Hedge Apple Contest - Guess how many!?!?

We have two very large hedge apple trees (also called Osage Orange). Every year, these wonderfully ugly trees drop a lot of hedge apples making mowing very difficult.  To give us kids an incentive to pick them all up, Dad has paid a dime per ten hedge apples, a penny each, or a dollar per hundred. It is a very distasteful job and dangerous on windy days when the hedge apples are falling from the trees. (Yeah, it hurts to get hit by one of those. I've worn a helmet before.)

This is a typical sized hedge apple. They are pretty solid with a sticky milky substance and somewhere in the middle there are seeds.

Squirrels love shredding them and eating the seeds.  According to my uncle, hedge apple ice cream is delicious. :) According to Google, they are edible and taste like cucumbers, but smell like oranges. (I totally disagree about the smell!) We've never tried them before, but they do have a number of uses. Supposedly, if you cut them in half and put a couple in your house they'll keep spiders away.

So, this year Andrew has spent hours outside collecting all these hedge apples. And since he's getting paid, he has counted every hedge apple he has put into the wheel barrow.

 ***** So, how many hedge apples do you think our two trees have produced this year? Give you a hint, Dad isn't too thrilled with the number because the money comes out of his pocket. :)

And for the person who guesses the closest number, we'll send them a prize --- a package of hedge apples to enjoy! :)

The answer will be given next week on Nov. 21th. Let the guessing begin!!!