Apple thinning

My hands again this week ... this time reaching for another little apple to tug down.

My hands again this week … this time reaching for another little apple to tug down.

I’ve mentioned in several newsletters now that we’ve been slowly working on “thinning” apples in our two orchards. The process took us several weeks to complete, but we did finish this weekend (at the beginning of a very hot Sunday!).

When we thin apples, we are simultaneously provided a very intimate tour of every apple tree in our orchards (all 130 of them), as we circle it slowly, looking for every spur on the tree and making sure that only one apple remains there (by delicately removing the others). We purposefully prune our trees to be human height so that we can do this work by standing on the ground, and it’s beautifully calm work to do with one’s spouse. Conversation can flow easily as we each circle a tree, meditatively looking into the branches and physically touching the tree as we go.

Even in this early spring season, we can already see such huge differences between different apple varieties. The Goldrush trees were all heavy bearers, setting thousands of apples on each tree, requiring much more attention from us than some other types (some of which only need a cursory look around to make sure no spur was over-loaded). On some trees, the cull applets popped off easily, as though they were just waiting for our fingers to signal that it was time to drop and leave room for just one. On other trees, we had to carefully twist off apples that had already grown to be golf ball-sized.

Thinning apples is one of those seasonal activities that naturally brings to mind so many prior experiences. We of course recalled our previous seasons of thinning — and mostly found ourselves remarking again and again on how much fruit we have this year compared to earlier years! We planted the orchards in 2009 and 2010, so they really are just now in full maturity and we are seeing the balance of what they are likely to produce in most years.

But we also naturally recalled the experience of planting each orchard — how the first orchard went in the winter before I got pregnant with Rusty, and the second one went in when Rusty was a little tiny baby on my chest.

And, even farther back, we recalled learning to thin fruit on a hot May day in Chelan in 2004. It was our first week of ever gardening (really!), and yet we had these ideas that farming was our calling. So we spent a week staying on an organic homestead and helping with the spring work. In that particular climate, stone fruit grow exceedingly well, and so we helped thin a peach tree, doing the same basic task of removing all but one fruit in each location so that they could grow as big as possible (and to eliminate some pest and disease pressure from over-crowding too). That peach tree was much larger than our apple trees, and so it was also our first experience of standing on an orchard ladder (which have only three legs rather than four and are actually amazingly stable). I remember how sore my neck became from looking up all day as I reached for baby peach after baby peach, littering the ground below my ladder.

And, as today, we talked and talked with Jeff, our host and mentor. We still recall stories he told us that week about his land and the work and so many experiences he and his wife had had over their decades of living on their homestead. How much we learned in that one week!

The children helped us some with our thinning this year, although mostly they played nearby and collected caches of fallen apples. I do imagine that in future years they will join us for longer and longer as they grow into the beauty of gentle work. Not this year, but someday.

The fruit are already growing so big because of our work (and irrigation and heat and time). Now when I look out our living room window, I can see red orbs growing on the trees closest to our house. The earliest apples are really only weeks away from being ready. Already! It is hard to believe but true.

The summer solstice is still a few weeks away, but we are very much in the thick of the growing season. As you will see in this week’s share, which features treats that astound us by their presence in early June. Tomatoes! And more!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

How we eat fava beans: As I was preparing fava beans for lunch yesterday, I thought, “I need to share this with the CSA!” Because fava beans can be overwhelming sometimes. At this stage of growth, they are really best when shucked and then peeled free of the white outer skin that grows around each bright green bean. But who was time to sit with a bowl and shuck and peel a bag full of fava beans?

Ok, maybe we all have that time if we prioritize it, because really doesn’t sitting on the porch shucking beans sound somewhat romantic? It does to me, but the reality is that I don’t think about doing that early enough before a meal to make it happen in that slow paced romantic way.

Instead, here’s how our fava beans get eaten. A few at a time. Casey and I both have gotten into the habit of adding just a handful of shucked and peeled fava beans into our cooked greens (or other dishes) at each meal. It ends up being quite easy when we don’t overwhelm ourselves with a whole bag of beans at a time. If I throw the beans into my pan at the same time as the garlic or onions, then the beans are cooked through by the time my greens are done. And I’m consistently amazed at how much just a handful of beans adds to the color and flavor of the meal I serve as a result. It’s a reminder to us that it’s June, a special time on the farm featuring special foods!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

  • Cherries
  • Strawberries
  • Tomatoes — The first! As such, each share will just receive a small portion, but OH there are so many more to come. These have been delicious (because of course we had to taste the VERY first ourselves).
  • Radishes
  • Fava beans
  • Bok choy
  • Head lettuce
  • Beets
  • Zucchini
  • Potatoes
  • Storage squash
  • Torpedo onions — These special Italian onions are sweet enough to eat raw (chopped on a salad or sliced onto a sandwich) but also have fabulous flavor when cooked. They are a summer favorite of ours.

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

  • Eggs — $6/dozen
  • Ham — No nitrates-added artisan-made ham from the last of our hogs! $12/lb
  • Pork chops — $12/lb
  • Ground pork — $8/lb
  • Pork organs, fat & bones — $4/lb

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