Apple of the Week: Gravenstein

Gravenstein is the Macoun of August.

These are not quite at peak where I live, but still worth seeking out.

Forever sugar

It's August already and we are up to the very fine Gravensteins.

Well into the harvest.

Personally I am not looking back, but it just hit me that today it is possible to eat super sweet varieties all year round and never have the joy of tart local fruit.

Goodby, Willams Pride

Get out your tiny violins.

My sole source for Williams Pride, one of my favorite August apples, has none this year and will be pulling the trees down to grow something else.

The apples are susceptible to bitter pit and just too ornery to grow.

Apple of the Week: Pristine

Eat us now!

The best of the super earlies, crisp and lively Pristine has snap and sophistication.

They are ripe now, so what are you waiting for?

10 Years of Adam's Apples

Ten years ago today, in my very first blog post, I said,

Neither a farmer nor a gourmet, I can't promise technical explanations or rarefied flights of fancy.

Still, there is a rich variety of apples still available here in New England, including many heirlooms.

If you don't know these apples, prepare to be amazed.

Maybe there has been a rarified flight of fancy or two. Still, my best work here is when the prose gets out of the way and the apples speak.

And so it begins

Perhaps not the best apple of all time, but the event it heralds has no match in the calendar of fruit.

The above Lodi apple is the first of the 2018 apple harvest.

Fraud gallery

In the last few years we've seen some new faces on the supermarket shelves.

Kiku is sweet and crisp and juicy. Mahana Red is crisp and juicy and sweet.

Kiku

Mahana Red

The stingiest month

April may be the cruelest month, but this particular June feels like the stingiest.

Of course there can be no fresh local fruit this month, but the southern hemisphere had a harvest not too long ago.

Where are those apples? Not in supermarkets.

The Herefordshire Pomona

containing coloured figures and descriptions of the most esteemed kinds of apples and pears.

Source: The Herefordshire Pomona, Volume II

The Biodiversity Library recently posted scans of the two-volume Herefordshire Pomona.

A fairy tale that's not even wrong

"Honeycrisp Saves the World"

Recently National Public Radio's "Planet Money" decided to explain apples to us.

Because the true story of the apple and cider renaissance is so boring, the explanation came in the form of a fairy tale, once upon a time, in which nearly every story element is unfaithful to the truth.

A dab of mustard

Imagine my surprise to find mustard in my apple last week.

Not the actual golden brown spicy stuff, but rather its distinctive tang. Minus the heat.

Calm before the bloom

Not a bud has burst earlier today at Huchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

Separated at birth?