The Apple Club Newsletter, Winter 2007, Page 4

In the spring I wrote about old age. Since then we have had a wet summer, but still the crops were good. We had good strawberries from under the protection of plastic covers, and the raspberries were plentiful too. We made jam from the strawberries, and juice from the raspberries.
Next came the plums; again they were very plentiful. I think that Opal is the best plum, but Victoria is good too. We made jam from the plums too.
The apple picking is finished, and I will write about apple picking.
All the trees are small now, and everything is picked without ladders. It is interesting to see. We have a picking train. That is a tractor with a little train of bins behind it.
It was different when I was young in Holland. All our trees were very tall. Up to 7 metres. We had an orchard like that when we came here first in 1967. There were Bramley cookers and some old varieties.
At that time almost every farmer had an old orchard. Our late neighbour, Paddy Hickey, who was one of the first people to welcome us here, had an old orchard, and we rented it from him for 2 years.
The picking had to be done with a ladder and picking basket. And we put the apples in a heap with straw over them. In the winter they became ripe, and you could eat them.
The poet Patrick Kavanagh had a small orchard at his farm in Co. Monaghan, and I was there.
The poet Robert Frost wrote a poem about apple picking.
It begins:
“My two-pointed ladder is sticking through a tree; towards heaven still”.
And he wrote about harvesting leaves:
“Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?”
And W.B. Yeats wrote about silver apple and golden apples.
“And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”
Did you know, we still have “Golden” apples. Have you ever heard of Golden Delicious?

Competition

Now for the competition, which is open to anyone up to and including 12 years old. First prize is a €20.00 Easons voucher, and the runner up gets a €10.00 voucher for use at our farm shop.

Competition questions:

Send your answers to:

before January 11th, 2008.

Previous competition winners:
Well done to our competition entrants in Spring. They were:
David from Ballingeary near Cahir,
and
Sarah from Capparoe near Nenagh.

Newsletter Winter 2007		page 4 of 4

Picking apples, By Willem Traas

Competition