Adam's Apples

The apples ripen and swell at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts, on August 26.  ¶  As we near the end of pomological summer , more farms are selling a wider assortment of apples.

By some accounts, this early English variety was once quite popular and is still grown commercially today.  ¶  My samples are medium sized, slightly ribbed and slightly flattened at top and bottom.  ¶  Their warm red blush, over spring green, is variegated and includes many lenticel dots that are curiously indistinct, as though they were fuzzily out of focused.

Zestar and Gingergold have joined Early Mac and Paula Red at farmers market this week.  ¶  It is fun to watch the symphony of apples build to its annual crescendo in October. The melody unfolds a little differently every year.

This understated antique apple is a window on the past.  ¶  The last (and only) time I tasted Chenango Strawberry was in November (of 2017). I could tell then that the apple had been off the tree for a while.  ¶  Still, I did not appreciate how early the Strawberry actually ripens, and how long it had been sitting. Apples change in even the best storage, so I am eager to taste a fresh version.

A reader writes,  ❝ In the early 1960s for several summers I worked at Nagog Hill Farm when J. Morrison maintained a dairy farm there. I recall one warm August day when I was assigned to clear a fence line in the old peach orchard. The peaches were at their peak and none were picked. I almost got sick on the best peaches I have ever eaten. At the time I had no idea I was in one of a handful of the oldest, continuous fruit orchards in the country.

On a bike ride to one of Massachusetts' finer beaches , I stopped to pay tribute to the old Crockett orchard, which failed tragically in 1934.  ¶  The original farmhouse still stands (though the road has shifted a good bit closer to it in the last century), but I found myself drawn to a neighboring property that, I assume, was part of the original orchard.  ¶  There stand two old apple trees, bent but well tended, both bearing many apples.

The view from from Concord, Massachusetts, is more cheerful than that of my previous dispatch from Littleton .  ¶  In Concord, the fruit is ripening nicely on Hutchins Farm's well-tended trees.

I am sorry to see the state of things at the old Nagog Hill Orchard, now several years into its abandonment.  ¶  Nobody seems to have the wherewithal to make a go of these trees , held (with the land) in trust by the Town of Littleton in Massachusetts.