By Red58bill - Own work, CC BY 3.0

APPLE PICKERS REEL
words and music by Larry Hanks, 1966
Sung by Andy Blyth
Recorded on "Songs of the Pacific Northwest"

Hey, ho, makes you feel so fine
Looking out across the orchard in the bright sunshine.
Hey, ho, you feel so free
Standing in the top of an apple tree

Up in the morning before the sun
I don't get home until the day is done
My pick-sack's heavy and my shoulder's sore
But I'll be back tomorrow to pick some more

Start at the bottom and you pick 'em from the ground
And you pick the tree clean all the way around
Then you set up your ladder and you climb up high
And you're looking through the leaves at the clear blue sky

Three-legged ladder, wobbly as hell
Reaching for an apple---whoa!---I almost fell
Got a twenty-pound sack hanging 'round my neck
And there's three more apples that I can't quite get

Hey, ho, makes you feel so down
Picking up windfalls, crawling on the ground
Hey, ho, you feel so free
Standing in the top of an apple tree

Hey, ho, you lose your mind
If you sing this song about a hundred times
Hey, ho, you feel so free
Standing in the top of an apple tree

Copyright Larry Hanks
"I worked picking apples for only a few weeks in the fall of '66 near Sebastopol, California,
and it was really a vacation-- a new pleasure, more than a job. It was hard work for me,
but it remained a fresh, joyful exercise. I tried to include in the lyrics what I learned in a few weeks' work.
The song [Apple Picker's Reel] erupted full-blown, while I was standing in a tree, exhausted,
at the end of a hard day's work!"

Pacific Nothwest Folklore Society