Adam's Apples

Surrounded by the plastic and newsprint that kept it over the winter, this 2025 GoldRush apple proved still good to eat in June of 2026.  ¶  As things turned out, my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I squirreled away a score of these apples last fall to eat in April.  ¶  But no matter: GoldRush is a phenomenal keeper apple , still good in June. This is my last one.

SO FAR FROM THE HARVEST  ( GoldRush (L) and Empire ) ¶  The late spring used to be enlivened by imports of (relatively) fresh apples from Chile, New Zealand, and other points south .  ¶  Today these apples are swept away on the ebb tides of global commerce. (Tariffs? Hormuz Strait?) Things are a little bleak.  ¶  This year I've found myself gravitating to the last of my GoldRush from the fall, and, unexpectedly, Empire.

Things are not pretty here at the end of June. Supermarkets are flush with Honeycrisps picked in August of 2018. Of course the cupboard has been bare at almost every orchard for most of 2019.

It's still about a month before the first local apples are ready to eat here. Apples Yates, Five Crown and Frequin Rouge. Some for the fruit bowl and some for apple crumble 😀🍎 pic.twitter.com/OfZlPTu6Mb — Heritage Fruit Trees (@heritage_fruit) June 22, 2019 But in Australia  (above), there are still plenty of keepers in good shape from the spring harvest.

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.

Photographed June 11 I'm still eating the Gold Rush apples I laid down last Halloween and began eating in April.

May and June, so far from the harvest, make an especially bleak season of the apple year. High-tech industrial storage only gets you so far, and the supermarket apples are really showing their age. These babies are months away. June 6 photo. This year where I live the problem is exacerbated by an inexplicable absence of apples from New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina. Usually these fruits, fresh from the spring harvest below the equator, provide a welcome relief. The imports  ride in around the end of April and tide us over until the real thing begins here in late July. Though unwelcome, this year's absence creates an opportunity for me to report on apples that I would otherwise avoid: those that have been in storage for as much as 9 months (and counting).

It seems like years since it's been here. Apples growing in the sun yesterday at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Mass.

The crop of southern-hemisphere apples that usually arrives in late April or May was, at last, in full cry in June. I don't know whether it is freshness or terroir or something else, but the Chilean Granny Smiths were much better--crisper, more complex--than their Washington State counterparts.

I saved out one last russet apple from the fall and ate it today, the last of June. The apple was yielding in my hand, and its skin was wrinkled and smelled mossy. It looked like a little rotting pumpkin. But the flesh was sound and the flavors were wonderfully sweet, wildly concentrated pear and honey like ice wine after the freeze.

June is when memories of last year's harvest season bend into anticipation of the next. But though the mental storehouse is richly stocked, the actual cupboard is nearly bare. Continue to look south this month as the later part of the Fall harvest arrives from Chile and New Zealand and thereabouts. The traditional vinous Northeastern varieties, Empire and McIntosh, have become attenuated shadows of their true selves. I've been especially enjoying some Chilean Granny Smiths that can't be too long off the tree. When these are good they are very good indeed. Last June we had the pleasure of Autumn Greetings from Argentina; we'll see if they return. But mostly, in June memory looms large.