Today in the orchard
The cold, raw November winds swept across the farm today, and even rubber boots, two sweaters and a sweatshirt were not enough to keep out the bite. But despite the cold and the wind, we harvested all the potatoes. The yield was good. We had planted them in the bed where we dug out a couple hundred nursery trees this past May. Now that the potatoes are dug, we’ll fertilize the bed and plant garlic by the end of the week. We’ll harvest the garlic on a warm, sunny day next August. That will be three different crops in that one bed. Rotation, rotation, rotation.
In the great apple sauce rotation, today it was Golden Ball, one of my favorites. It’s large, round, golden yellow and, to my eye, beautiful. Whoever named it did a good job. There’s no consensus on where it originated. Some sources say Connecticut while others suggest Maine. Either way, it was grown historically in the southern and central parts of the state. It ripens in early fall and keeps until about now. It was time to use them up. It’s on the acidic side and cooks well into an excellent, thick, creamy sauce. You can read more about Golden Ball in Chapter 5 of Apples and the Art of Detection. I’m pretty sure it was also Sun Ra’s favorite apple - or should have been.