After apple picking
I went apple-picking this weekend. It’s easy to do—just drive about 15 minutes, go to the pick-your-own orchard, buy one of their little bags, walk out on a lovely fall day to where the trees are, and begin.
The trees are dwarves. They’re all labeled as to type. I didn’t even have to get on my tippy toes, and I’m only 5’4″. They were laden with fruit, all ripe. Just reach out and grab it, fill up your bag, and walk back to the barn and the cash register. Buy some cider, too, while you’re at it.
The place was loaded with families with young children, who’d even brought the dogs—mostly tiny little dogs like Yorkies. A lot of photo-taking, although not by me.
And, as always happens to me with apple-picking, there’s the poetry that pops into my brain. Frost, naturally:
AFTER APPLE-PICKING
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
If you think that’s merely a poem about apple-picking, Frost is eluding you. As usual with Frost, the familiar country scene and familiar country activities are merely the jumping off points for much deeper ruminations about life itself: youth versus age, goals and dreams versus accomplishments, energy versus ennui, and of course life and death. In other words, the biggees.
The modern world being what it is, I was able to stand in the orchard, dial the poem up on my cell phone, and read it right then and there. Concentrating on the images in the poem, it struck me for the first time that apple-picking itself has changed mightily, at least in this orchard and at most of the pick-your-own orchards I’ve visited. Ladder? No ladders needed; the fruit is right there at knee level, waist level, eye level. Tired? We pick only what we want, and pay for the privilege.
It’s a Disneyland of apple-picking, a serious activity recast as entertainment for us modern folk. Frost’s daylong, repetitive, wearying task is now a brief, light excursion into a storybook past. As Frost wrote in another poem, “Two Tramps in Mud-Time,” about a different chore (wood-splitting):
…I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed.
Well, the orchards have figured out how to make their work our play, and have us pay them for the privilege. And we enjoy it, especially on a beautiful day.
Ever see roses grown in New England, Neo? Or grown them yourself?
After a few years, those vine trunks are like weapons, dagger sized scythes of sharp pinpricked blood loss.
Very good for creating biological and organic barriers to entry at certain choke points.
There was a story about ancient classical Roman civilization in Tunisia or North Africa. The Romans built highways along the coast as well as palm trees, but instead of maintaining the roads using their own money, they sold sections of the highway with the palm trees so that land owners would have to maintain the palm trees and the road as well, but in return they would make a profit selling the fruits or whatever they got from the trees.
After the Islamic Jihad conquered north Africa, all the irrigated farmland washed off into the Mediterranean. The Islamic goat herds had pulled up all the grass and vegetation keeping the soil from being eroded.
Brings back memories of picking apples back in the day when it was a necessity to add to the meager larder of our household. Many to eat as picked while they stayed fresh – about a month when stored in the dark coolness of our cave where we also kept potatoes and carrots. Sliced apples, apple butter, and cider all canned by hard work in the kitchen. What a feeling of accomplishment came with seeing the cupboard filled with canned fruit to last over the winter.
Now I’m like most urban dwellers. Spoiled by the fact of fresh fruit all year round. Spoiled by how cheap and plentiful it is. It’s a high standard of living, but we have lost some of the hardiness of those earlier times.
At my age, looking toward the end of the trail, Frost’s poem resonates. I feel in my bones what’s coming, yet I perceive it only as a mirage. Something I cannot quite grasp – as in peering through a shard of ice looking for clarity. All I hope for is that like Frost, “I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. …”
Now I’m like most urban dwellers. Spoiled by the fact of fresh fruit all year round. Spoiled by how cheap and plentiful it is. It’s a high standard of living, but we have lost some of the hardiness of those earlier times.
If you have a plot of land around, you can just grow your own using heirloom seeds or gmo seeds.
There’s an orchard near me–family-owned for over 100 years. They have pick-your-own apples, berries, etc., a retail store, a nursery, corn mazes, hayrides, a trout pond, and a petting zoo. They make good use of every inch of land. When you think of all the upkeep, advertising, traffic control involved, it’s quite an operation. Farmers earn their money no matter how they get it.
JJ,
One of my fondest childhood memories is making apple butter at my aunt’s. There was a huge copper kettle put over a fire outside, and quite a few aunts were there to help. The older kids did most of the serious picking in her orchard. I can’t tell you how much time I spent helping mom can and freeze food as a kid. It sure beat playing hockey.
BTW, if you want an apple butter that tastes like homemade, try McCutcheons. You can order it from Amazon.
I caught the deeper meaning of Frost’s poem right off; Maybe that’s because I’ve learned a lot from planting my own apple orchard eight years ago. When the price of apples broke $1 per pound (remember those days?), I raised my fist against heaven and screamed, “I’m not going to take this! I’ll grow my own apples, by God!” So I called up the excavators and had 1/10 acre of my property cleared and the tree stumps hauled off. Then I fenced it with a high fence to protect the young saplings from the deer.
Not knowing which varieties would thrive in my area, I bought fifteen different ones and lovingly planted them in large holes with soil amendments. Then I waited…for years. I didn’t see the first apple until three years later, and some of the trees didn’t bear until their seventh year. Several of the trees were injured by Fireblight one year, and some of them have died along the way from Crown Rot or Borers. But all these years I’ve had to tend the trees and mow the grass I planted to hold the orchard soil from running off.
Tending this orchard has turned out to be a constant battle against disease and insects and weather. Each fall I prune the trees – a process which now takes weeks since the trees have gotten so large. At the time, I never considered just how dangerous it would be for an old man to be up on a 15′ ladder with pruning shears. Each spring I spray them for Fireblight and every two weeks thereafter I spray them for insects and the fungi that make black and brown spots on the fruit. The first couple years I did that chore with a hand sprayer, but had to purchase a 25 gal. power sprayer when the trees got large.
So now we’re “blessed” with more apples than we can use each year. I had hoped to sell some to help defray the cost of this misadventure, but the neighbors just turn up their noses because the fruit isn’t all shiny and perfect like they have become used to.
So I got my wish; I have all the apples I want, but I never counted on how much work this project would take. When I conceived this project, I never counted on getting old, either. I’d hire some help, but where I live there just isn’t anyone willing and able.
Yes, Frost was right. This orchard has taught me a lot about life and mortality.
Our neighbors are farmers with some older, poorly tended orchards here in Central Pennsylvania. All the trees were heavily laden this year, with a big crop of really good apples. My dog and I walk the farms constantly, he helps keep their groundhog population under control. This fall I have had my pick from their trees as he hunts and exercises, the apples are of many varieties, and all of them have been prolific and good fruit this year.
They have offered to let others come in and help themselves to the easily-reachable fruit, but there have been few other takers than the dog and me. Yet ten miles away families pay for the privilege of wandering through a small commercial orchard. Go figure.
So now we’re “blessed” with more apples than we can use each year. I had hoped to sell some to help defray the cost of this misadventure, but the neighbors just turn up their noses because the fruit isn’t all shiny and perfect like they have become used to.
The super markets are stocked with GMO or hybrid fruits which keep for longer, transport better, and thus have a better “outer appearance”.
But I’ve heard that the more natural foods taste better, because they never used preservatives and all those hybrid growth that selected for height, size, and appearance, goes into the taste energy instead.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with GMO in my view, but the way companies use GMO to select crop strengths is a human preference, not a natural one.
We have been visiting the local orchard for decades. The season begins in late August and continues until late October if the first hard freeze holds off. Its a treat to be wandering through hundreds of trees sampling the different varieties, bringing home a bushel or two to make sauce and jelly, and some fresh cider.
So what kind(s) of apples did you pick?
Having picked apples (and other fruit) for pay as a kid, I can tell you that there are many worse jobs on farms than apple picking. The weather is usually fine that time of year, not too hot or cold, and there is enough variety to the picking itself so you don’t get totally bored.
BTW, if you see some Winesaps, pick up a few and try them. They are an older apple that the farmers I knew liked for both eating and for cider — which is easy to make.
Ymarsakar Says: October 14th, 2015 at 12:26 pm
After a few years, those vine trunks are like weapons, dagger sized scythes of sharp pinpricked blood loss.
EDEN
We are the roses in the garden, beauty with thorns among our leaves.
To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed.
What is the reason for having roses when your blood is shed carelessly?
It must be for something more than vanity.
Believe me, the truth is we’re not honest, not the people that we dream.
We’re not as close as we could be.
Willing to grow but rains are shallow.
Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land, we will be.
Waiting for the light arisen to flood inside the prison.
And in that time kind words alone will teach us, no bitterness will reach us.
Reason will be guided in another way.
All in time, but the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden, in our Paradise.
Will our eyes see well beneath us, flowers all divine?
Is there still time?
If we wake to discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?
Ymarsakar – I didn’t know there were any GMO apples, other than some experimental ones that just got approved. (They were modified so that the slices won’t turn brown as quickly as apple slices usually do.)
There was once an orchard on the land that we now own, and there are still a couple of remnant apple trees in our backyard and a few more scattered around the field across the road. The trees get no spraying, pruning or other attention, and most years, they bear small quantities of old-fashioned fruit – smaller and less perfect than what you’d find in a grocery store, but tasty nonetheless, and very welcome to the hungry neighborhood deer who dig them out of the snow in our long, cold winters. For whatever reason (a bad winter coming?) this year the trees this year are bearing with remarkable abundance, covered with a surfeit of red and golden fruit from top to bottom. So many have already fallen that I couldn’t mow the grass under the trees until I raked hundreds of soft, half-rotten apples out of the way — buzzing with flies and yellow jackets — but there were so many hundreds and hundreds still on the trees, their weight bowing down the branches so low that I could barely fit under the trees to get the mowing done once the grass was clear. I keep thinking wistfully of the applesauce and apple cider and apple cake and apple butter I could make from all that fruit in an old-fashioned world where I could spend more of my time in my kitchen. But that won’t happen this year. We’ll use what we can, but there are only two of us, and most of all that fruit will have to go, as always, to nourish the deer and yellow jackets and raccoons and whatever other wildlife can use it to get through the winter. I guess that’s not a waste.
On the up side, I have a couple excellent varieties that are really great tasting and you can’t buy in the stores AFAIK: Ginger Gold and Cinnamon Spice. The Red Fujis and Galas are pretty good, too.
expat, thanks for the tip. McCutcheons it is.
J.J.,
McCutcheons sells their products themselves online.
Here is their site.
https://www.bobmccutcheon.com/newmccutcheons/indexmain.htm?referer=&shop=&source=&url=/newmccutcheons/index.htm?newserver=godaddy&newserver=godaddy
My Father grew up on an apple orchard// farm.
He’s all picked out.
During the previous Great Depression distant cousins rode the rails — and dropped in.
The two lads timed their travel for the harvest — and figured that they could eat some Iowa corn on the way.
Dang near lost their teeth. They discovered the difference in chewing between field corn and sweet corn. ( Corn grown for human consumption is a trivial fraction of the harvest. )
So by the time they showed up, they were starving.
Grandma had her standard solutions to hobos:
1) Stay outside.
2) Free food.
3) But it will always be apple sauce.
That’s all we grow hereabouts. Heh.
It turns out that there’s only so much apple sauce that a starving lad can stand.
So the cousins ran off to the West Coast.
Neo, I have to ask, what apple variety do they grow in your local orchard ?
My personal orchard consists of one solitary peach tree.
It fruits fully just after Independence day.
If you want to follow commercial practice you must prevent the fruit tree from rising skyward.
There are some YouTube videos on what a production apple tree should be pruned to be. And Neo’s description is spot on.
&&
Even my pitiful tree draws pests like a magnet… even though there is not another peach tree — probably for miles around.
I always find it astounding that peach tree pests can locate their victim from such a distance.
Mother nature is a wicked ol’ gal.
blert:
At different times it’s different, but right now (as with most orchards around here) it’s predominantly Macs, Cortlands, and Macouns. There are other orchards that specialize in more unusual varieties.
The peoples Soviet of Washington grows the most apples. About twenty years ago there signs along I-5 south of Seattle that said “Apple Maggot quarantine area. Do not transport home grown tree fruit”. One commuting morning car pooling with the spousal unit, I saw someone had graffitied one to say “Flaming Fa@@@t quarantine area … I almost ran off the road i was laughing so hard.
Jim Miller, I haven’t researched in depth on the subject, but they’ve been modified, even if it is the old hybrid methods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycrisp
It gets complicated. But the trees Neo saw, the short ones, sound like another hybrid version to make them shorter.
Cultivating plants and husbanding animals, were the divergence points for human technology.
great website and on topic
http://www.blahh.com