Apple Trees and Apple Pie! (and some pumpkin pie too…)

Food security is a top priority here at Rubus Estates. Way back in 2013 we planted our first apple tree, a lovely Jonagold. 2020 is the third year this tree has produced fruit, and this week we harvested about 35 lbs of delicious apples from its boughs.

Earlier this year we realized that our stone fruit trees, all Japanese plums, were suffering from a bacterial canker infection. After accepting the disappointment of this sad news, we had to remove all but one from our property. We kept a four-year old Santa Rosa plum, and we will be watching this one very closely for symptoms of the same disease. (The neighboring property has an old, somewhat abandoned orchard, and I believe that this is the source of the pathogen.)

The loss of our Black Amber plums, motivated us to be sure to introduce some new apple trees onto our Estate this growing season and early in September we ordered two baby trees through the mail, a King and a Purple Spartan, both grafted onto Malus fusca root-stock. About two weeks ago, the trees were shipped and they spent almost a week in transit. In an attempt to reduce the shock of such travel, we already had the growing sites prepared and both trees were planted within minutes of their arrival at their new home.

Malus fusca is native to our region, and it is somewhat content in wetter soils. As that is exactly what we have for much of the year, I believe that these trees will be very happy here. I expect that one fine day, in about five or so years, we will be celebrating the harvest of two more species of precious apples. (After these images were taken, we did erect some protection to prevent our free-ranging chickens from enjoying the exposed soil too much.)

And what will we do with our apples? Well we are eating them raw, and we are also eating them in pies and danishes!

Since the pie image includes both apple and pumpkin, here is also an image of some of our “pumpkin” crop. Technically I understand that these are winter squash, but for all practical intents, they are equivalent to pumpkin and perhaps slightly better. Surprisingly one squash this size, once baked and pressed of its water, just yields enough puree to fill one pie. (This is actually rather convenient.) Both of these pies tasted awesome and you can see that the pumpkin was initially more of a crowd pleaser however the apple pie wasn’t far behind.

This weekend we made apple danish bars, see the images below. (As our apples are organic there is no need to peel!) These are amazingly delicious and far more rich than a simple pie. Luckily there is no one in our home counting calories, rather most of us have lifestyles that could be considered athletic, but that is a topic for another day…