It’s apple season in the Adirondacks, in my view, the quintessence of the North Country autumn harvest. Grab a crunchy treat and sink your teeth into its sweet-tart bliss. Aaahhh…
Apple Concoctions
An apple (or three) a day keeps the concocter away? Perhaps. Unless, of course, you enjoy experimenting with the nearly infinite concoctions born of the forbidden fruit. The aromas of autumn profit amply from the influence of apples, so I’ll offer a few suggestions to stimulate your imagination. Cinnamon-y applesauce, apple crumble, apple butter, cider, apple pie, apple streusel, apple vinegar, apple fritters, apple chutney, applejack, apple upside down cake (aka tarte Tatin), apple brandy, apple-raisin muffins or pancakes,… It’s easy to get carried away.
Apple Abundance (Source: Geo: Davis)
Apple Family Tree
While apple picking, harvesting, pressing, concocting, and fermenting rightfully share center stage, apple season is at once an invitation to reflect on the diversity of apple varieties in particular, and the many somewhat surprising cousins in their broader family tree.
Did you know that domesticated orchard apples are in the genus Malus which is in the family Rosaceae? Yes, the same taxonomic family that includes rosebushes also includes one of our favorite autumn harvest fruits, the apple. Also pears, quince, peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. And that’s just some of the edible Rosaceae.
And if apple season offers an annual invitation to celebrate the broader family tree, it’s also a nice celebrate the Malus varieties we cultivate in Rosslyn’s holistic orchard:
Belle de Boskoop
Duchess of Oldenberg
Enterprise
Freedom
Gala
Kidd’s Orange
Liberty
Pixie Crunch
Rubinette
And in addition to the twenty apple trees in our orchard, we have another dozen or so trees scattered along the borders of our back meadows that I’ve gradually pruned and pampered back into production. So far I’ve been unable to identify the varieties, but there are some tasty fruit among them. In keeping with our abundance approach to gardening, we mostly harvest the trees in our orchard and leave the outliers to the deer, raccoons, bears, coyotes, wild turkeys, and probably a bunch of other apple motivated wild neighbors.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on all the trees I wish I’d planted in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007. We’ve been adding new trees for a year now — a half dozen or so each spring and fall — and yet I can’t help but imagine what might be today if I’d started earlier. Fruit trees ten or twelve feet tall would still be blooming. We would have been harvesting apples and pears and plums and apricots and peaches for a couple of seasons by now.
In fact, we have harvested some apples and pears during the last two years, but they didn’t come from newly planted trees. I’ve been restoring a couple dozen gnarly, long neglected apple trees (and two pear trees) scattered throughout the meadows behind our barns. Whittling a third of their old growth away each season, I’ve begun to nurse the old trees back to health, and several have begun to produce palatable fruit.
I’ve wiled away many beautiful hours lopping and sawing from the top of a ladder or winding my way through the limbs like a monkey. I’ve loved every minute of it and not just for the promise of future fruit.
It’s a funny thing, an orchard. So many functions wrapped up in one little plot of land, one little grid of fruit trees. Obviously one of the most important is also the most self evident: an orchard is a neighborhood “market”, if you will. A fresh fruit grocery less than a minute from the kitchen. An organic grocery where I can be 100% confident that no pesticide and no unwholesome ripening techniques have sullied the fresh fruit.
Doug carrying orchard ladder
And then there are the flowers. Gardeners, landscapers, poets and painters have romanced the seasonal blossoms of fruit trees for hundreds of years. I am no exception despite my utilitarian, upcountry ways. An orchard is a geometric bouquet of blooms, an annual riot against leafless canopies and gray, drizzly spring days. And even when blossoms flutter earthward and the boughs fill with thick plumes of adolescent foliage, there remains a subtle nobility in the orchard’s orderly procession.
During hot summer days the orchard becomes contemplative, concentrating on nurturing promises into bounty. The fruit trees reach deep into the cool earth for water and high into the sky for sunshine. They brace their increasingly heavy load against winds and thunderstorms.
And then it’s time for the harvest. Whether a crisp apple plucked during a mid-day walk with Griffin or a pear sauce cooked down with vanilla, cloves and a jigger of maple syrup, I’ve already begun to enjoy the fruits of my labors. This August through October should offer up an even more robust crop of apples and pears. And someday soon I hope to acquire a cider press and invite friends and neighbors for a weekend of fruit gathering and cidering. A potluck. Music in the meadows. And by then, with luck, the apricots and peaches and plums will have begun to produce as well. What fruity feasting we’ll do!
Old Apple Tree; New Chapter (Photo credit: virtualDavis)
During the winter months another often overlooked function of the orchard reveals itself. In order to maintain healthy fruit trees while improving their physical architecture and productivity it’s necessary to prune the trees during the period of winter dormancy. This is a chore, and the bigger the orchard grows, the bigger the chore. But unlike most chores, pruning an orchard is far more than a line item on a To Do list.
There’s a creative element, shaping and guiding the trees’ growth habit year after year. And there is a serotonin inducing pick-me-up triggered by dedicating yourself to an activity during the winter doldrums which will increase summer abundance. An investment in future harvests.
But for me, the single greatest reward of fruit tree orcharding occurs during the off-season. My bride is an avid and dedicated practitioner of yoga. Not I. For me it’s fruit tree pruning. I don’t think it’s a reach to suggest that pruning fruit trees in the late winter and early spring is my yoga. It’s my mindfulness meditation.
And then there’s grafting… But that alchemist’s hobby for another day, another post.
Now I’m off to sleep to dream of the orchards we might have had today if we could have initiated our orchard yoga sooner!
Seven Apples, an apple still life, August 10, 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)
Sometime seven apples, five ripe edibles and two depicted in watercolor, are perfection. Rosslyn’s curious combination of real fruit and facsimiles (the latter painted by a dear friend, Amy Guglielmo, nearly two decades ago) are subtly playful. A self reflective still life, if you will. A juxtaposition of food and art.
I’ll admit that a decent dose of sentimentality pulls me here. A delicate illustration conjured by a close companion of many years. And plump apples tempting. Granite agonized over, tiles attentively paired by my bride and me, installed by Elaine Miller in the August days of Rosslyn’s lengthy rehabilitation,…
But there’s another poignancy as well, and it’s rooted in the illustrative rendering, liquid pigments now dried onto, into paper. A photograph of a painting of apples. Next to real apples. A verisimilitude vignette. As I endeavor to untangle my Rosslyn narrative from our Rosslyn narrative; to distill my poems and stories and essays and homemade images from the property itself (and her many artifacts); indeed to separate myself, ourselves from the ecosystem that has been our home and our life for so long; there is something in this vignette that resonates deep within me despite the fact that I still can’t quite define it. Perhaps clarity will accrue in the coming months as I reexamine the memories and relics of our sixteen years at Rosslyn. Partly a poetics of place, perhaps. But what else? Why?
