On Sunday we picked the last of the apples and pulled the nets off the trees.
It's been an incredible season, possibly our best ever and although I do feel sad at the thought that it will be so many months before I pick another juicy ripe apple from a tree, I feel happy and grateful for the season that was.
Our orchards are made up of 40 varieties of heritage apples to spread out the blossom and the harvest - so we picked and we picked this year all the way from January through to late May. From the sweetest all the way through to the ones that make you wince with sour. From the ones that hold their shape when cooked through to the ones that completely disintegrate into mush. From the old faves like Granny Smiths and Jonathans all the way through to the interesting Mutzus and the Peasgood's Nonesuch and the Esopus Spitzenbergs.
It's been such fun!
And although we do wonder if the bio-dynamics and the nets made the season so great, we're most thankful of Mother Nature and the rain and the sunshine and the bees.
And the farm stall. How we love that stall. Opening her up in the morning, picking apples and filling the crates, writing cute notes on the blackboards for our customers, our gorgeous customers, and the thought that our apples are being munched and crunched in homes and lunch boxes all around the area.
So to finish on a high and to thank you for your love and support, we have dropped the price to $2.50 a kilo from now until we run out. Which will be pretty soon I think.
So if you are in the area - please come and buy some and take them home and eat them, bake them, juice them, dehydrate them, pop them in Fowlers jars, make stamps with them, stew them, brew cider with them, bob for them..........
And tell me - what's your fave variety of apple and what's your fave way to eat them?
Big love!
xoxo
Oh PS Alli you won the little Tea Mouse kit. Yay!! x
Ooohh I can see on your sign under Mutzus it says 'best apple ever'! I'm going to find out more about that one..... I love Pink Lady, so sweet and delicious! We have three apple trees but they are only a couple of years old. I would love an apple orchard like yours. No wonder you love your farm stall, it is simply gorgeous! Xx Even though I probably will never get to taste one of your apples, thank you for producing food that is so good for us and even better for the environment. You are biodynamic superstars! :)
ReplyDeleteI love the sign in your first photo. I hope you sell them all. Good job producing such wonderful fresh fruit, you're doing a great thing for your community.
ReplyDeleteWhich kind are the most sour?
ReplyDeleteWe love all apples here (except for delicious). Oh my if we lived near we'd be your stall, we buy by the big boxful each week.
ReplyDeleteSo much fun! The apples all look so delicious. My favorite is Red Delicious. Washington, the state I live in, is famous for it's apples. I love fall and the harvest.
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Betsy
Such scrumptious photographs! We are just now coming out of apple season and I will miss them.
ReplyDeleteMacIntosh with Armstrong cheddar - yummy!
ReplyDeleteLovely apples! And a fantastic stall, so pretty!
ReplyDeleteIt just doesn't get any better than this Kate. Wishing you a lovely weekend xx
ReplyDeleteWish that I lived around the corner. xx
ReplyDeleteLove my apples sweet and crunchy. Either fresh or cooked into a crumble or even in an old fashioned apple cake. All yummy!
Kate the Apples were magic. It was great to see Brendan at the stall when we visited. Thank you for the quinces. We made a slab of quince paste from them, well our boy actually contributed to the most part of that. Look forward to getting a load of fruit next year.
ReplyDeleteLove that apple stall!
ReplyDeleteWow, what a variety! Some rather unusual names there. Josh likes the sour apples, his favourite being the Brambley cooking apple! Hope you have a restful weekend after all that picking. x
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic post, such great photos and well done for a successful season, have a rest! xxx
ReplyDeleteI love reading your blog and looking at your amazing photos. We will have to stop in and visit your patch when we do a road trip south one day to purchase some of your beautiful apples. we will just have to time our trip to apple picking season.
ReplyDeleteSadly too far for me to come and try out your apples. As a kid my favourites were golden delicious, but now I love royal galas. I live in Tas-Vegas so we have lots of delicious apples here at the moment too. I love eating them straight off the tree!!
ReplyDeleteHi Kate. It is so nice to be here, reading your words and appreciating your wonderful photos. I always get so inspired because I myself have started a rural life, a dream come true. In other country, other continent, other hemisphere, in a more modest dimension than yours, but still much work, much love and lots of harvest! Thank you for sharing your heart and your life with us.
ReplyDeleteOh Kate how I wish I could have visited your farm stall. It's so cute, and those apples look heavenly. My favourite way to eat apples is cooked into a delicious apple crumble, I don't really like them raw.
ReplyDeleteHope you've had a gorgeous weekend,
Sarah xo
PS I've contacted Alli. Thanks so much Kate for hosting the giveaway xx
Yum! We picked both our (mystery) apple trees last week and pulled off their nets, which the chooks are now using to nest in until I get around to putting them away. I baked a beautiful apple cake today, and some apple muffins for the lunch boxes, and am enjoying grabbing a sweet, red apple out of the laundry basket whenever I wander past, rather than rationing the fruit for the kids like I usually do. I adore your farm gate, and $2.50/kg sounds like a steal to me (it is $8/kg for organic apples at our local shop).
ReplyDeleteI so wish we were in the area, Eve would be beside herself choosing from those gorgeous apples at your stall.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite apple is the Fuji. This upsets my grandfather who fought in WWII in PNG very very much. In fact it makes him so upset that I wouldn't even eat an apple, regardless of its variety, around him any more.
ReplyDelete...but when I do eat an apple I like to cut it into eights.
Royal Gala, Granny Smith and Fuji are the faves here. We have two Gala trees that give us a bountiful harvest each fall. Your farm stall is so cute, I would frequent it regularly, and learn to love all the heritage apples, how to cook with them and enjoy them in a multitude of different ways.
ReplyDeleteI reminisce about my Oma's (grandmother's) Dutch appelmoes (stewed apple sauce) which is thicker than a sauce but thinner than stewed fruit and ever so tangy and sweet at the same time.
ReplyDeleteOh, apples!! I do not have a favourite variety, but I love apple sauce with Christmas dinner and apple crumble pie and my favourite apple of the week (and many times the only apple of the week) is the one I munch down after yoga on Friday night. There is nothing as good as a nice crunchy apple after exercise. Yum!
ReplyDeleteI wish we lived closer to try some of your varieties. My grandparents were orchardists and my favourites were the Winesaps. I was delighted to find a local organic grower was selling them this year. They were just as good as I remembered. The other special one for us was The Lord Nelson. They just had one tree and were always able to pick enough early apples to make apple sauce for Christmas. Jonathons, Red a Delicious, Granny's and MacIntosh were the other main varieties the grew. When I was little I would pick the tiniest apple I could find and keep it in my pocket and keep polishing it. There is nothing better than a fresh, crisp apple.
ReplyDeleteYou have just the sweetest blog, I love your photography style! I look forward to reading more in the future.
ReplyDelete