Oylers Organic Cider

I drank most of a quart of cider today. I could have shared better. It was from Oylers Organic Farms in Biglerville, PA and certified organic by PCO.I'm not a stickler for organic produce or cider for that matter, but this was some good cider. It was sweet, complex and very cloudy giving it a heavy rich taste I'd almost equate with chocolate. Damn fine stuff.

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. .

Lyndale Stand

Ida red, Melrose, Mutsu, Gala, Empire... It's the end of the season, but the late yielding trees still make a last stop at the Lyndale farm stand worthwhile. Right beside the Boston Turnpike it's an easy stop on a nice detour. You can find more Connecticut farm stands here.

Shirey Brothers Orchard

Owned jointly by the three Shirey brothers, Eugene, Andrew,and Stephen Shirey, this farm resides in Berks county Pennsylvania. Located at 1259 Old Airport rd. in Douglassville, you can see the apple trees from the road. I found their apples at a chain grocery store, prominently displayed but not labeled by type which is a minus.

Unionville cart

That's the setting sun, not the rising sun on those apples. At a farmers cart in Unionville, a hired hand was selling apples, pears, Lima beans and some greens. The apples were not labeled at all but Golden Delicious, Gala, Granny Smith, Macintosh, and others were easily identified.

Monolith Apples

Monolith apples are actually a recent Pennsylvania cultivar developed by North Star Orchards. It's firm, very tart but still sweet and has a bit of distinguishing russeting around the stem. It's a red and green blush apple that ripens in late August.They haven't revealed the lineage but they don't have to. they just have to keep growing them. It's the best new apple I've tasted in years.

Ringing Hills Cider

It's not exactly  a purist cider. It's pasteurized and contains a pinch of potassium sorbate as a preservative. But it's from an organic farm and it's good; leaning toward the sweet and mild end of the spectrum. Personally I prefer more tartness but this is also sold at grocery stores in the suburbs of Philadelphia, so in some ways it needs to serve the palate of the average consumer.  More here.

Quarryville Orchards

There's not much I can add to this already informative blog post. Aaron Esh is the main main at Quarryville Orchards.  He sells his fruit at many weekly street markets around Philadelphia. His cider is divine. But drink quickly, it's unpasteurized and starts "sparkling" as soon as you break the seal. Of course for some fans, that's when the fun gets started.

For the record, there is no federal law that requires the pasteurization of cider. However some states do, thankfully not Pennsylvania. The possibility of E coli contamination is limited to wind-fall apples in pastures that trees share with cattle. No reputable orchard would do this.

Florina Apples

A very modern apple originating in France in the 1950s. It's popular with growers not just because of it's sweetness, but also because it is firm and ships well but is also resistant to diseases such as Fireblight, scab, and mildew. That's a win-win. More here.

Florina are a type 4 apple which means it is self-sterile. It cannot pollinate itself which is uncommon in apples. It is a known mix of Malus floribunda and Malus zumi. 

Royalty Apples

I was unfamiliar with the Royalty apple, they're about the size of a grapefruit but still firm and sweet.  At that size they're more of a meal than a snack, but apples share well if you have a knife. Apparently it's novelty as a cultivar is for it's redness and not it's size

‘Royalty’ is one of the few apple cultivars producing 100% red-pigmented progeny. Most red-pigmented apples produce some non-red progeny, and more than would be likely in a random set. Apparently this is due to a single dominant red pigment gene. More here.


I am much more familiar with the Royalty crab apple, which this is clearly not. To which the pigmentation data applies is uncertain.

Grafting Apple Trees

Seed Savers is offering a workshop later this month. and again in April. You can learn techniques to preserve heirloom apples from Seed Savers orchard advisor Dan Bussey and Lindsay Lee. Workshop participants will go home with at least 3 grafted trees from our Historic Orchard. More information here.

An Apple Is...

Creston & Fortune Apples

Both of these sacks are at Horse Listener Orchard in Ashford, Connecticut. It's a nice off the beaten path new orchard.

Both of these varieties are quite new.  The Creston came out in about 1998. It's a mix of Golden Delicious and a nameless test apple NJ 381049. It's similar to Jobnagold but firmer. Fortune was developed in 1997 It's a cross between a Red Spy (aka Schoharie Spy) and a Empire.