Today in the orchard
Summer Sweet ready for the fire, August 17, 2025
This morning was cool enough to light up the cookstove for the second day in a row and cook up a pot of Summer Sweet (aka King’s Sweet and Orange Sweet.) This is the small roundish-conic, opaque-orangey-yellow apple that originated in Sidney, ME and was sometimes confused with the very old Plymouth, MA apple, Hightop Sweet. They are different apples. All historic cultivars with the word “Sweet” in the name are apples with low acidity. Because of this, they take forever to cook.
Summer Sweet found its popularity as an August dessert fruit. Without the tartness we are so used to tasting in apples, its flavor is distinctive. They are best-flavored and textured when they are still slightly green (unripe). The Summer Sweet sauce is moderately thick, and that distinctive flavor really comes through. The acidic Dudley sauce took about four minutes to cook down yesterday. The Summer Sweet sauce took about an hour and a half. That’s the low acidity.
I continued cutting firewood and cleaning up compost piles. Late in the day we picked all the Tecumseh plums still on the large tree up at Finley Lane. They are so good!
