I think late September through early-to-mid-October is my favorite time of year. The days alternate between soft and crisp. The soft ones are overcast, maybe foggy or rainy, and temperate. Crisp days are bright and hard, with vivid blue skies and sharply colored leaves that turn luminescent on the soft days.
On the first official day of autumn, the solstice, my husband and I headed out to a local apple farm. Not the big, fancy one, but one of the smaller, family orchards. It was a pick-your-own place, but we opted to purchase already-harvested fruit. I don’t trust or particularly like supermarket apples until I have too.
I grew up in an area full of orchards. The aforementioned big, fancy orchard, with its distillery, herb division, and summer concerts is great for the local economy, but I prefer the smaller places. Back then, I knew the families who farmed the land. Now, the properties and trees have changed hands. Some acreage hosts a massive festival. Trees were removed to create sports fields. But the area wasn’t always like that. There were apple trees everywhere.
As my husband and I chatted with the woman at the smaller orchard, we had an apple tasting. She collected several varieties from which she’d slice off chunks for us to taste. This gave us an opportunity to choose the perfect fruit for each of us. I have finally convinced my husband that Red Delicious is not a varietal, but rather a decoration, so that helped.
I had to giggle, though. My parents’ property had lots of apple trees on it when they purchased it. And there were old, gnarly trees across the road, too…gone now, sacrificed to someone’s lawn. We never knew the varietals (except they weren’t Macintosh or Red Delicious), but mom knew the middle tree up by the dump yielded the best pie apples. For applesauce, she picked from the tree on the knoll behind the old barn. And so on.
The actual varietals of those trees were lost when the last owner of the original farm passed away. I’m not even sure any of those trees have survived the decades of neglect. If they did, wouldn’t it be cool to find out what kind of apples they were? But I don’t have the funds or the patience to approach science with the request.
