The Fresh Apple

I forget every year just how good an apple tastes. A real apple. An apple that grew near you. An apple picked from an actual tree. An apple that drips juice on your chin and tastes like the rusty leaves, like the nippy wind, like the tart chill in the air.

Ru turning the press wheel.

Apple cider! At least in small quantity.

My boys wild apple picking with Big Grandpa (my dad) last fall.

I no longer buy oranges unless its the dead of winter and I think this year I'm done buying apples unless its fall. Yes, they are edible all year round but they become a bland, pale shadow of themselves, something that gets old so fast its hard to time it. I really love a good apple but every year when it is apple time I have to polish off my enthusiasm and convince myself to go apple picking because a whole year of completely pitiful, mediocre grocery store apples has stolen their thunder. I don't hate regular apples, they're edible I just don't actively like them either and they are so ubiquitous and so overdone that they completely steal the thunder of a real ripe tree fruit.

Wild Michigan apples come in a.....

....beautifully varied palette.

Our homeschool co-op plans field trips most fridays once the weather turns nippy. This week they planned a pint-sized, cider pressing instruction. Pretty darn cute! My little boys were big fans.  I think Ru would like a cider press for our backyard so that he could spend some time every day feeling really important, turning that big crank.

Fallen apples at one of our local orchards.

Red Delicious on the branch!

We don't really buy store-bought juice at our house but we do occasionally indulge in cider in the fall. (Especially if we can find it raw!) Cider feels more authentic to me than most juice. I fondly remember romping around as a little girl at chilly, annual cider pressings with our local congregation and also at least once as a deal split between two families sharing the sweet rewards of all the apple picking and the use of a borrowed press. I grew up in a place where there are wild apple trees on every corner. Getting fresh apples is as simple as harvesting them from an ancient roadside orchard or craggy wild tree down the nearest lane. Most of them simply go to waste although a few are gathered up for deer, bait piles for hunting season and never even tasted by a local human.

Big Grandma and Big Grandpa, my parents with Ru, after a wild apple ramble.

Here in Connecticut they are slightly harder to come by. I know where one wild tree is but mostly we pay money to be let into a cultivated orchard in counties north or east of us. I'm okay with that though, the fruit snaps when bitten and the flavors are nothing, nothing you can buy in May in the corner grocery store. 

Fruit Of Our Labors

This is the first official produce of our new mini-orchard we planted last year. We have a bunch of new baby trees we planted on our property last spring: two plum trees, a peach tree, a cherry, a pear and a nectarine to keep our ancient apple tree company. Last year they just grew, and this year that's still where most of the energy went (they are starting to look like real trees now!) but one of our plums pulled out all the stops and made a single golden fruit.

It was condensed deliciousness. All our fruit farming hopes and gardening efforts congealed in one glowing orb. A and I split it one very early morning for breakfast while the dew was still on the grass, dripping juices on our hands, alternating bites. Sometimes we share an achingly happy vision of life together.

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Apple Picking

We had a great little excursion to pick apples at Blue Jay Orchards and finished the fun with a warm box of apple cider donuts, rolled in cinnamon sugar. Autumn joy abounds.

Blue sky, red fruit, green leaves....beautiful.

I love the bounty of fruit rolling around under your feet, everywhere you step.

Snow White apple all shined up and glowing

I love that Dee puts little bits of flora that he finds behind his ears.

Witness...

Nib, riding in the baby pack during picking...

Ooo....new ones!

And yeah...you can see where Dee is getting the idea. Hee hee.

Apple cider donuts are so very, very good.

...lick your fingers off good.

Smiley babe, blazing blue sky.

And now there are bags of apples in the basement, rows of apples on the fruit table and apples in our minds and their dusky taste embedded in our mouths. Tasting every variety several times all the way through a mixed orchard will do that to you.

We are dreaming of warm pies ala mode, and apple dumplings, oozing buttery cinnamon...and I hoping this weekend to take my first crack at the bags of fruit and make something truly delicious...another apple cake could be squoze in too.

I leave you with this beautiful poem on the subject, which makes me want to be in my Mama's kitchen with sisters at my elbows.

Apple Season

by Joyce Sutphen

The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples,
big yellow pie apples, light in the hand,
their skins freckled, the stems knobby
and thick with bark, as if the tree
could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing
at the apple peeler; my grandmother,
more at home with a paring knife,
faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed
tight against the apple's side and peels
the skin away in long curling strips that
twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions,
slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until
my grandmother's paring knife goes slicing
through the rings and they become apple
pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon
they will be married to butter and live with
cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.

Peach Love

 We're off and running on a very busy week. Lots going on. Company for dinner, apricot jam to make, packing prep to do (ah, the ever-present), visitors to get ready for, friends to visit, a Bible study to lead (yipes!) and heaven knows what quantities of laundry. 

In amidst all of the business we keep stopping to eat another peach. We've been peach picking, see and all of three lugs of peaches are spread out in our kitchen, ripening slowly on our counter-top. We're waiting for that sensitive point when more peaches will be ripe than green or mushy brown. Its a special balancing act and to avoid the brown ones you have to eat a few as you go, lest they over ripen in the meantime, see? Such a delicious business. I do like peaches. They're my Papa's favorite and I sure think of him every single time I rub a velvet fruit between my cupped hands and then eat it leaning over the sink to drip the sunset juice down the drain. 

Next stop, peach canning!

The Garden

by Shel Silverstein

Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond,
Grew hisself a garden the likes of none.
Sprouts all growin', comin' up glowin',
Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun.
Colors of the rainbow,
See the sun and rain grow
Sapphires and rubies on ivory vines,
Grapes of jade, just
Ripenin' in the shade, just
Ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine.
Pure gold corn there,
Blowin' in the warm air,
Ol' crow nibblin' on the amethyst seeds.
In between the diamonds, ol' man Simon
Crawls about pullin' platinum weeds.
Pink pearl berries,
All you can carry,
Put 'em in a bushel and
Haul 'em into town.
Up in the tree there's
Opal nuts and gold pears –
Hurry quick, grab a stick
And shake some down.
Take a silver tater,
Emerald tomater,
Fresh plump coral melons,
Hangin' in reach.
Ol' man Simon,
Diggin' in his diamonds,
Stops and rests and dreams about
One... real... peach.