Apples
We moved here when I was five. One of my early memories is exploring the fields just the other side of the stone wall from the house. There were old apple trees there. I don't remember what time of year we moved here, or if I found the trees the first year. But I remember going down to play with my sisters. We would make mud pies, chase butterflies, and make lots and lots of noise. And we would eat apples. Green apples. Ripe apples. Apples that had frozen on the tree. I learned to take an apple and pound it to bruise it slightly, then suck the juice out of it.
I was probably 10 or 12 when I first brought home enough apples to make sauce. Back then we had a Foley Food Mill, and if you left the skins on, the applesauce would be tinted pink. We would make applesauce cake. I was young to be getting that happiness that comes of making something from the home place, but I remember it well. The taste was better than applesauce from the store.
My parents would also buy apples from local orchards, and cider.We would keep them in an unheated room, and I remember the taste of the old varieties, so crisp and tart and juicy.
I left the farm to go away to school when I was 16. After that I would be home between sessions, but I didn't really live here. My younger sisters and my brother grew up, and went away to school in their turn. At some point my brother thought himself in charge of the place, and decided to cut the old apple trees down. I never heard why. So they are gone, except for seedlings that I am nurturing. I have put new trees in, and am waging the debate with the ecosystem as to whether they will survive, and if so, how well they will do.
There are still a lot of the old trees out in the periphery of the area I am now using for pasture. It is astounding, in fact, how very many fruit bearing trees and bushes abound in the woods on the verge of the swamp.
I have not yet identified all the old varieties, although I am sure there is a wine sap, a Granny Smith, a russet, and 2 or 3 others that are superb but as yet un-named to me. They tend to like the verge of the swamp, on a slope slightly north-facing. There is also a lot of hawthorn, wild black cherry, chokecherry, service berry, and viburnum. One major question to be asked (and answered) is whether they will do better in a more open woodland.
Encouraging the Old Trees
The old trees haven't had any pruning to speak of for at least a generation. Some have fallen over and re-sprouted. I took a course in apple tree management, and know theoretically how to prune and graft. but those are skills that I haven't had the leisure or the focus to practice much.
The cattle love the apples, and if they know I am out picking apples, it is a fight over who gets them. I believe that the cattle perform a service in that they fertilize, as well as keeping down the weeds and grass.
I was probably 10 or 12 when I first brought home enough apples to make sauce. Back then we had a Foley Food Mill, and if you left the skins on, the applesauce would be tinted pink. We would make applesauce cake. I was young to be getting that happiness that comes of making something from the home place, but I remember it well. The taste was better than applesauce from the store.
My parents would also buy apples from local orchards, and cider.We would keep them in an unheated room, and I remember the taste of the old varieties, so crisp and tart and juicy.
I left the farm to go away to school when I was 16. After that I would be home between sessions, but I didn't really live here. My younger sisters and my brother grew up, and went away to school in their turn. At some point my brother thought himself in charge of the place, and decided to cut the old apple trees down. I never heard why. So they are gone, except for seedlings that I am nurturing. I have put new trees in, and am waging the debate with the ecosystem as to whether they will survive, and if so, how well they will do.
There are still a lot of the old trees out in the periphery of the area I am now using for pasture. It is astounding, in fact, how very many fruit bearing trees and bushes abound in the woods on the verge of the swamp.
I have not yet identified all the old varieties, although I am sure there is a wine sap, a Granny Smith, a russet, and 2 or 3 others that are superb but as yet un-named to me. They tend to like the verge of the swamp, on a slope slightly north-facing. There is also a lot of hawthorn, wild black cherry, chokecherry, service berry, and viburnum. One major question to be asked (and answered) is whether they will do better in a more open woodland.
Encouraging the Old Trees
The old trees haven't had any pruning to speak of for at least a generation. Some have fallen over and re-sprouted. I took a course in apple tree management, and know theoretically how to prune and graft. but those are skills that I haven't had the leisure or the focus to practice much.
The cattle love the apples, and if they know I am out picking apples, it is a fight over who gets them. I believe that the cattle perform a service in that they fertilize, as well as keeping down the weeds and grass.