I brought a couple of boxes of homegrown apples to work recently and was intrigued to see the results.
I learned from a colleague that he has two apple trees in his yard, both of the same Goodland variety as my tree. But he doesn't pick them, he mostly just rakes them up, which means he does a lot of raking and hauling -- they are prolific bearers of fruit.
One morning when his wife was leaving for work she noticed one of the trees was shaking furiously, not from a strong wind; it was calm, as the stillness of the second tree attested.
She went to solve the mystery and saw a rather stout older woman shaking apples out of the tree. She fled when approached, jumped in a Cadillac in the lane and drove off. But not before her licence plate had been noted. My colleague's wife, a lawyer, traced the plate and found the car belonged to the wife of a prominent businessman and that the couple lived nearby. So they went to the address and found a backyard that supported no trees whatsoever -- there wasn't room for trees given the size of the pool and patio.
Certainly, the theft of the apples provides an insight into the nature of avarice. It would be an easy thing to speculate that it is this "eager desire to get or keep" that drives people to have the wealth that supports big cars and swimming pools.
But what struck me was that she was an older woman, which likely meant that she knew that apples grown in a Winnipeg backyard were valuable, that they were worth getting and keeping.
My mother would have known that. In her day, in my youthful days, she would put up more than 600 quart sealers of preserves each summer and fall -- beans, beets, corn, pickles, relishes, jams, sauces, pears, peaches, cherries, raspberries, strawberries and apples. Most of it, including the apples, was local.
Few people today do that, partly because they don't think they have the time, but mostly because they simply don't know what bounty is all around them.
Anthony Mintenko, the fruit specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, told me that part of his job is to try to teach Manitobans where their food comes from. If they knew that they might know that it could come from their own backyard -- or mine.
"Urban people have such a disconnect," he said. "I mean, does anyone have a garden anymore?"
But back to Goodland apples. The variety was developed right here in Manitoba, at the research centre at Morden, more than 50 years ago.
Search the variety on the Internet and you will discover that it is the No. 1-rated apple for our climate and that it is popular across Canada, including in B.C. but especially in Quebec.
Look for commercial information and something odd occurs -- most commercial offerings of Goodland apples are in Quebec, but there is at least one U-pick orchard in every province except Manitoba, where it was developed. This apple, at least, seems to have fallen far from the tree.
In fact, there is so little interest in Goodland apples that there is not a single grower in the Prairie Fruit Growers Association. The reason? Who knows? One reason would be that a world-wide glut of apples means that wholesalers can buy apples from New Zealand for 16 cents a pound. That's almost free.
But I would hazard it's because we are ignorant. I certainly was. I planted an apple tree just because it seemed a cool thing to do. I expected that they would look and taste like crabapples, but I was wrong.
I thought that the tree would bear little fruit, as it did in the early years, but I was wrong again. This year I gave away about 500 perfectly nice, unblemished apples and sent at least as many bruised and cut ones to the landfill (please spare me the compost lecture).
Over time, as I became less ignorant, I learned when to pick them -- which is when nice ones start falling to the ground. A weakness of the Goodland is that it bruises easily and spoils quickly once bruised. But picked fresh and unblemished they'll last until Christmas in a refrigerator.
So I learned to harvest and how to harvest -- with an apple picker, a soft cloth basket on the end of a pole that extends to 12 feet.
I went to the supermarkets and begged for apple boxes and the trays in which they are shipped. The produce guys were only too happy to recycle the stuff to me.
It is amazing how much easier it is to deal with a lot of apples when you do it like the pros.
And when you do it like the pros, it is so very rewarding. People are happy to have the apples. They are astonished that they are good. Here in the newsroom, my colleagues have been inspired to eat apples and bake -- there was even a pie-baking contest.
In these times of concern about the environment, it is perplexing that there are not U-pick orchards, that there is not at least one Goodland apple tree in every yard.
gerald.flood@freepress.mb.ca
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