not far from the tree

I happily happened upon this opportunity to manage a not-for-profit, volunteer-run, apple-scavenging business, but have absolutely no previous experience managing a business or harvesting apples. To put it simply, I had never picked an apple before this Saturday – the launch of the business! We sold out in under an hour, so something must have worked. Perhaps I am an idiot savant apple farmer, yes?

But the educator inside of me says that any lack of experience is just an opportunity for learning. Part of the reason I started this blog is to document how I stumble my way through this experience, learning as I go. Here are some things I’ve learned so far:

• How to pick an apple: Hold it gently in the palm of your hand and hug your fingers around the stem. Give it a little twist and slight tug. If it comes off, it’s ready! If not, then don’t force it or you’ll end up with a tough and unpleasant mouthful.
• The images of worms in apples that saturated my childhood were all wrong. Worms don’t live in apples, silly illustrators — moth larvae do! Many of the blemished apples in the Spadina orchard are the happy homes of coddling moths. The coddling moth is born in the bud of the fruit so it has lived its whole life in the apple by the time you might find it, meaning that it’s a safe little piece of protein. In our cold climate, where their reproductive cycles are less frequent, they’re not a big threat to the apples. When they finally leave the apple, there’s even a little hole (usually at the bottom dimple) that looks like it was bored through from the inside out (which it was), almost like it a sharpened pencil poked through and left some shavings.
• There’s a scientific word for the study of fruit trees: pomology! This blog is so pomological…

It’s a bit overwhelming to know there is so much more for me to learn… but I’m treating this whole thing like an experiment such as the market itself is a pilot project in anticipation of its new home next year.