First Apple

Sept 10, 2018: Most of the apples have their red coats now.

Again, I'm a novice farmer here. I have no idea how to tell if an apple is ripe. I trust that my local grocer wouldn't sell them if they weren't ripe, but an apple from my own tree... Usually I forget about them until it's so late in the season that I'm finding them on the ground. By then, they're a bit too ripe.

They aren't the type of apples that become solid red, but they spread the

red over the green beneath. A few haven't even started blushing yet.

So I decided to be proactive this year and try one of my apples as soon as they appear to be ready. They're small apples, so size is not an indicator. They won't turn solid red, so that doesn't help. I don't even know what type of apples they are. Comparing them to online charts, they most resemble the pictures and descriptors of Fuji apples, but I can't be sure. Who knows if Fuji apples can even thrive in our mountain climate? (Did they actually come from Mount Fuji?)

I'm going to guess they'll be fully ripe by late Sept or early Oct.

At any rate, on Monday I chose one of the larger little apples within my reach and gave it the tiniest of tugs. It came right off, which seemed promising. I took it inside to wash and examine. It was a perfect specimen, without blemish. So small, it fit neatly into the palm of my hand.

This was one of the larger apples, just big enough to fit in my palm.

Then I sliced the apple into four quarters and took a bite. It was crisp and mildly sweet, not grainy at all. It was less sweet than I'd expected, based on apples I'd sampled in previous years, so it may be that they need until the end of this month, or even early October, to reach peak sweetness. They'll need to be picked by then anyway, because the autumn frost will soon follow. But I'd say that most of the apples are ripe enough for picking now, if one prefers a less sweet apple.

Barely ripe enough to eat, mildly sweet, but tasty.

Meanwhile, I gobbled down that apple in a few bites, and it was yummy. Maybe I'll follow that old "apple a day" rule for a couple of weeks. Then it'll be time to get out the ladder and officially harvest my apples, bottom to top, for the first time. I'm thinking some apple crisps might be fun to make...