Meurthe-et-Moselle. It's time to start picking mirabelles!

Sometimes you find gold high in the hills. Or rather, golden fruits, the nickname for the Lorraine mirabelle plum... While the harvest has officially begun for a good number of the two hundred Lorraine producers, the orchard where we are meeting this Thursday morning overlooks the fields of Loromontzey, a village of fewer than one hundred souls located about ten kilometers from Bayon.

On site, twenty-two pickers have been busy since 8 a.m. on the mirabelle plum trees to fill their baskets, either on the ground or by climbing onto picking platforms for the higher branches. "We started a little this Wednesday afternoon, but today is the real start," smiles Bruno Colin, operator of the Sabieumé farm, which produces fruit on 25 hectares, mostly mirabelles. "We have them on 12-13 hectares," continues the farmer, "every year, we harvest between 150 and 200 tons." This production is sent almost entirely to Vegafruits, a cooperative specializing in mirabelle plums from Lorraine.

This Thursday morning, the pickers go from one tree to another to fill their baskets before pouring them into crates that can hold eight or nine kilos of mirabelles... Pen and paper in hand, Anne-Laure, a farm worker, announces the number of baskets since the beginning at each pass... "Melda, twenty-two, Lucie, eighteen, Haï, twenty-three...".

A valuable tally. Here, as elsewhere, we pay the minimum wage, but there is also a variable portion that often makes all the difference... "There are sometimes big gaps between those who are used to it and those who are starting out," observes Bruno Colin, "it can be as much as three times as much..." With the key, significantly higher pay for the "Speedy Gonzales" of the orchards.

As a result, the pickers waste no time. Sometimes they move on to the next tree when there's not much fruit left. But those in charge make sure that each tree is thoroughly "stripped"... As for the tallest fruit, it will be harvested a little later, using special baskets.

The ballet of baskets continues throughout the morning. Behind the tables, Ludovic, the cultivation manager, quickly sorts the mirabelles into crates. "We remove the small-sized fruits, those with major defects, rotten or cracked," he explains, checking out a crate before placing it on a pallet behind a tractor. "We make about a pallet an hour," he says.

With seventy crates per pallet, it's possible to pick more than five tons in one day if it doesn't rain. If it does, picking is postponed until later. No risk on that front this Thursday. With clear skies, temperatures neither too hot nor too cold, and a gentle breeze, the weather is perfect for picking...

Like other farms, the Sabieumé farm also uses mechanical vibrating harvesters that shake the trees. All that's left is to collect the fallen fruit onto large tarpaulins. This system requires less labor, but more tractors and drivers. "We do more manual picking than mechanical picking, but last year, it was the opposite because it was harder to work on the trees," continues Bruno Colin, "with fruit, nothing is written in advance..."

What is, however, is the duration of the harvest: around four weeks each year. Nearly a month spent playing gold prospectors in the trees to delight lovers of Lorraine mirabelle plums...