelf underlies most of Penisular Florida in the form of limestone. Vegetation, in the sand hills area of the Lake Wales Ridge varies from tropical rainforest plants in the moist low lying areas to arid desert plants on the tops of those sand hills. We are constantly amazed at the rich variety of plant life thriving down here. Citrus harvest in progress
Notice the ladders in this picture. Each fruit picker has a ladder that he carries from tree to tree. The citrus these workers pick are dumped into the black plastic tubs you see. Mechanized equipment will pick up the fruit filled black plastic tubs and empty the contnets into a large dump container on the vehicle. This special vehicle will transport the dump container to the edge of the citrus grove where it will be "dumped" into a waiting 18-wheeler citrus trailer.
Manual labor is required in the citrus harvest
Workers with bags on their shoulders climb ladders and hand pick each individual fruit. When the bag is full they empty the oranges into one of those large black plastic tubs you see in this picture and other pictures on this page.
Citrus harvesting equipment in a citrus grove
The equipment you see in this picture is the machinery that picks up the full tubs of citrus and empties the tub of fruit into the bin you see that is on the back of each of these vehicles. I can see two of these vehicles in this picture. Do notice that one of the machines has a tub of fruit in the air above his bin.
Closeup of the machinery used to haul fruit in the grove and pick up those plastic tubs of fruit
This equipment is used to enter the grove and unload those plastic tubs of citrus. Note that two of the handlers arms have plastic tubs of fruit. To the right is another look at one of those citrus handlers. Note that it is full of oranges. These rigs enter the groves to get the plastic tubs of citrus then head to the edge of the grove to dump their payload into to a large 18-wheeler trailer.
Dumping a load of citrus into the waiting 18-wheeler trailer situated on the edge of the grove
Note how the lift on the rig is used to unload "dump" oranges into the waiting 18-wheel trailers.
Loaded citrus trailer in staging area near grove
The loaded trailer on the right was on the edge of a grove several blocks from the nearest paved road but obviously in a staging area used by the harvesting crew.
Stowing the tub picking attachment to the bed of the dump for the return trip into the grove
Once the cargo of citrus is dumped into the 18-wheeler trailer the lift mechanism returns the container to the bed of that rig that goes into the grove.
Until next week just remember how good life is. Click here for some Key West travellogsUntil next time remember how good life is. More Florida AdventuresSome Key West Adventures ** More 2006 Travel Adventures
Mike & Joyce Hendrix
Mike & Joyce Hendrix who we are We hope you liked this page. If you do you might be interested in some of our other Travel Adventures: Mike & Joyce Hendrix's home page Travel Adventures by Year ** Travel Adventures by State ** Plants ** Marine-Boats ** Geology ** Exciting Drives ** Cute Signs ** RV Subjects ** Miscellaneous Subjects
We would love to hear from you......just put "info" in the place of "FAKE" in this address: FAKE@travellogs.us Until next time remember how good life is.
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