After arriving slightly late in the game to collect apples last year, I stopped by this famously secret (or secretly famous) apple tree about three weeks earlier this year. I expected to find the fruit just about ready for harvest. I still can not believe that I instead found that it is just as ripe as it was when I came by last year, and already falling on the ground!
This is the old abandoned apple tree near Conference Drive and Graham Hill Road, that so many who had been homeless over the years were able to get a few apples from while they were in season. It is fenced and inaccessible now; but there is less demand for the apples anyway.
There are not as many homeless people here as there used to be. There are certainly plenty of apples to go around.
Most of the remaining good apples from this tree will be harvested and shared among some of those who work or live in the neighborhood. This year, only a few, if any, might be brought to Felton Covered Bridge Park for those there who want them. (There is no point in adding to the surplus.) If there are enough leftover, some might be canned as applesauce.
This old article is reblogged from another blog, on October 21 of last year.
I really believed that I had something special here. A few fruit trees that are either remnants or descendants of remnants of fruit trees of the old Zayante Rancho have survived on a vacant parcel east of town.
There are two pear trees, a prune tree and an apple tree. The pear and prune trees are too overgrown to make much fruit. Almost all of the fruit that they manage to produce is too high to reach, and of inferior quality. They could be renovated, but the process would require severe winter pruning for several years.
However, the apple tree is still somewhat compact and quite productive. Much of the fruit is within reach for the ground. Much of the rest can be shaken from the tree without damaging it too much. Although abandoned for decades, someone actually put the effort into pruning the apple tree a few years ago…
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