I graded apples and pears for sale first thing this morning and then headed off on an apple mission, first to drop off fruit at Tenderwild Farm in Rockport where it’ll be sold in their farm store, then to a small orchard just a few miles farther down the road, owned by the flutist Thomas Wolf and his family.

Tom lives in a most magical place that he has cared for lovingly. The farm is old; the house was built in 1790. On a terrace in back of the house that overlooks the orchard and the farm pond is a huge Weeping Beech tree (Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’) that’s been trained to lay over an arbor. Under the draping branches is a table and half a dozen chairs. What an amazing place to eat lunch on a hot summer day—or anytime!

But that wasn’t our goal today. We were there to collect specimens from most of the twenty-five apple trees scattered about the back yard. The trees ranged in age from twenty or thirty years to well over a hundred. It was extremely helpful that Tom had numbered all the trees in advance. (Numbering your trees is always a good idea.) A few of the apples were easily recognizable—Wealthy, Twenty Ounce, Yellow Bellflower, Golden Delicious—but others were not so. A couple of the unfamiliar ones were extremely distinctive. Those can be really fun. I’ll study them all at home with my books and the apple key and hope to identify them in the coming weeks.