Miss just a few farmers markets (I was traveling), and WOW.
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| Just some of the apples you could buy at the Arlington, Massachusetts, farmers market on Wednesday. Click to embiggen! |
There were 26 different kinds of apples for sale at the farmers market this week. possibly a record. (Well, maybe not, but still a lot of apples.)
The menu included the Newtown Pippin and Calville Blanc, for goodness sakes, which I don't think I've seen at the market before.
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| Some rather early looking Calville Blanc d'Hiver |
Also present:
- Ambrosia
- Ashmead's Kernel
- Brock
- Cameo
- Cortland
- Crimson Crisp
- Empire
- Evercrisp
- Gala
- Golden Delicious
- Golden Russet
- Fuji
- Honeycrisp
- Jonagold
- Jonathan
- King Luscious
- Macoun
- McIntosh
- Melrose
- Mutsu
- Northern Spy
- Pink Lady
- Red Delicious
- Spartan
We are lucky to have three farms that bring apples to Arlington. While all of them grow popular varities like Honeycrisp and Macoun, each also offers a few varieties no one else sells.
Ashmead, Melrose, and Evercrisp, for instance, each came from a different orchard.
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| Crimson Crisp, Ambrosia, Evercrisp, Macoun |
But wait, there's more
Volante Farms, which sells apples for several orchards, lists 25 varieties as of this writing on its "This Week's Apples" page. I often find additional varieties there that were not listed because they were in short supply that week.
Shelburne Farm, on its home page (scroll down), lists an astonishing 50 varieties currently for sale, either in the orchard or the farm shop. (Some of those listed may be past their peak.)
These vendors thoughtfully keep these pages up-to-date in season, usually revising them just before the weekend.
Plenty of other farms and markets are full of choices, too, even if they don't tell us what they are at any given time.
Update: Hutchins Farm brought Liberty to Belmont the next day:
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A comment on the Liberty apples, shown in your bottom picture: These make an excellent apple sauce that is extraordinarily rich in flavor and they are fantastic in baked goods. Yes, Liberty has balancing tartness, but it also has good sugar content. Our apple sauce made from LIberty apples has excellent sweetness with no sugar added. I like eating Liberty apples raw - I appreciate their complex flavor and their good, crisp and dense texture when picked at their prime - but they are outside of the realm of modern apple tastes, which favor more sweet and less tart. I think even folks who might naturally gravitate towards an Evercrisp, Sugarbee or Envy will appreciate apple sauce and baked goods made from Liberty apples, though.
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