We will be under the powerlines on 3A in Hill this Saturday from 8 AM to 2 PM. Hope to see you there.
This has never been updated all that often. It will still be a repository for longer musings. However, we have capitulated and now have a Spook Space presecence in order to advertise, or whatever it is that happens on socialite media. Here is a link:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553151462784
What is in a name? Objectively, Honey Gold must be yellow apple. On a hill adjacent to Olympus, all the Honey Gold are uniform in flaxon splediferousness. On ours, they go from green to blush in a few days. Judging their ripeness is always a knife edge. A perrenial goal being to minimise drops, we often get distracted in the Sweet Sixteen harvest to pick this one at its cusp.
Not for nothing, it has Honey in its name. If you like your apples sweet, look no further. This is a pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. It rounds out the tri-umverate with being crisp and juicy. Finally, being no slouch in juice yield, we make a pressing every year for the sweet teeth inclined of those who like thier apples completely liquid; always with a bit of Kerr for a just amount of contrast.
Some call it juice. Others Cider. Purists wince and remain steadfast in thier conviction that juice is juice, until sugars are fermented in alcohols, and only then can you call it Cider. Splitting the differnce, a camp arose calling the result of pressing apples Sweet Cider. What ever you call it, ours is unfiltered and un-pasteurised.
We would like to thank Amphora Restaurant & Tavern, in Derry, for featuring our bottled sunshine in their seasonal cocktail. The crate to the right goes to them in the morning. This pressing is one part Kerr and three parts Honey Gold.
Them other bottles is up for grabs. Perhaps we will see you at the Bristol Craft and Food Market this Saturday. We will also have whole apples by the quarter peck for purchase. As always, samples are available. Support your economy, buy locally grown!
This is an apple that always seems to surpise people. Whilst smaller than your usual suspect, it is no shrinking violet on the palate. A cross between famous crab Dolgo, and an early 20th century edible Haralson, the result is only slightly more tart than sweet. It also is apple forward and leaves no doubt as to what fruit it is.
Snack sized for adults, it makes a perfect full fruit serving for pre-schoolers. Under ideal conditions, it will store for four months. On our hill, it is picked last week of September. Look no further for a jelly apple, it self sets. We also use it in mult-varietal sweet ciders for complexity and contrast to sugar heavy apples like Honey Gold.
The photo is from yesterday's pick. As always, the clay applied mid sommer lingers into the fall. We store with the haze on, and wash as they go to market. It takes longer per bushel to cleanse small apples than regular sized. This week will be overtime on wash day.
the fire-flys were out tonight
putting on a display
bio-illuminating thier mid sommer
silent in spectacle
but no less impressive
than any salt peter
charcoal and sulfer device
hundreds of them it seemed
under branches in the woods
out in the open over orchard
a woodland meadow
thick in under story
profuse in fungal duff
bird song for roosting
the score underpinning a ballet
of fire-flys
out tonight
Farming is beguiling. For the most part, it hinges upon showing up and giving it your all. Some is applying knowledge. Within that framework comes a term, partly scientific in bent, that applies the principal of hypothesis to the quotidian. Delve the depths of literature devoted to site planning of a fruit orchard and you will run across many a dialogue that deals with late frosts / freezes. Invariably, they point to a maxim that stipulates an orchard on a slope has the greatest chance of cheating the deep spring plunges of temperature.
Physics, or its sibling Chemistry, prove that a volume of gas tends to seek lower altitudes as it cools. Our atmosphere is no different. The slope principal interprets that tendency into an understanding that hillside orchards have a flow of atmosphere, wherein, as the air at orchard level cools, it travels down the hill. This movement of air mass draws in warmer air from the next layer just above into its place. To work perfectly, an orchard must be positioned such that it is not at the peak of a promontory, as well as having a clearing below it to accept the sliding air mass.
When we set about looking for land to start an orchard, we had this concept on our minds. It was one of many considerations that went into the calculus of which properties to make an offer on. Sure, it is a ton easier, and other more graphic terms, to propagate, manage, and bring an orchard to fruition if its entirety is on a completely flat plane. Then the 50 year frost hits. Or, even the decade frost. Both will bite deep into your crop.
By all accounts, this one was a doozy. Stone fruit grown in New England will be equivalent to hen's teeth this year. Almost without regard, apple operations will struggle to pay for inputs, given the damage done. We, once again as a result of being unconventional, have managed to emerge unaffected by the May 28th super freeze.
Our orchard is not flat. At the very least, you can count on a 7% incline no matter where you stand in it. At points, it approaches a 15% incline. The lower end bounds a clearing that is at least 15% grade. This all translates into a concept that as air cools in the orchard it should slide down hill, as it has a place to flow.
On April 22nd, we transplanted 56 trees to finally fill in the un-propegated corners and replace some dead loss. As usual, they kept us biting nails as leaf out dallied well behind the established. Finally, about May 22nd, they all showed signs of bud break. Just days later, the 50 year frost hit. Through the grape vine, we heard of operations with new transplanting losing all of them. That, in addition to taking it hard in fruit set. The hill had a different experience. None of our transplants experienced any setback from the sub freezing event that had neighbors thermometer's registering 28F for hours on end.
Farming is beguiling. Not the least of which experienced by a farm on a decent incline. When we plant new trees, it takes a effort above to create berms that keep water around the newly transplanted ball of roots. Then there is the logistics of hauling water to keep them hydrated. Once producing, it is no small task to keep a tree fed and protected from insects, viruses, fungus and bacteria; all a result of applying inputs that arrive at a much lower elevation.
Overall, the orchard spans just over a hundred feet in elevation. That is after taking a two hundred foot climb from where the tractor is stored along with inputs. Overall, this daily hurdle saved us from the 50 year frost. Hopefully, we will not have to test the proof of concept in the 1000 year freeze. Things are challenging enough.
Final note, the fruitlets pictured are Wolf River. Get your pie tins ready New Hampshire, because this orchard will have plenty of apples for your pies this fall!
For the puzzle lovers. Free .25 peck of apples, or one quart sweet cider if you can name the composition.
My output has never been, how shall we say, multitudinous. I had, as an intent, a post about why I spray Kayolin clay, and the ways in which it inhibits insects. Reality is that I get to the end of the day with a picture of what I did, and no longer have the oomph to document it on the interwebs...
About a week or so from now, I will be picking apples for market. Since I planted trees on root-stocks that wanted to grow to a height above twenty odd feet, I need a way to get me the crop that is that far above the orchard floor. In a laboratory setting, that end would be simple in achievement. This particular orchard is far from conforming.
The common apple ladder has been designed to accommodate fast picking in an orchard that is arranged on a plain as flat as they come. The orchard in consideration is about as steep as one might consider; lest they are truly the bretheren of Don Quixote.
It only goes to follow, that harvest will require the above and beyond, to transverse an apple from tree to your teeth. This results from all of our trees being trained to be about 20 feet tall and 20 feet in diameter once fully developed. Enter the aparatus to level the playing field!
Things are looking up. It may not be super efficient in changing up deployments, it will more than make up in having to weigh instability vs. how many apples I retrieve in a particular planting of ladder.....
The implications are astounding. It should precipitate starvation of significant populations around the Globe. This may not be such a bad thing. Fewer humans equals less pollution, of any kind. The only hurdle will be how intense the conflicts become over the dwindling resource of fish, which is a major source of protein for the world. Douglas Adam was prescient in his glib Au-revoir of, "So long, and thanks for all the fish." Oh, and let us not forget that an inextricable link exists between the Ocean and climate. Literally, humans have jumped the shark...
" An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic."
"The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm
fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought
the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence
gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished."
"Plankton is made up of the billions of marine creatures and plants that drift in the currents of oceans and seas. The category covers a huge variety of species, many of them microscopic. However, they are fundamental to life on Earth as they form the bottom rung of the food chain. Plankton is consumed by the krill which are fed on by the fish that, in turn, provide nutrition for terrestrial animals including billions of humans."
We hold these truths
to be self-evident
endowed with an
unalienable right to
life, liberty
and pursuit of happiness
so long as
you are strong of back
and can pay your taxes
unto perpitutiy
Whenever I find egg on my face, I console myself in that they are locally grown and free range...
I have
just recently
discovered reddit
or moar to the point
streaming television
where you can voyeur
and comment at the same time
I must
admit
I am indulgent
in seeing just how
I can place my thoughts
into the stream of others
not that it will amount
to anything moar
than an experiment
into just how suggestible
humans at large are
woe be unto me
for my sense of humor
makes for curious
interjection
if not cliched pricelessness...
