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Hi,
As you may know, we have over a 100 varieties of apples. However, we only planted a couple of trees each of the more unusual varieties. With some of these varieties one tree was more than enough and with others we now know we should have planted more-perhaps many more One of the best of the unusual varieties we grow is the Hawaii apple. The following was a comment I found by googling "Hawaii apple" on the internet.
"Most amazing Hawaii apple
Posted by axel_sc z9b/Suns16 (My Page) on
Fri, Sep 19, 08 at 0:40
I had my first Hawaii apple (a cross in between Gravenstein and Golden Delicious) and it completely blew me away, never had such a deliciously juicy and full-bodied flavored apple. Not only do they look beautiful with their pineapple yellow skin and slight red blush, but they are so crunchy and juicy and so amazingly tasty.
Is anyone else growing 'Hawaii'? How can it be that this isn't one of the top commercial apples? It's simply incredible."
We plan on starting to spot pick our Hawaii apples this week.
Another unusual apple that we grow is the Stark Jumbo. As its name suggests, this apple is large-it becomes huge when there are relatively few apples on the tree. This year our Stark Jumbo trees are loaded which means there are very few really big ones. However, they are still large for an apple. We found this relatively tart apple makes great pies that rival pies made with Northern Spy apples. If you like a tart apple you probably will like to eat this apple fresh too.
Another top quality rare apple that will start this week is the Snow apple. This antique apple is supposed to be the parent of the famous McIntosh. This apple gets its name from its snow-white flesh. Our supply of Snow apples is very limited, however.
One of the highest quality of all apples is the Macoun. It is believed to be one of the parents of the newly famous Honeycrisp. While this apple is considered rare in Michigan, it is fairly widely grown in New England. This apple is a favorite of a number of our customers. We will be picking Macoun this week.
Also this week we will continue to pick our Spartan and Cortland apples. While it is an exaggeration to call either of these apple varieties "rare" , they aren't common either. Annemarie gave a couple of the Cortland apples to a friend from Holland Michigan and the friend loved them and commented "Why can't I find Cortland in the Supermarkets?" Cortland's white flesh resists browning and is thought of as a salad apple because of this. Like Cortland, the Spartan apple is a Mac hybrid and is sometimes called "Spartan Mac", although to my tastes, it doesn't taste that much like a Mac. The Spartan is my very favorite sauce apple.
In addition to apples, the temperatures and the official start of fall brings to mind pumpkins. We are busy filling up our pumpkin patch with pumpkins of all sizes as well as gourds. In addition to standard pumpkins between 10 and 50 pounds we have a good supply of xtra-large attractive, orange pumpkins from 75 to 125 pounds each. Feel free to take pictures in our pumpkin patch!
While we are now into the fall season, summer at Magicland Farms lingers on with our last patches of green and yellow beans and sweet corn. We also are still enjoying the summer tastes of tomatoes, watermelons and peppers. Keep in mind our average frost date here is October 1 AND this coming Saturday is the first day of October! Of course this doesn't mean it will frost on Saturday but the time is approaching...
By the way, Annemarie this morning made that apple coffee cake that was in the newsletter a couple of weeks back. It was really delicious and moist. While she used the last of our Gravenstein apples, I bet the Stark Jumbo's would work well with it.
One last note. We are into the heart of our pawpaw picking. This week we should reach our peak in supply. We are making available free B&W copies of my article on pawpaws in the July/August 2011 issue of Grit magazine.
Nashle,
Tom
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