Posts Tagged ‘apples’

Heirloom Apple Orchard Identification Project

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

As mentioned in some previous posts, our friend owns a farm in Prince Edward County. At Breezy Acres there are a variety of apples growing in an abandoned orchard.  Some of the trees are 150 years old and are part of the original United Empire Loyalist Farm.  We’d love to start identifying some of these heirloom apple varieties and are asking for some help.

We have many plans for them and will be using the 8 bushels (that’s 320 pounds) of apples that we picked for some really fun projects in the next few weeks.  In the meantime we have numbered 17 of these mystery varieties of apples and will be referring to them by these numbers until we make some headway in identifying them. Here they are, numbered, photographed and with our initial notes. Photos of the trees and of them on the branch will be added in future posts.

 1. No notes? I will eat one and report back shortly.

2. These are delicious and really retain their shape and colour when baked. These small apples have bumps on the bottom like “delicious” types and grew on a full sized tree.  They our one of our favourites.

3. These tart tasting fruits are probably a cider apple. Mainly green with a splash of red.  They oxidized really fast; turning brown within seconds of biting into them.  These grapes were growing within the tree.

4. These gorgeous apples have quite a bit of orange on their coats.  These were quite tart but not sour and very juicy.

 5. Gorgeous Russets.

6. Mainly yellow apples that packed a serious crunch.  There is russeting around the stem.

7. A full sized tree of eating apples growing quite close to the farm house. Love the speckles.

8. These apples are hard as a rock. They have streaks of true orange and are a little lopsided.

 9. Some Juicy cider apples.

 10.  These perfectly miniature apples are pretty tasty.

11. Nice crisp and juicy eating apples.  Gorgeous red and green streaked coats. These were growing in the hedgerow.

 12. More tiny apples.

13.  These are heavenly.  Quite sweet with a real crunch.  These are growing by the entrance to the farm and in direct view of the farm house.  These bake quite nicely, keeping their shape and colour.

14.  Rebecca loves these ones.   This very old tree is away from the main orchards and only about 15 feet tall although it has very thick branches.

15.  This tree hardly had any leaves but did have these gorgeous yellow apples that have cracked looking red shoulders.

16.  These must be for making sauce or used for their pectin. They are soft and rather bland when eaten raw.  When cooked, they turn into perfect mush.  they have bumps on the bottom like the “delicious” varieties.

17. These are from a lovely little wild tree.  A little 4 foot tree that had 8 apples on it.  We ate them all.

These crap apples have been planted recently.  we picked a few to add to our cider and have included them here to compare to the small apple craps to show the difference.  We only found 1 other true crab apple in the orchards.

We picked some lovely bartlet pears form a “modern” tree.

Last but not least there are these sour sour pears. What an earth are these for?  I’m guessing making hard pear cider?

They make Rebecca make this face. And she like s sour things and is one of those kids that will eat an entire onion.

A whole giant 40 foot tree just dripping with them. Oh they are something else!


So any thoughts on IDing any of these gorgeous fruits?  Or know of any resources I could use? Have any thoughts on what the different kinds are for?  there are also really dry fleshed ones that would dehydrate nicely and some that I think may be grown for their pectin. 


I have some good books and site and have met some knowledgable apple people recently but could really use some help.  We’ll be referring back to this post in the upcoming weeks.

project365: week thirty six September 10th, 2011 – September 16th, 2011

Monday, September 19th, 2011

 September 10th, 2011 We were up to our in ears in canning tomatoes.

September 11th, 2011 The Tomato Queen came up with this out fit all by themselves.

September 12th, 2011 A teaser gift of heirloom apples and pears from the orchard we raided this past weekend.  Photos to come soon!

 September 13th, 2011 The best part of nursery school is the walk home through the park.

September 14th, 2011 Some Peacock Purple Beans form the garden.

September 15th, 2011 Rebecca went carrot picking and came up with this lovely little golden beet.  We ate it for dinner

September 16th, 2011 After driving along the Apple Route, we arrived at the farm to go apple picking for our 5th wedding anniversary.

Wordless Wednesday: Wonder Who she Gets That From?

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011



hmm, seems someone has started photographing things before she eats them.  Wonder what that’s about.

Our little heirloom apple tree

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

Last fall, after watching Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire I decided it was time to add an heirloom apple tree to the mix.  So with some twitter followers goading me on, I found an orchard, made some inquiries and had placed our order by the time the documentary moved on from apples to marijuana. 

If you haven’t seen this documentary, please do (you can stream it from PBS here) and if you have, PBS also has some great extra videos on their site from Michael Pollan.  He talks about heirloom apples and really sums up my personal philosophy quite nicely by describing them as “The extravagance of nature that really made life worth living”.  Warning, these links will make you hunt down and plant an heirloom apple tree.

With some very helpful guidance from the folks at Siloam Orchards we decided on a Spitzenburg.  Its a fairly disease resistant heirloom apple from New York, that makes both a good eating and cider apple and really, if it was good enough for Monticellio, its good enough for us. 

Well the call finally came last week; spring is here and so was our 1 year old “whip”, basically a branch with roots and we needed to come and pick it up.  

So we spent what should have been a lovely day driving around gorgeous Ontario Farm Land looking for Siloam Orchards with a very grumpy toddler. We barely made it in time for their 3pm close, but had a great visit once we arrived.  Rebecca ran through the orchards and poked things with sticks and I bought pies. We’ll be back for apple picking in the fall.

Hey little apple blossom…
what seems to be the problem? 
picking clover?

She’s going to work on a tractor now.  Becca is wearing her new tree planting skirt for the occasion; A gift from the fabulous Sarah over at Bohdi Handmade on Etsy.  I think I want everything from her perfect little shop.

:::Sigh::: Ryan says no more fruit crates are coming into this house.
Not grumpy now that she’s out of that terrible car seat.
Never getting back in that car seat unless you give me apple chips.  
We also saw a brand new calf, all wobbly and proving that all is right in the world.
We got home just in time to plant our little Spitzenburg and all took a turn watering it.
All in all, it’s basically a very good day if you have really dirty feet by the end of it.

Please take a minute to click through some of the links as there are some very interesting things out there on the internet.  Apple Photo Credit: Oysters4me under flickr creative commons licence.

Rebecca’s Great Big Crunch 2011 #GBC2011

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Rebecca is really into apples so we were happy to be invited by Not Far From The Tree to participate in FoodShare‘s Great Big Crunch.  Both our great organizations that we are lucky to have in Toronto.
So take 12 seconds and watch Rebecca Crunch!

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