Today in the orchard
Today we had rain much of the day. We could hear the trees gasping with a sign of relief. Admittedly it was a pitiful amount (about 2/10”), but when you’re in a drought as we are, two tenths is welcome. Just seeing droplets of water beading up on the leaves of apples was enough to make me feel like all might be well again on Earth.
Until this year we sold much of our fruit through our CSA. We let that go after 16 years. We will still sell some apples to Khris and Lizzie Hogg, the couple who have taken over the CSA, but we’ll also sell our apples to local farm stands, restaurants and bakeries. Today we packed Purple Heart plums, Black Ice plums and Trailman apples so we spent a chunk of the day in the barn grading them. When we’re cooking, saucing or pressing for us at home, we’re likely to use nearly all the fruit. We were more selective with the fruit that we provided to our CSA members, but they learned to be very tolerant of less than pristine fruit. When it goes to a farm stand or restaurant, however, it’s got to look nice. The grading process can be a bit brutal. Yes, we’d use this apple no problem, but would it sell? (Sadly, probably not.) So it goes into the discard bucket. Fortunately, we eat a lot of apples ourselves, and in a couple of weeks we’ll crank up the press and start making cider.