18th Century Purity Farm

The 18th Century Purity Farm has so many heirloom varieties. They are truly amazing.I encountered their farm stand inside the Coventry Farmers Market.They carry some of the oldest Apple varieties in America. I am deeply impressed.

Tolman Sweet
Mutsu (Crispen)
Newtown Pippin
Roxbury Russett
Black Gilliflower
Westfield Seek-No-Futher
Golden Russett
Esopus Spitzenburg
Fameus (Snow Apple)
Yellow Bellflower
Northern Spy
Winesap
Irish Peach apple
Caville Blanc  

Which Apples For What?

Fedco is amazing at this sort of thing. Leave it to an enclave of agrarian anarchist hippies to work out which applies should best be used for what purpose. Is that a desert apple? Is it a baking apple?  Could it be used as a cider apple?  Fedco knows.

Apples in Queens

I was in Queens and looking for tacos, or kabobs.. anything except a Hookah bar. That's a tall order around Steinway. But on a side street I found overflowing bins of apples. It held me over until lunch happened later on.

Summer Rambos

Summer Rambos and Honey Crisps, the season has truly begun. There are many early season apples: Jonogold, Mott's Pink, Queen Cox and even some Gravensteins. But most very early seasonal apples are soft, I prefer the more tart firm apples, really starting with the classic Granny Smith and moving up the scale.

there is no apple core

Kauffman Fruit Farm

For offf-season cider this was great!  Amos L. Kauffman started planting the Kauffman Fruit Farm in in Bird-in-Hand Pennsylvania  back in 1911. Five generations later the family is still running it and it tastes like they know what they're doing.

Union Square Apples

I stopped in Union Square in New York City on a Saturday morning and found apples. These were not fresh picked. These have been refrigerated and packed in a controlled atmosphere cold, humid, nitrogen rich and low in CO2.

This is not new. a century ago clever orchard keepers packed their ice house with sacks of lime. The lime oxidized into Calcium carbonate stripping the air of CO2 in the process. I ate many and while not at their peak, many were quite good. Except the Lady Apples. Those are terrible even fresh, strictly decorative.

Pennsylvania Farmer Magazine

Caption-less cover image of girl picking apples in Pennsylvania 1962, from Pennsylvania Farmer Magazine. .