Ten-Finger Exercises

First sight of the apples

Went for a walk through the apple orchard with my husband Bill and our old Bouvier, Seamus. The blossoms are just about gone now and the apples have set well. They’ve had their first chemical spray to thin them, and it’s easy to see which ones will be falling soon. Especially in this wind! The dust and pollen are thick in the air today, not too pleasant for walking unless you like sniffling too.

This particular orchard is part Fujis, and equal parts Yellow and Red Delicious. It amazes me that people still buy the Delicious apples. Fresh off the tree on a cool early fall morning they are delicious indeed, but they aren’t very flavorful compared to all the other good varieties, at least for my money. The Fujis are great, and hold their firmness and juiciness in storage until after Christmas. When they’ve begun to lose their flavor, the Braeburns are still crisp and tasty.

Fujis aren’t easy to grow though. The night temperatures have to be just right for the color to come up in the fall. Then because the stems are so stiff, they have to be cut off the trees. Otherwise the stems do too much damage to the other picked apples.

The orchardist, Bill Kelly, across the street is probably close to 80 yrs old. He was riding in his golf cart giving his dog a run. The creek behind the orchards is very full of runoff from the mountains right now, but his dog plunged in and out, happy for a quick dip. The ‘creek’ is really the Johnson ditch, the oldest of the irrigation ditches in this whole valley and part of the Hudson Bay ranch originally.

How fortunate we are to live in this beautiful area!