ANNA'S APPLES
Autumn is a lovely time of year in small American towns. The leaves turn red and yellow, and the fruit trees in people's gardens are full of apples and pears. There are millions of fruit trees in private gardens across the USA, and their owners love them. But the owners are often too busy to pick the fruit, so it falls from the trees and stays on the ground until it goes bad.(lines 1–8)
Anna Webb lives in Portland. Three years ago, on her way home, she noticed hundreds of apples on the ground in her street. "What a waste!" she thought. That evening, Anna decided to pick the fruit that nobody wanted. She knocked on her neighbors' doors and asked them to let her pick the fruit from their trees. They all said yes, and soon Anna had boxes full of fruit. She took them to a market in the city and sold the fruit there.(lines 9–13)
Soon people all over Portland were calling Anna and asking her to pick their fruit too. It was too much fruit for one person to sell, so Anna started a company and called it Anna's Apples. Today the company has twenty workers. They pick the fruit and wash it. "My job is selling," says Anna. "Shops and restaurants buy most of our fruit. I also take some to schools, because I want children to eat fresh fruit."(lines 14–18)
Sometimes the workers find apples and pears that are too soft to sell, or even to take to schools. But Anna's Apples never puts this fruit in the garbage. The company sends it to Green Hill Farm, a small farm outside Portland. Soft fruit does not look nice, but it is usually sweet. At Green Hill Farm, people turn it into new things to eat and drink, like apple juice and jam* for breakfast.(lines 19–23)
"We are proud of our work with Green Hill Farm," Anna says. "But in towns like ours, a lot of fruit is still lying on the ground. In my opinion, people buy too much fruit that comes from far away. Lots of families have a fruit tree near the house. They should pick their own fruit first, and then they can buy less in the shops."(lines 24–26)