Wild Organic Apples of Vermont (and New Hampshire too)

We’ve been making forays into Vermont’s pastoral countryside and have been thrilled to find wild “organic” apple trees growing along many a roadside.

We spied this huge, lone apple tree on our way to Walden Heights Nursery, Vermont growers of heirloom apples and other unusual orchard fruits. We noticed nary a blemish on the deep red fruit polished to a high shine by wind-whipped leaves.

In less than four miles from our home we have collected a sampling of very edible fruit in colors ranging from red to green to yellow or a mix of all three.  The most beautiful apple we have found so far is a tiny and fawn-colored with a lipstick-pink blush.

A selection of wild apples gathered not far from our home in Newbury, Vermont.

In the past before we sampled apples from the wild, we would wipe off fly speck, tiny black dots – and no, the dots do not arise from flies but are the result of fungal disease especially prevalent in Vermont’s apple orchards as our summers and falls become more humid and wet.

We found two abandoned orchards with trees still producing fruit on Cobble Hill within the lands of The White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire.

Most orchards spray fungicide multiple times to prevent things like fly speck and sooty blotch – but we don’t have to worry about eating chemicals with our wild finds in hand and we don’t even bother to wipe off the spots and dots, instead biting into the apples to determine if they are tart, sweet, spicy, or too sour to eat.

One of the tastiest apples we have discovered so far is in a meadow adjoining ours.  The apples are gnarly from the pecks and bites of piercing, sucking insects but all they need is a trim around the insect-damaged flesh and they are a delight to eat.  We wonder if they are possibly an heirloom apple variety as they have many attributes for home use – the flesh is sweet, tart – firm but juicy.  They are yellow overlaid with crimson stripes and were ripe some weeks ago.

The apples we dubbed “the meadow apple” looked rough but had exceptional flavor and were added to a succession of excellent dishes — a harvest stew of rabbit, a veal stew reminiscent of my Great Grandmother Booth’s French Casserole of Veal, and a fragrant, spicy venison chile.

The “meadow” apples have held up well in cooking and have found their way into a rabbit stew made rich by the addition of butter, good olive oil, a cider reduction we made and put up last year, lots of vermouth, good white wine, carrots and tomatoes picked from our garden and roasted before being added to the stew. There was an ample amount of the excellent fragrant sauce left over from the rabbit and it was reincarnated as a base for a veal stew.

The organically-grown veal came from Winsome Farm in Haverhill, NH just across the Connecticut River from our Newbury, VT home. The tender bits of newly-harvested meat were caramelized in a super hot oven and were added to the sauce as were more “meadow” apples, our own heirloom tomatoes and slowly sauteed onions, little red potatoes from one of our favorite local farms, Peaked Moon in Piermont, NH, and as more liquid was needed to keep everything moist the last half of a bottle of red wine.

This abandoned orchard in The White Mountain National Forest will provide food for wildlife and a taste of the wild for those lucky enough to find apples in season.

As the stew was put to a simmer and the aroma filled our home, I wondered what else I could cook with wild apples and rummaged about in the freezer pulling to the front items of goodness needing to be cooked before the freezer put the burn to them.  A goodly-sized package marked “stew” put a smile on my face as I silently thanked our friend Tom Kuralt who generously shared venison he had taken during a hunt last year.  After thawing the rich, wild meat it was browned, like the veal, in a hot, hot oven then added to a base of homegrown tomatoes, onions, lovage, peppers, and garlic with the addition of carrots from Newbury’s own 4 Corners Farm and cut up chunks of wild apple.  Cumin and dried chiles from Oaxaca — Pasilla and Chilcosle — added heat and hints of clove, anise, cinnamon and smoke.  Homemade corn tortillas completed the meal!

All of this yumminess has us giving thanks to the early settlers of Vermont and New Hampshire – the apple trees they planted years ago produced a mixed blessing of progeny to inherit the wild.

Pick Your Own Pleasure, Culture

 

 

Heirloom apples and Vermont artisan cheese are a match made in heaven.

Poverty Lane Orchards and Alyson’s Orchard in New Hampshire and Champlain Orchards in Vermont offer a good selection of heirloom apples.

Please ask Jane Booth for permission to reproduce her copyrighted photographs and/or writing. Email jane.booth.1@gmail.com or call (802) 866-3329.   Jane has spent a good part of her career photographing and writing about gardens and small farms for Gardens Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Country Living, Country Living Gardens, Better Homes & Gardens, Old House Journal’s New Old House, among others and Cape Cod  Home where she produced an ongoing column and feature stories.

David Tansey founded The Landmark Trust USA in 1991.   He is the past president of The Landmark Trust USA and The Scott Farm and was involved in every step of revitalizing Landmark Trust USA and Scott Farm properties.

 

 

Heirloom Apple Pie

Heirloom apple pie and Vermont cheddar cheese, a perfect pairing.

It’s lunch time and poor us, all we have to eat is a fresh-baked apple pie filled with the last of the apples gleaned in the fall — Bramley’s Seedling, England’s favorite baking apple originating in the early 1800s;  Northern Spy a 1800s seedling from New York; and one of my favorite baking apples – Rhode Island Greening, a colonial apple from about 1650 discovered in Green’s End, Newport where a Mr. Green ran a tavern.  The farm’s  cooler has been turned off since December, yet these old timey apples are still firm and have held up wonderfully in long months of storage.

Bramley’s Seedling, England’s favorite heritage baking apple

My husband, David Tansey, loves making pie and because he is such a good pie crust maker I have stayed away from the task until now.  I begged him for his recipe at breakfast and parcel it together but ask him to roll out the dough as it seems too wet (he knew it was just fine).

Northern Spy, a beautiful American heirloom apple perfect for a pie.

When my mentor left for work, I forged ahead with the filling making things up as I went along.  In the refrigerator I found the balance of a small bottle of iced cider from the Monteregie region of Quebec and used it to moisten peeled apple slices letting them mull around in the sweet scent of concentrated fermented cider while I fiddled with the dough.  Just before topping the pie I realize I haven’t added any flour or sugar to the mix of apples and sprinkle a tablespoon of each over the mound of slices.  Simple.

Calville Blanc d’Hiver, the classic French baking apple has a crown shaped base. It is my absolute favorite when baking a tarte tatin.

The pie, much to my delight, is a success.  My husband admires the way it looks it from the time he arrives home for lunch.  Admires it more when he tucks into a slice.  And says all things yummy when I suggest he try a bite with a piece of Grafton’s clothbound cheddar attached to his forkful of apples and crust.  We are both beaming.  The cheese adds a sharp tangy crumbly bite cutting into the sweet sureness of apple, flavors melding into a taste sensation.  We try the same effect again with a creamy cheddar from Shelburne Farms, not as sharp but just as nice with the pie.  Tasting the clothbound cheddar again I tell David the cave-aged mushroom mustiness would be an excellent foil to the carmalized sweetness of a tarte tatin made with Calville Blanc d’Hiver, a fine French cooking apple dating to 1598.  We vow to do just so when the new crop of apples are ready for harvest.

So many heirloom apples to pick from – indeed what variety to put in the pie.

Please ask Jane Booth for permission to reproduce her copyrighted photographs and/or writing. Email jane.booth.1@gmail.com or call (802) 866-3329.   Jane has spent a good part of her career photographing and writing about gardens and small farms for Gardens Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Country Living, Country Living Gardens, Better Homes & Gardens, New Old House Journal, and Cape Cod Home where she produced an ongoing column and feature stories.

David Tansey is the founder of The Landmark Trust USA and past president of Landmark and The Scott Farm.  He was involved in every step of revitalizing Landmark Trust USA and Scott Farm properties and always loves using heirloom apples when he bakes a pie.

 

An Affair with Heirloom Apples and Artisan Cheese

Heirloom apples and Vermont artisan cheese – a match made in heaven

I have always wanted to photograph an apple orchard through the seasons and readily accepted an invitation to do so at historic Scott Farm in Dummerston, Vermont.  A working farm since 1791, the farm’s apples were shipped around the world in the 20th century.  As time moved on Scott Farm slowly fell into neglect until 1995 when David Tansey began work to revive the 571 acres and 23 historic buildings and structures now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The orchard was transformed from one variety (McIntosh) conventionally sprayed to 90 varieties ecologically grown.

Seven years have passed since my first visit.  I’m still intrigued with the early apples of August, Russian heirlooms with new to me, old to the world names — Red Astrachan, Duchess of Oldenburg, and the ghostly pale aptly named Yellow Transparent.

The Yellow Transparent is the first heirloom apple to ripen at the orchard, ready to eat as early as the end of July.

I’m fond of “leather coats” — rough, brown-skinned russets with flavors veering from pear to citrus to nut such as Hudson’s Golden Gem, an American apple from the early 1900s with a flavor and texture similar to a Basque pear.  It is delicious eating out of hand but even more so in a leafy green salad loaded with blue cheese.  Belle de Boskoop from 1850s Netherlands is tart when first picked and is good for strudel but sweetens and mellows in time when I discovered it tasted fine with a slice of brie.

I photographed harvest the first year and as it ended so did my frequent visits to southern Vermont.  I returned for winter pruning pictures but missed a long sought winter snow.  Fuzzy buds  swelled as April waned until one misty morning in May the bees arrived bumping along in back of a pickup truck in colorful painted hives.

Colorful beehives are home to honeybees in the Scott Farm Vermont heirloom apple orchard.

They hummed and buzzed from tree to tree as I hummed and photographed apple blossoms taking flight on the wind.

Scott Farm – a Vermont heirloom apple orchard nearing the height of blossom

David walks in the orchard most days after work taking in the seasonal transformations and making observations of “things that need doing”.

Sometimes he would find me crouched behind my camera marveling over the intensity of color on tree-held apples as the day drew down and light lingered low.  We would have brief conversations, nothing very serious, until one day nearing the end of harvest he told me he would bake me an apple pie filled with heirlooms if I would stop by his home.

As my affection for antique apples grew and my photographic affair with the orchard intensified,  Cupid struck with an arrow after Pomona nudged Aphrodite. I fell like a tree-ripened apple for the man who saved the farm as he had fallen for me.  We married in the orchard a year after his apple pie courtship, our only witnesses the apple trees and David’s black lab, Stella, who we call Dairy Queen for her love of cheese and all things dairy.

Me – Jane! – and my husband, David Tansey (and shadow Stella), moments after taking our wedding vows above the heirloom apple orchard at Scott Farm in Dummerston, Vermont. Heirloom apples brought us together – Cupid, Pomona, and Aphrodite helped too.

My heirloom apple pie baking man is also a great lover of cheese.  We have savored many a pie with a traditional pairing of Vermont cheddar and have been trying our hand at matching heirloom apples to various made in Vermont cheeses. (see related post on David’s easy pie crust)

Roxbury Russet (one of my favorite “leather coats”) introduced in 1649 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, is filled with sugar and is known as a great hard cider apple but we like it sliced with a bit of Gore Dawn Zola from Green Mountain Blue Cheese.

Roxbury Russet, an American heirloom apple from Roxbury, Massachusetts is delicious with a soft, creamy cheese

The tangy, semi-firm blue is also fantastic with the very small Api  commonly called the Lady Apple. Api was known in ancient Rome and found in Louis the XIII 17th century orchard.  Refrigerated this cheery red and green to red and yellow, child-size Christmas apple stays crisp long after harvest, its perfumed skin and flesh improving in flavor.

The Lady, an ancient heirloom apple, is also known as the Christmas apple. A good choice with a semi-firm blue such as Gore Dawn Zola from Green Mountain Blue Cheese.

17th century Ananas Reinette from the Netherlands is named for its pineapple-like flavor, the fully ripened crisp yellow fruit  develops a juicy, sweet-sharp taste that will go a long way in cutting the tangy bite of Vermont Butter & Cheese goat milk feta.

Ananas Reinette, a 17th century heirloom apple from the Netherlands with Vermont Butter & Cheese goat milk feta. The sweet sharp heirloom apple takes the tangy bite out of the feta.

Claygate Pearmain is an old English apple from the 1820s found growing in a hedge.  A small russeted apple,  it often develops a bit of crimson blush where it has been kissed by the sun.  Crisp with a juicy sugary flavor, the yellowish flesh is excellent with Blue Ledge Farm’s Camembrie, a semi-soft cow cheese from a predominately goat cheese maker.  We also smothered slices of Ashmead’s Kernel with Camembrie and devoured them all.  Raised in the 18th century by a Dr. Ashmead of Gloucester, England, I like them for their crunch and tartness when first picked.  Later on they may develop a nutlike flavor that goes well with most any blue-veined cheese.

The English heirloom apple, Ashmead’s Kernal, tart when first picked, is excellent smothered in Blue Ledge Farm’s Camembrie.

Stella loves apples and seeks out drops of Black Gilliflower also known as Sheepnose for its distinctive shape.  Possibly a Connecticut apple from the late 1700s, it has a deep reddish purple skin and in a good year will exude a clove-like scent, hence gilliflower.  We sampled it with Ascutney Mountain from Cobb Hill Cheese, a beautiful raw milk Jersey cow cheese – warm yellow color and a nutty, sweet taste.  This is a delicious cheese that would also be good with Orleans Reinette, a French apple introduced in 1776 with a rich sweet nutty flavor.

The Black Gilliflower (aka Sheepnose) heirloom apple has a distinctive shape. When growing conditions are just right you may catch a hint of clove that goes well with Ascutney Mountain from Cobb Hill Cheese.

This past winter we tried one more cheese before the apples went by, Autumn Oak from Willow Hill.  A raw milk sheep cheese we liked it best grated over a mix of apples in a simple salad dressed with a bit of fruity olive oil and a splash of apple cider vinegar.

Stella, David’s shadow, loves heirloom apples and is diligent at picking up drops from the floor of Scott Farm’s heirloom apple orchard.

Parts of this story originally appeared in Culture:  the word on cheese.

David Tansey is the founder of The Landmark Trust USA and past president of Landmark and The Scott Farm.  He was involved in every step of revitalizing Landmark Trust USA and Scott Farm properties.

Please ask Jane Booth for permission to reproduce her copyrighted photographs and/or writing. Email jane.booth.1@gmail.com or call (802) 866-3329.   Jane has produced stories about gardens and small farms for Gardens Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Country Living, Country Living Gardens, Better Homes & Gardens, Local Banquet, New Old House Journal, and Cape Cod & Islands Home where she created an ongoing column and feature stories.

 

Autumn’s Heirlooms

Adventurous in my walking, I studied the growing wood near my home.  Not far from the cliff above Muddy Creek, I found an old cellar hole, nearby a settled pairing of scraggly lilac and apple tree.  A bit further on along the road running east and west of Crow’s Pond in North Chatham near Eastward Ho! I found a number of old timers with out-of reach apples, fruit miniaturized from lack of care.

Heirloom apples are enjoying a resurgence!  Nantucket Historical Association’s Kathrina Pearl is designing an apple orchard of antique varieties–Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet, Sops of Wine, and a French baking apple from the 1500s, Calville Blanc d’Hiver.  If the deer don’t get them she is looking forward to the day when they can ofter fresh squeezed cider and heirloom apple pies. Debbie and Eric Magnuson of Tiasquin Orchard in West Tisbury sell Macouns, McIntosh, and Liberty apples at Edgartown’s Morning Glory Farm.

Cape Cod Home Magazine

Picking Dolgos

Cold hardy Dolgo crab apples originated in Kazakhstan and are a favorite early season treat.  We love to dry them for winter snacking and find them very appealing in salads – think tart sweet of dried cranberries.

August 8, 2012

The Dolgo crab apples began to color up a week ago.  By Monday they had turned into ruby jewels ornamenting the trees, two days later much of the fruit hanging on the outer upper branches are a deep, dark crimson.  Unlike their astringent crab apple cousins, Dolgos are edible — zesty, tart, a mouth full of sunshine.  We dehydrate them for winter snacking and as an addition to salads and granola — think dried cranberry.  They make a beautiful ruby jelly and when pressed they make a cider that looks and tastes like a pink lemonade treat.  Originating in Kazakhstan near the Siberian border, Dolgo means “long” in Russian alluding to their elongated shape.  Extremely cold hardy it is understandable why this antique crab apple was first imported in 1897 to South Dakota where winters are often unpleasantly frigid.

Richard and Michael, two of Scott Farm’s dedicated Jamaican crew, arrive in the farm truck with a warm wave and hearty hello. They have come to the orchard with their apple picking gear:  harvest buckets, bushel boxes, and wooden ladders polished from years of use.  There is a rustling of leaves as they set their ladders into the tree then a snap, snap, snap as they begin to pick, their fingers  working deftly — quick, exacting — both are gentle, their large man hands easing the olive-shaped fruit into harvest buckets held to their chests by a harness strapped across their backs allowing free hands for picking and ladder climbing.  At the base of their buckets hangs a canvas apron drawn shut with two short pieces of rope.  The harvest bucket, akin to a baby carrier, holds cargo almost as precious.  A short time passes, their buckets fill.  Neither Richard nor Michael bound down the ladders, instead they move slowly retreating to the ground.

Scott Farm, located in Dummerston, Vermont, is lucky to have dedicated Jamaican orchardists. Michael Johnson (on left) is Scott Farm’s fastest picker. Lionel “Richard” Henry (on right) is a trusted team leader.

Richard has set the wooden bushel boxes in the shade of the Dolgo crab to protect the just picked fruit from the strong summer sun.  Michael is first and hovers over one of the boxes.  Releasing the knotted stays from their keep, he slowly lowers the the circular canvas apron and its contents into the box.  Controlling the gravitational speed of the departing apples is an important step, if they travel too fast they will bruise not only from hitting the bottom of the box but from bumping neighboring apples.  It is an amazing sight to watch grown men so cautious and gentle with the fruit.

Picking Dolgo crab apples at Landmark Trust USA’s Scott Farm heirloom apple orchard in Dummerston, Vermont.

An hour and a half  passes, the tree is looking naked. We talk about respect.  Michael says adamantly, “You must respect the fruit, you don’t respect the fruit you bruise it, you bruise the fruit the buyer doesn’t want it, it is bad for the farm and bad for the worker who needs the wages.”  The young generation in Jamaica doesn’t understand hard work, nor do they want to do it.  We have the same problem in the states and worry about farm survival without a younger workforce.  Michael and Richard say there is pleasure gained from earning your keep and Richard notes “…a man that works hard is respected in the neighborhood, the man that is lazy is not.”

Picking heirloom apples such as the Dolgo crab, is a tedious and exacting art.

They continue picking, I inspect a neighboring tree filled with small, freckled yellow apples — Ananas Reinette.

Ananas Reinette, a heirloom apple from the Netherlands, is a small yellow apple with freckles and is one of our favorites.

Early in the season they remind me of limes, similar in shape in color.  Their expected harvest date is not long off and we are looking forward to tasting them — they have a sharp, juicy-sweet acidity.  Ananas means pineapple in French, textbooks note the Ananas originated in the Netherlands in the early 1800s.  I like eating this heirloom apple  with a couple of gooey slices of a good camembert, it is also good with feta cheese in a salad, is great sliced into yogurt, and recently I’ve been wondering if I could use them as a substitute in a pineapple upside down cake.

Ananas Reinette is delicious heirloom apple sliced into a salad with chunks of feta cheese.

I ask the guys if pineapples grow in Jamaica.  “Sure, sure,” they reply in their Jamaican lilt.  Richard tells me he grows them on his farm.  I’m not sure I’ve been aware all these years that Richard has his hands in the soil at home.  He tells me he grows sweet potatoes and corn.  His brother and a friend take care of this place when he comes north for Scott Farm‘s seasonal work.  I ask him what his soil is like and he says it is different, lots of clay.  They work the soil digging up the clay, baking clods of it in the sun, then break it up amending it with animal manures.

Both men have come to Vermont to utilize not only their orchard skills but also their attention to detail when packing apples for market.  They wake each day at 5:30 spending a bit of quiet time with a cup of tea.  By 7 a.m. they have left the farm’s apartment to open and stock the farm stand.  Depending on need they may spend the morning trimming out pervasive invasives from under apple trees.  When morning dew has burned off the fruit, they will pick the varieties that have reached the proper stage of ripeness.

Richard and Michael are nearly finished.  I watch their technique, two hands are necessary — one to hold the branch, the other to pluck.  Michael pinches the small apples between his fingers and gives a quick flick backwards collecting four, five, six Dolgo crab apples before dropping them gently into his bucket.  I never hear a thump, maybe a tiny bumping as he gently drops them in.

Michael Johnson uses two hands when picking Dolgo crab apples filling one hand with up to six heirloom apples while the other holds the branch steady.

Out of the 90 varieties of apples in the Scott Farm orchard, the Dolgos take the longest to pick.  Hewes Virginia Crab would be a close second. Thomas Jefferson grew Hewes at Monticello and used it to create a dry, highly flavored hard cider.

Hewes Virgina Crab, a heirloom apple loved by Thomas Jefferson.

Lady Apple, another mini apple, is one of the oldest varieties dating to early Roman days.  It is one of the best keepers at the farm.  The coolers where the fruit is stored are shut off the first of December when Scott Farm sells out most of the apples.  With luck there will be a half bin left of these cheery red and green apples with a white crisp flesh that becomes pleasantly aromatic in keeping.  Lady Apple is also know as the Christmas Apple.  With their cheery colors — red, green and a flash of yellow — they are a good choice for holiday decoration tucked in amongst cut boughs of pine and holly.

The Lady Apple or Christmas Apple is oldest heirloom apple variety grown in Vermont. Dating to early Roman days it is a great winter keeper.

It is nearing 3 p.m. and Richard and Michael are almost done.  They are both working in the shade on the north side of the tree. Covered head to toe with clothing they wear my husband David’s old winter boots designed for frigid Vermont winters, t-shirts topped with a long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and baseball caps to shield their eyes and protect their heads.  Richard is wearing a worn pair of David’s corduroys, I’m miserable in the heat and think it must be 90 degrees or warmer, a wretched persistent heat we have had for most of the summer is pushing the apples to ripen weeks ahead of schedule.  I ask the two how they can stand wearing all the clothes they have on and they tell me there is good reason for their madness.  They sweat, the clothes get damp, the damp keeps them cool although Richard laughs and admits,”Sometimes the boots do get too hot.”

At 3 p.m. they finish, in two hours they have picked 6.5 bushels of small, beautiful ruby red fruit from one tree.

Heirloom Dolgo crab apples fill a bushel box.

David Tansey is past President and CEO of The Landmark Trust USA and Scott Farm. He loves answering questions and sharing knowledge as he has been involved in every step of revitalizing The Landmark Trust USA and Scott Farm properties.  He may be reached at (802) 431-7111.

Please ask Jane Booth for permission to reproduce her copyrighted photographs and/or writing. Email jane.booth.1@gmail.com or call (802) 431-7111.   Jane has spent a good part of her career photographing and writing about gardens and small farms for Gardens Illustrated, Yankee Magazine, Country Living, Country Living Gardens, Better Homes & Gardens, New Old House Journal, and Cape Cod & Islands Home where she produced an ongoing column and feature stories.