Audrey, Sherry, Marilyn and Joan pose with the “windfall” apples from Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in August 2015. Each year the 10+ volunteers of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard collectively spend over 100 hours a year caring for our trees and pollinator garden. This year we hit our 100th hour on August 8, 2015.
This week six volunteers gathered in Ben Nobleman Park to water our very thirsty fruit trees and weed the pollinator garden. At the same time, we also solved a mystery.
You see, our young apple trees have been in the ground for five years now, and they have been producing fruit for three years. And yet, we have not yet ever been able to taste any of the apples on our trees. Why?
Because by harvest time in September or October, all the fruit is gone. Each week we see fewer and fewer apples on our trees until every single piece of fruit is gone.
I will admit, for those of us who care for the trees, this is pretty disappointing. As a group we spend over 150+ hours a year caring for the trees and our pollinator garden. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could at least taste just one piece of fruit each?
And sometimes my mind goes to dark places. Maybe passers-by harvest the fruit before it’s ripe! They taste it, discover unripe fruit tastes yucky. Then they throw it away. What a waste.
But today I learned that something else, far more benign, might be happening. While Lynn and I were watering the fruit trees today, a lady with a dog started to chat with me and amongst other things we chatted about our apple harvest.
I said it was really sad that we have never been able to taste our apples because park visitors come and harvest them before they are ripe.
“That’s not what’s happening,” she said.
I was really confused.
“Windfall apples” are apples that have fallen from the tree before ripening. Small hard apples must be put in the compost. But larger apples have other uses….
She told me she comes to the park three times a day with her dog and she often finds apples on the ground, blown off by the wind. She picks them up and takes them home. She then cooks the unripe apples with a bit of sugar and uses the sauce as a condiment, to serve with meat.
As it turns out, these fallen apples are called “Windfall Apples” and people wiser than me have known for centuries that once the fruit reaches a certain size, they cook up really well. So now we know our fruit has been eaten and enjoyed over the years. Just not by us. At least not yet!
Well, today I found two windfall apples! So I scooped them up and brought them to the others who were weeding the pollinator garden. I asked for a volunteer to take the windfall apples home and to cook them up. One of our group, Joan, was excited to give it a try.
She’ll bring the apple sauce to our pot luck gathering next weekend. And so now – five years after planting our trees – we can finally taste the fruit of our labours!
For me the biggest windfall is knowing that no one is to blame for our missing apples – except the wind of course – and also knowing that the fruit we have so lovingly grown is being used and enjoyed.
As great as that is, I still hope that the wind leaves some apples to ripen on the tree this year!
This post was written by Susan Poizner, the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards and creator of the online fruit tree care training program at www.orchardpeople.com. Susan is also a founder of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. in Toronto.