Pome Fruit
While the mid-summer season holds our stone fruit harvest, Pome Fruits ripen in late-summer through fall and round out our fruit season each year. Pome fruits consist of fruits with a central, tough, seeded core surrounded by edible flesh. On the farm, our Pome fruits include Apples, Pears, & Quince. Unlike a standard orchard with uniform lines of same-variety trees, our orchard spans the entire property with different fruit trees dotted around. Most of our pears are in a front garden called the “Pear Nursery” while the majority of our apples are in the backyard “Potato Field”. The quince trees can be found in the front yard lining the rose arbors headed into the Flower Shop.
Apples
The Legacies behind our Apple Orchard
Organic orchardist, author, & educator Michael Phillips was a wonderful mentor over our apple orchards and helped get us off the ground in terms of establishing and caring for the trees. He also helped us make Raw Apple Cider & Apple Cider Vinegar. To get to know him a little better, you can read MOFGA’s Tribute or the REAL Organic Project’s Tribute here. He passed away suddenly in February 2022, but we feel incredibly lucky to known him through mentorship and friendship in the years prior - and our apple orchard would not be where it is today without him!
Another name in the fruit growing world that our orchards continue the legacy of is that of the horticulturalist Albert Etter. He was best known for breeding beautifully distinctive red & pink fleshed apples that taste as stunning as they look. In the 1900s, he purportedly bred as many as 10,000 varieties of apples! Many of the apple trees found in the back Potato Field orchard are Etter varieties. Among these are his well-known Wickson Crabapples and Pink Pearl.
Other apple trees that are dotted around the property include Duchess of Oldenburg, Liberty, Calville Blanc (which contains more Vitamin C than an orange), Northern Spy, Graverstien, Baldwin, Columnar, and my personal favorite, Sweet 16.
Apple trees can be a finicky fruit to get established. For the first two years, any fruit that grows must be removed to help the trees keep their energy directed to strengthening the roots. A Columnar apple tree that fruited in its 2nd year back in 2017 did not fruit again until last year! In 2024, it produced a strong harvest again so we expect it has fully bounced back.
“Wickson’s Crabapple”
“Duchess of Oldenburg”
Large harvest years are often followed by a smaller crop the next year so the trees can rest and replenish their energy after growing so much fruit. Each year on the farm is different, but after almost a decade in the making, our apple orchards are finally feeling firmly established and regularly fruiting so we can share in the bounty & harvest!
2023 was our most abundant year for apples yet! It seemed like every day in September through early October we were out harvesting apples for hours at a time, lugging around huge tubs & baskets that were all overflowing by the end of the day . Over the season, we harvested more than 120 lbs! None of these apples went to waste, whether they went to market, to the birds, or to making farm-fresh Apple Cider or Apple Wine. Below is a video of our Antique Apple Cider Press in action! We were able to make over 10 gallons of Apple wine and 5 gallons of Apple cider in 2023.
Pears
Deveci Pear -
an Anatolian/Turkish pear
Five pear trees are located in the “pear nursery” raised bed and other half dozen or so can be found in the main backyard orchard or next to the High Tunnel Greenhouse. Like the apples, the pears have taken their time in getting established and tasting as delicious as we’d hoped they would! One pear we are particularly excited about is “Glou Morceau” - which translates to “Delicious Morsel”. This is a Belgian dessert pear planted by the High Tunnel in 2017. It started fruiting a couple of years ago, but the taste profile was never as satisfying as advertised. In 2023 though, Glou Morceau came into its own as the most delicious pear on the property!
Abbe Fetel, still considered the leading variety in Italy, is a long and slender European pear. Another heirloom, European pear planted alongside Abbe Fetel in the pear nursery is White Doyenne. Our most prolific producer is the Clara Fris pear which can be found lounging over the terrace wall in the backyard. Our espalier pear called “Rescue” lives in front of the High Tunnel and bears red-skinned fruit. These pears grow in “doubles” so two fruits will usually sprout alongside each other on the tree.
Pair of “Rescue” Pears
Fruit trees are not entirely unlike other living beings like humans or animals. After years of working with them, you start to notice their “personalities”, their likes & dislikes, and the bonds they build between each other. For instance, the Glou Morceau pear can be found reaching its branches out to the apricot trees planted around it. We believe that our trees hold a lifeforce of their own that we don’t always understand, but try to respect. When we notice a certain pair of trees “bonding” or reaching out to one another, we take careful precaution not to cut the branches and to let their friendship bloom. A couple of years ago, we had a Hess Plumcot and Paviot Apricot planted next to each other that were bonded in this way. When their branches were cut away from each other, both trees began to wither and eventually died. Although we may never know the true nature of these bonds, we now take extra care to foster these natural relationships between trees and suspend our beliefs about how the fruit trees’ energies interact with those around it.
Glou Morceau
Abbe Fetel
Quince
A pome fruit that is lesser known than its cousins but still deserving of equal attention is the “Quince”. Pears and apples may be harvestable as early as late August and into September, but the Quince requires a longer season and is ripe closer to mid-October or even November!
As a young fruitlet, the quince has a fuzzy yellow exterior, not unlike the skin of a peach, and a pear-like shape. Throughout the season, the quince will grow into a palm-sized fruit and shed its fuzz once it is ripe and ready for harvest. The long growing season requirements present quite a challenge as a fruit grower. We have to carefully monitor the fruit to make sure it isn’t getting too much water (which can turn the skin brown) or too much critter attention. In 2024, one of our quince trees had all its fruit stolen by a pesky squirrel in the middle of July, months before it would ripen! We learned the hard way to tie mesh bags around all of the fruit early on to protect them against the hungry critters and insect damage alike.
A ripe quince will not necessarily make a delicious snack right off the tree. Eaten raw, they are quite astringent with a tough skin & flesh. Instead, quince are best served in the form of desserts like pies or cobblers. When cooked down, the quince softens up and has a melt-in-your-mouth velvety consistency. Despite the challenges this fruit poses, it is all the more rewarding to see the fruit reach maturity and taste the culinary depth hidden within!
