Week 9 of Apple Picking 

Week 5 of Pumpkin Picking Season

 Carve you pumpkin here and enter the contest.  We keep the mess here and you take the pumpkin home!  Green pumpkins will continue to turn orange.

The Cold Springs Bridge is OPEN.

 People are asking if we take cards.  These we do, at most all checkouts. 

Kiddie Bag, can hold up to 3 lbs,      $3

HoneyCrisp ONLY bag up to 5lbs,    $10  new double size is $18
Family Bag, can hold up to 10 lbs,    $11
Baker Bag, can hold up to 23 lbs,     $19
So buy a bag and fill it.  It's still cheaper than in the store.
Parking is always Free

Apple Varieties, Week 9

Nittany

Red Delicious (upick only)

JonaGold

Rising Sun Fuji

Empire

Macoun (in store only and almost gone as of Friday)

HoneyCrisp  special bag required, Last Call for upick      

Cortland  Last Call for upick

20 ounce (store only)

Gala

One clarification, the wristband gets you three shots free at the cannon and slingshots.  More can be purchased, 3 for $1.

Nittany 

Nittany is a cross between a Golden Delicious and the York Imperial.  It was developed by Pennsylvania State University.  The crisp yellow flesh is juicy.  The flavor is tart and is good eaten fresh.  The Nittany is a good choice for a cooking apple as it holds its shape when cooked.  Its flavor and attractive orange-red color also give it good fresh market potential. The apple can be held in refrigerated storage for up to six months.  Flesh oxidizes very slowly and imparts a highly desirable yellow color to processed products. Nittany needs to be aggressively thinned to avoid biennial bearing.   Nittany blooms late in the season and will pollinate all other late-blooming varieties. It will also pollinate varieties blooming in the middle of the season.

Red Delicious 

Last year  was our first year on the new trees since 2006 when we started to replant the orchard to smaller trees and get all the varieties in order by maturity.  We are still 3 years away from being done!   Red Delicious is a man made selection, now comprising more than 50 cultivars, that was recognized in Madison County, Iowa, in 1880.   Stark Nurseries held a competition in 1892 to find an apple to replace the Ben Davis apple. The winner was a red and yellow striped apple sent by Jesse Hiatt, a farmer in Peru, Iowa, who called it "Hawkeye".    Stark Nurseries bought the rights from Hiatt, renamed the variety "Stark Delicious", and began propagating it.  Another apple tree, later named the Golden Delicious, was also marketed by Stark Nurseries after it was purchased from a farmer in Clay County, West Virginia, in 1914; the Delicious became the Red Delicious as a retronym.

Consumers showed retailers they were interested in red apples being all red, so as new cultivars were selected with improved color, the taste and texture of the harvested commodity have changed, and many customers have moved on to other varieties.  Some people (like me) even call it "Red Disgusting"  People like it so we did replant it.  I think it has the best flavor right off the tree.   42 sports have been patented in the United States.  Our sport is RedChief.

JonaGold

Delicious and blush-crimson Jonathan cross, they form a large sweet fruit with a thin skin.  Because of their large size they are now favored by commercial growers in many parts of the world.  Jonagold is triploid, with sterile pollen, and as such, requires a second type of apple for pollen and is incapable of pollenizing other cultivars.  The Jonagored Apple, a sport mutation of Jonagold, was once covered under United States Patent PP05937, now expired.  

The apple is heavy and dense. It is juicy and aromatic and has a sweet-sour taste.  The skin can also turn out fully red, orange or green.  It is also the variety used in Cidre (a brand of cider by lager manufacturer, Stella Artois). This Warren's favorite apple for pies and apple sauce.   He likes to blend apples for a bigger flavor, just like a good cider.   Our sport is Red JonaGold.  

Rising Sun Fuji

The Fuji apple is a Red Delicious and Ralls Genet cross developed by growers at the Tohoku Research Station in Fujisaki, Aomori, Japan. Developed in the late 1930s, it wasn't brought to market until 1962.   It is named after Fujisaki,  but often mistakenly thought to be named after Mount Fuji.  In Japan, Fuji apples continue to be an unrivaled best-seller.  Japanese consumers prefer the crispy texture and sweetness of Fuji apples (which is somewhat reminiscent of the coveted Nashi Pear). 

Since their introduction into the U.S. market in the 1980s, Fuji apples have gained popularity with American consumers.  A stranger to American supermarket shelves only 30 years ago, Fuji apples ranks number 5 on the US Apple Association's list of most popular apples, after Red Delicious, Gala, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith.   We have two sports, Sun Rise that is ready right now and Yataka which is ready next month.

Empire

Empire is a clonally-propagated cultivar Lester C Anderson, a Cornell Researcher in 1945, grew from crossing McIntosh and Red Delicious. Scientists at the NYS Ag Experiment Station of Cornell University in Geneva, harvested thousands of different seeds. The Geneva teams grew and tested ever dwindling sub-populations of the sibling group until 1966, when the final selection, the Empire, was released to the public at the New York Fruit Testing Association meetings in Geneva.  Empires are red, juicy, firm, crunchy and sweet.  Empires are excellent for eating and salads, and good for sauce, baking, pies and freezing.  The sport we grow is Royal Empire.

Cortland and HoneyCrisp last weekend

A difficult to grow apple, upick HoneyCrisp requires a special bag, and special price, we added a second larger size, ask at the store or sheds for details

Festival Food

Are you hungry?  Our Fall Fest means Food!   People have been asking what food we have available, so here is a menu.  Try some of our signature food items and flood the senses.  Food is in the same building as the Cider Mill.  There is inside seating in the Cider Mill too.

Cider Doughnut Sundae

Cathy, our head doughnut maker, had the idea of dropping a cider doughnut in a dish and adding a swirl of soft ice cream topped with whipped cream and a bit on cinnamon.   She had one of the employees deliver one to me with a spoon.....  I was supposed to take one spoonful and let the rest of the crew sample it.  NOT!  

So try one, it's goooood.

Hamburger made with our very own beef, +$.25 for cheese   $3.50

Hot Dog   Hoffman's of course                                                      $2.25

Maple BBQ Beef  our own, slow cooked beef, with Merle's Maple BBQ sauce.

Beef is what I like for my dinner, and lunch, and...                     $3.75

Curly Fries   our own potatoes of course                                    $2.75

Salt Potatoes  my favorite                                                             $2.00

SweetCorn   we will have our own sweet corn 'till frost.             $1.00

Apple Fritters                                                                                  $3.00

Apple Cider Doughnuts  look in the window by the cider mill and watch them being made.                                                                             $  .85

Drinks include 

Cider Sipper  a reuseable apple shaped sipper                       $1.50

Cider 16oz cup,                                                                              $2.00

Hot Spiced Cider                                                                            $1.50

Coffee                                                                                              $1.50

Pepsi Soda Products                                                                    $1.83

Bottled water                                                                                   $1.25

Most of these items you can get in the store and take home for yourself. Well, after writing that out, I'm sure hungry now!

 Cider and Flavored Cider

  

All of our ciders are UV treated, not pasteurized. 

The Cinnamon and Maple do not taste very cinnamon or mapley, but they do alter the flavor in a very very good way.  Come this weekend and try some and tell us what you think.   The Maple is my favorite.

Regular prices are 4.99 & 2.99 for gallons and halves

Flavored are 3.99 a half gallon.

Cinnamon

Strawberry  

HoneyCrisp  as close as you can get to HoneyCrisp in a bottle

Maple  the smooooooooooooooooothest cider I have ever tasted