Westsylvania Cider

After a good bit of traveling this July we’re back at it in the orchards. While not many apples (there are some surprises as you’ll see) one is a tree I grafted from a wildling growing in Butler County, Pa.

I don’t have a name for this one yet, the blossoms survived 22F in April and was grafted/planted in 2023.

I’ll have to go back and look at my tasting notes but I propagated them for a reason.

Cider was there at the very start of the founding of the US.

Drink apples!

A great piece on a cidery that influenced me and my method of harvesting, making, and thinking about apples.

https://charleskirkwood1.substack.com/p/aaron-burr-cidery?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv2_a1demoo4dk5on8&fbclid=IwY2xjawS0xmJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFQZzY4bVN2UXhXVk40aGtLc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHny3kHr0sHVozMGNBzz8n8zPIldfcS_aohhAn1ydjaqUJrK29eZJPCbCgbMt_aem_ANV6r7BrIGs8UlKaNhVEHg

Aaron Burr Cidery The Orchard After the Orchard: Aaron Burr Cidery and the Problem of American Cider Continuity

Hooray for tiny miracles. I have some apples (not many but some). The later varieties that flowered out after the freeze (Dabinett and Yarlington Mill) have some fruit, as does a couple others (anything related to Golden Delicious oddly).

But it’s a beautiful time of the year working our orchards and eyes ont the future harvests.

Welp..the verdict is in and we lost nearly 100% of the early and mid-season apples from April 20th‘s deep freeze. It’s been raining dead blossoms that should be baby apples.

Our late season varieties-English cider apples like Dabinett and Yarlington Mill flowered later, yet we had another freeze this past weekend. Ugh!

Interestingly some of the varieties hit by that freeze are sending out a couple very late flowers-an adaptation that they must have evolved for events like this.

Even if it’s only a half dozen apples-the trees want to at least attempt to get seeds out to reproduce.

If you grow any kind of fruit in the northeast, this past week has been rough.

After a solid week of 80 degree days and the trees in abundant blooms, we bottomed out at 24 F Tuesday morning. Not just a little freeze but a hard, killing freeze. Pure devastation.

While it’s hard to put an exact figure on the loss we’re looking at a 90% loss of our crop. Ugh!

While late freezes aren’t new, warmer “false Springs“ are happening at a greater frequency and destruction. And farming-all ready a tough living-becomes even harder with climate change.

Seems like except for the Hewe’s Virginia Crab, most of the apples survived the deep freeze (21 degrees) last week.

A number of trees moving into King Blossom ten days earlier than last year. And unlike last year tons of flowers so should be a good crop this year.

This Buds for you-Bud 118 rootstock that is.

Planted 40 new cider apple trees so far this spring and hopefully the early leaf out on some early varieties survived the 21 degree F from last night.