Today in the orchard
Back on the home front Cammy picked Royal Jersey, Ivan and Blenheim Orange. The Royal Jerseys were mostly on the ground and should be pressed soon. Ivan is a small but exceptionally delicious fresh-eating fruit. It’s one of Niels Hansen’s best introductions. Blenheim is a large, famous, historic English dessert and cooking variety.
Meanwhile I spent the day fruit exploring with Laura and Sean west of Presque Isle. Our goal was to taste as many seedlings as we could in a single ten-hour period. I think we won the Guinness Book of World Record by a few hundred. My guess is we may have tasted 1,000 between the three of us. We found multiple forests of hundreds upon hundreds of seedling trees of every imaginable size, shape, color and flavor. It was incredible, fantastic and exhausting. Apples ranging from the size of Blueberries to the size of softballs. By about 3 PM my poor mouth was so overwhelmed, I could barely tell what it was I was eating. The colors of the fruit were absolutely electric against the blue September sky. Everywhere we looked there were more apple trees. Tree after tree after tree. Utterly amazing. Among the hundreds we found several that we should name and graft. We had flagging tape that we discreetly tied onto the backsides of the trunks. We’ll come back this winter to collect scionwood. It was a truly fantastic day.