An Apple a Day...

Orchard of Doom - by E. Colin Williams

Wouldn't it be great if someone would discover an apple variety that produced a modest amount of fruit year-round? Thankfully, help is available for people like us who have a fruit tree or two (or twelve) but not enough time to pick and preserve the harvest. I've mentioned the LifeCycles Fruit Tree Project on this blog before, but this group of hard-working volunteers now makes my list of urban heroes!

This past week, two cheerful volunteers came out to harvest as many apples as they could given the less than ideal working conditions in the jungle we fondly call the orchard. Alas, by the time they squeezed us into the schedule (I hasten to add that this, too, was my fault for not signing up through the website a little sooner...) most of our pears had succumbed to nighttime deer raids or leapt, ripe and juicy, into the grass! We did snag quite a few and dried them, but too many went into the bellies of local wildlife and our goats (though, the goats are not complaining).

Dan and Sonja were in and out quite quickly, filling a number of boxes with fresh apples that were then distributed to local foodbanks and other worthy organizations. The volunteers also took a bit of the fruit and we were left with a modest quantity for our own use. All this for a small donation!

If your community doesn't have a Fruit Tree project, consider starting one up. According to the LifeCycles website, there's a 'how to' manual available for anyone thinking of getting a program like this off the ground. And, if you ask me, anything that gets the fruit off the ground and into the hands of those who can use it is a good thing!

Here's the promised link to the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival. Sounds like a fabulous way to spend the day on Sunday, October 4th. 

One of our favourite preserving books here on the farm (the apple butter recipe is to die for!):


Our book giveaway this week is The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home:

To have your name entered into the draw for the book prize, send us an email at allpointswest[at]cbc.ca and let us know your favourite way to enjoy apples and, if you have one, the name of your favourite apple variety. We'll post some of your responses here on the Dark Creek Blog.

Missed the segment live? No problem - give Amanda at the CBC a day or two and then check the All Points West website for a link to the archived segment.

And, finally, for those who are curious about the rest of the Robert Frost poem, here it is in full:
After Apple-Picking (1914)

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.

By Robert Frost

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