 So today, welcome to the October 23rd History Bites Noontime Lecture sponsored by the Amherst History Society. And today, we are fortunate to have Mr. Russell Powell to talk to us about apples. It's especially timely because we're in the apple harvest season. And I am one of those people who loves fresh apple cider and I go to pick your own apple places and there's nothing quite like an apple that's fresh off the tree. So Mr. Powell is going to talk to us about the history and the biology and the culture of apples. We think it started with even the apple and continued on from there. But Mr. Russell Steven Powell has written about and photographed New England's apple orchards for the past 25 years. He's the author of America's Apple and Apples of New England. And his popular Apple blog now in its 11th year is published weekly for mid August through November. Apple harvest season. It can be found at newenglandapples.org. He currently serves as the executive director of the nonprofit New England Apple Association. He's a multimedia artist. His paintings have been exhibited widely in Western Massachusetts and on Cape Cod, including the Paradise City Arts Festival. His documentary Shack Time about the artist Shacks in the Dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore was chosen for the 2001 New England Film and Video Festival and was aired regionally on PBS affiliate WGBH in Boston. And that sounds just fascinating. I've often wondered about those Shacks in the Dunes on Cape Cod. Mr. Powell's magazine, New England Watershed, a Journal of Art, Culture, and Ideas was named the best publication of 2006 by Utmay Reader. He's authored six books, including Molly's 17 Rules for Living, Words to Live By from a Canine Bodhisattva. My interview with James Baldwin and Living Without Long, Rethinking the Front Yard. He's a New England native and he's lived in Amherst for nearly 20 years before moving to Hatfield in 2001. So let's welcome Mr. Powell and take it away. Thank you. I love to talk about apples and what I'd like to do today is walk you through the history of apple growing here in New England. I have some varieties with me that I will hold up to the screen and say a little something about. And then I'm eager to hear your questions and comments. The field of apples is so broad that I could go in any direction and I like to hear from the audience to see what people are most interested in. It was only a few years after the European settlers arrived in the early 1600s before we have our first record of apples in the New World. It's actually 1623, just three years after the Mayflower. We did not have apple trees here. We had crab apples, but not the eating apple that we think of today. But apples were very important to the early settlers for a number of reasons. Food value is obvious, but apples were also a source of sweetness. They could be stored year round or dried. They could be baked, pressed into juice from there made into vinegar or distilled into liquor. They could be fed to livestock. And in addition to all of those very practical uses, the four or five apple trees that people might have in their backyard was a familiar reminder of where they came from. They were arriving in this strange new world, new geography, new everything. And those apple trees were a symbol of continuity from their European roots. Very soon after the Mayflower, as early as 1635, we had our first name variety, which was the Roxbury Russet. I'll be talking about that a little bit later. But for the first century or so, it was not important that you could eat an apple. If you found one that was flavorful, that was great. But the primary use for apples early on was for making cider, both fresh and hard. And everyone drank it young and old alike. It was considered safer than water in some communities. So even the most sour or bitter apple is transformed when you press its juice and make it into cider. And even an apple that was known as a spitter because it was inedible, was saved and valued for its use in cider. Some people don't know that you can't grow a Macintosh apple from a Macintosh seed. The apple is set up in such a way that a variety cannot fertilize itself. It needs a second variety in order to bear fruit. And as a result of that, the genetic material in the seeds and the apples from that have characteristics of both parents. It's like we humans. The offspring may resemble a parent, but it's not going to be an exact copy. For that reason, the way that we arrive at true varieties is by a centuries old process called grafting, where you take a small limb off of the desired variety and you graft it on to what's called a rootstock, which in today's world is a small apple tree that's only about 18 inches tall. And it's chosen for some horticultural characteristic. It might be that it is disease resistant. It might be cold, hardy. It might have to do with size, be a dwarf or semi dwarf tree. And that apple variety that you want is grafted on to that rootstock. And from that point on, that tree will produce that Macintosh or Cortland or Macown forever after. One of the things I love about this is it means that when you bite into an apple, some of these old apples that go back to the 1500s or 1600s, you are having a direct descendant of that original tree. And there's so many things from history that we can't hope to replicate. But you can know what Gravenstein tasted like three centuries ago when you bite into one today. So until the mid 1800s, apples were primarily for cider and cider was America's drink. At that time, because of the Industrial Revolution, we had people moving off the farms into cities. We had immigrants from places like Germany who were expert at making cheaper alternative beer. And hard cider found itself under attack from temperance movements, both in the early 1800s and again in the 1870s. So as a result, we saw a decline in hard cider beginning in the mid 1850s. And it's only recently that we see cider, particularly hard cider, making a tremendous comeback. And I'll get into that a little bit later. But during the 1800s, we also shipped a lot of apples to primarily England and the West Indies. They were packed into barrels in places like Portland, Maine or Boston and shipped across the ocean to those destinations. They were apples that stored particularly well, the russeted apples. And again, I'll talk a little bit about them later. But that was the beginning of America having large orchards. Before that, it tended to be smaller orchards for the family or for a neighborhood. I do want to interject here something about one of our most famous citizens and most misunderstood. And that's John Chapman, who most people better know as Johnny Appleseed. He grew up in, or who's born in Lemonster and most people know that, but fewer people know that he actually grew up in Western Massachusetts near the Connecticut River in Long Meadow. He was America's first great walker. He went all over the place in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. That's where he planted his orchards, just in those two states, Ohio and Indiana. And one of the many myths that have come up around him, there are more than 30 states that claim to have orchards planted by Johnny Appleseed and in fact it's just those two. He accelerated the process of natural selection by going to an area where he anticipated that the European settlers were headed. And he would find a place typically near a river or where an Indian settlement had been. And he would clear about three acres by hand and plant seeds, apple seeds, because again at that time, it wasn't important if you could eat the apples or not. They were primarily for cider. And then he would occasionally come back and tend those three acres and he would select the best ones, the ones that were the hardiest that grew the best in this new geography. And when the European settlers did arrive, he had a built-in market for those trees. In some cases, land grant companies required newcomers to have four or five apple trees on their property as a way to discourage speculators. So he had a built-in market and he was many other things besides an apple lover. Unfortunately, he didn't leave any written record of why he was so passionate about apples. For that, we have to turn to a neighbor of his, Henry David Thoreau. They lived at the same time. They probably never met each other. They were born within about 20 miles of each other. But in his essay Wild Apples, Thoreau gives voice to a lot of what we believe was true about John Chapman, that he preferred the seed-grown apple to the grafted one. And he was really this complicated figure because he was a Massachusetts guy who was literate and that made him a little unusual on the frontier. But at the same time for the Easterners, he was this wild man. He was anti-materialist. He didn't wear a lot in the way of clothing. He liked to sleep outdoors. He was kind of a rough human figure. So he didn't really fit into either world. But he loved nature and he was a great herbalist. He was a pacifist who got along with the Indians. And yet we've caricatured him over and over again, particularly with Disney and some others. And I just want to say one last thing before I move on, and there's no evidence that he ever wore a tin pot hat. And I think that's a way to kind of discredit him. And so I would urge you, if you're doing plays about John Chapman or talking about him, the tin pot hat is fiction. So by the end of the 1800s, with the downfall of hard cider and the rise of beer, the apple industry had to remake itself. And it happened most famously at the 1905 World's Fair in St. Louis when a gentleman J.T. Stinson adapted an old Welsh proverb to say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, which we still know today. And that kind of reoriented the apple industry into more of an interest in freshening apples. And at the time, the three leading apples in the Northeast were all New England apples. They were northern spy, Rhode Island greening and Baldwin. And I have examples of those three today and I'll talk about them in a little more detail later on. But at that time, growers grew many varieties and gradually whittled it down as we moved into the century. The next big movement happened in the early 1930s. There was a brutal winter of 1933-34. And it killed more than a million Baldwin trees and many northern spies as well. And until then, Baldwin was the region's Macintosh. Baldwin was the New England apple and it had stayed that way for more than a century. But after this freeze with the rise of Macintosh, which had only been commercially available for a few decades, growers decided not to replant Baldwin trees but to plant Macintosh instead, which were cold, hardy and produced reliably. And from that point on, Macintosh has steadily become our most popular apple. At one point, it was about two thirds of the New England crop. Now it's still more than half of the crop. The next big change really occurred in the 1970s with the advent of Picuron. Both my grandfather's grew apples in Central Massachusetts and Brookfield. But when they were growing apples, there was no Picuron. There was no retail. My father drove his apples to Springfield mass. My grandfather drove his apples to Providence, Rhode Island, end of story. Growers could be just apple growers. They didn't have to be marketers. They didn't have to worry about dealing with the public. They could just focus on growing apples. That all began to change in the 1970s with Picuron. And to this day, it remains one of the reasons that New England is still a major player nationally. We only produce a little less than two percent of the national fresh apple crop these days. But because of our dense population and small orchards, we have a model here for, excuse me, for Picuron orchards that is the envy of other parts of the U.S. Growers can have people right there at the orchard and they can see how the apples are grown. They can interact directly with the farmer in many cases. And it allows the farmer to adapt much more quickly if a variety is not successful. They can change over to a new one. We've seen a change also toward more intensive planting, and that's particularly important in an area like New England where many of our orchards are in the middle of a town or near the middle of the town, and they really lack the opportunity to expand their acreage with more intensive planting on dwarf trees. They have the opportunity to get greater production out of the acreage they have. It's a little bit of a different aesthetic for older people like myself. We no longer see the big canopies of trees that are 30 or 40 feet apart. Some orchards still have them and will continue to have them, but more and more our orchards are looking more and more like vineyards, where the trees are 10 to 15 feet tall. They're on rows only 10 to 15 feet wide so that one does not shade the other. They're trellised or tied to stakes and heavily pruned so that more sunlight can reach the fruit, and it's a very different experience. It's very beautiful in its own way, but it's different from what we've seen over the last couple of centuries. So that's what we're looking at today. The New England apple industry is very strong in certain areas. Fresh and hard cider is one of those areas and it's experiencing a significant increase in recent years. And retail, where we do have the opportunity for people, especially during a year like this with the pandemic to get out to the orchard to be in a safe place in nature, where they can see bluebirds and smell the apples on the trees and come home with a bag of fruit in the process. So from there I'd like to talk about a few of these apples. I'm going to start with some of the oddballs, a cup of the oddballs. This one is, you see it's very small, fits in my hand. It's called Lady and it looks almost like a small Macintosh and it has a tart, citrusy taste, but you see it's tiny. It goes back to the 1600s. It's one of our oldest apples. This other name is Christmas apple because it's sometimes used in wreaths around the holidays. Some people pickle it. I've never had it that way, but that's another way that ladies are still enjoyed. You can find them at some of our orchards, but they're like a lot of our heirlooms. They're fairly hard to find. You have a look for them. This one is called Nobby Russet and you can see it's a strange looking apple. It's still on the small side. It has this Russet on it, which is a naturally occurring feature that is harmless to eat. And the Russet apples in general are considered some of our most flavorful apples, but they lack that bright red or green or yellow color. And as a result, you're not likely to see them in grocery stores. They're also on the small side, which is another reason you don't see them. And one of their main virtues is that they store extremely well. And with the advent of refrigeration around 1900, the need for these Russet apples decreased. However, they have excellent flavor. They're excellent in cider, both fresh and hard. And this is, to me, the perfect example because why would you keep an apple like this? Why does it even exist? This goes back to 1819. It has to have something going for it. It has to have good flavor or you wouldn't know it today. This apple is called Calville Blanc de Vier. It's a French apple. It's also very old. It goes back to the 1500s. And you see it has these unusual ribs. It's a very odd shape. It's primarily a cooking apple and used in cider. And it was considered one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite apples. From there, we moved to New England. And we've had pretty good success developing varieties here. One of our oldest named apples is Rhode Island Greeny. Kind of the East Coast Granny Smith. But it's much older than Granny Smith. It goes to the 1600s. And it's an apple that's on the tart side. It's primarily good for baking. But a century ago, it was one of our three leading apples. And it's really a delicious apple, particularly if you like something with a little tartness. Moving to Connecticut. This apple is back to the 1700s. It's called Sheep's Nose. And you can see why when you turn it on its side. Some of these Sheep Nose have a very rich deep color. And it has another name called Black Gila Flower. But we primarily know it as Sheep's Nose. And some of them are even more conical than this. It's actually, in my opinion, it's not a great tasting apple. It's a little on the dry side, but it's said to be excellent in apple sauce in particular. One of our only apples from Maine is this beauty. It's called Black Oxford. And it's really the only major apple that's ever come out of Maine. It has a kind of greenish, greenish flesh. It's a little on the tart side. And it's also very good used in cider. This apple is one that many people will know about by name. It's Northern Spy. And the seeds for Northern Spy were grown in the state of Connecticut and Salisbury, Connecticut. The farmer who grew them took them with him to New York State. And that's where the first Northern Spy was harvested. But we still like to think of it as a New England apple. It's an excellent baking apple. My 97 year old mother to this day says this is her favorite pie apple. It's also a very delicious eating apple. And it has kind of a pink. It's not as red as some varieties. It has kind of a pinkish hue and tends to be a larger apple. From there we move to Massachusetts. And I mentioned earlier, Roxbury Russet. Now, Roxbury is a suburb of Boston, but in our agrarian past, this lovely apple was discovered there. And it is among the leading revival heirlooms that we have today because it is so good in both fresh and hard cider. It's a delicious eating apple as well. This is an apple that is from Hubbard's then it's called the Hubbard's the non such. And it was very popular in the 1800s. We can't really compare to England when it comes to apple names where we have pit mass and pineapple and ash meets kernel. But we do have a couple that were discovered in Massachusetts that are among my favorites and Hubbard's the non such is one of them. Another one that's very hard to find, but it's still grown in a few places is called Westfield seek no further, which was from Westfield mass. And like Hubbard's the non such was very popular in the 19th century. Part of the reason they're not grown today is because they're difficult to grow. They don't bear on a regular basis. And a commercial grower just can't afford to take a chance on an apple that may succumb to disease or bear every other year. And finally we end up with Baldwin. This is as I say this was our apple for more than a century. It is beautiful for baking. It's beautiful as a fresh eating apple. It's main vulnerability is to severe cold. But among the heirlooms, if you're hunting for some of these rare apples, you should have a better chance finding a Baldwin than a lot of other varieties. I'm going to end with three, three new varieties which are similar to each other to give you a sense of where the apple industry is moving today. The first one is called John a gold. And it was developed in New York state in 1968. And it is the product of a Jonathan apple, which is an heirloom from the Midwest and golden delicious. So they put the two words together, Jonathan, golden, John a gold. And it was in an era when marketing was not very important for apple growers. And I think in today's world of jazz and envy and some of the other names we have, it suffers in part because it has a fairly bland name. But this is a terrific apple. It is, has many of the features that have come to be associated with honey crisp, that light crisp, juicy crunch when you bite into it. And, and I think has even more apple flavor. I personally prefer it to honey crisp. But this is honey crisp. This is the biggest apple to hit the apple industry in 50 years. It was discovered in Minnesota in 1961 and released commercially 30 years later, 1991. And people can't seem to grow enough of them these days. It is a wonderful apple when grown well. If it doesn't have enough color, it can be on the blander side. But if you haven't had a honey crisp yet, it's worth trying. It's an exceptional apple. And I was a holdout for a long time. I'm a Macintosh guy and I resisted this upstart, but a good honey crisp is really a terrific apple. Because of that, everybody's trying to create the new honey crisp. And we haven't gotten there yet. There are a lot of new apples that you may find in the grocery store that I don't think we'll see in another generation. And many of these are patented apples are not just patented but trademarked, meaning that New England growers cannot grow them. So when you see an apple like jazz or Lady Alice in the grocery store, they have some good qualities. But if you're looking for an apple that is grown by a New England grower, you should check to see if it's trademarked. When an apple is trademarked, it forms a club. The creators of the apple or developers create a club and only certain orchards are allowed to grow those apples. And it's typically based on financial reasons. So our medium to small orchards rarely get an opportunity to grow some of these apples. An exception is this new one that was developed in Ohio of all places. Ohio has not really been a major apple player, but this is called evercrisp. And its parents are Honeycrisp and Fuji. So it has some of the characteristics of, that we associate with Honeycrisp, it has that light Christmas, but Fuji is a harder apple and it's a later season apple. So growers are very excited about evercrisp's ability to come in at the end of the harvest and, and keep well through the fall and winter. So those are just some of the examples in New England. We grow more than 30 varieties at a commercial basis and we have probably several hundred more that are grown like some of these in small quantities. And you have to hunt for them and the hunt is well worth it. So that's kind of where we are today. As I say, I'm happy to answer questions on any subject relating to apples. And I'll turn it back to George to figure out how to get questions. Well, I have a question right off the bat. What was the impact of prohibition on apple growing? I heard that they cut down a lot of the orchards because of the cider. Well, that's the thing that hard cider is, it has some alcohol in it about as much as beer, it's slightly carbonated. And like any alcoholic can be abused. And hard cider was the target of temperance movements, two temperance movements in the 1900s. By the time of prohibition, it was not targeted on the same scale as beer or hard liquor. But yes, it was definitely an issue for the prohibitionists and some orchards were affected. By that time, more and more orchards were being grown for fresh eating apples. So it didn't have the impact that the temperance movements in the 19th century had, but it did have an impact. Lisa, Lisa. Yeah, thanks. Not this year because of the COVID, but most years I go out to the UMass cold spring orchard. And look, and so I'm not totally sure what they had this year, but most years they have like 15 different kinds of apples at various times like Hudson and, you know, things like that. And that strikes me as a great public service for the apple. We're seeing more and more of that even the traditional orchards that in the 60s and 70s had whittled down their varieties to maybe six or seven. The Cortland and the Max and the Counts and now the Honeycrisp, even those orchards are planting heirlooms because they recognize that while the volume may be small, people are really interested in getting that full range of flavors and textures and colors from apples. Right. And the thing with heirlooms, they may have nine out of 10 properties that are excellent, but that one last property may keep them from being grown on a commercial scale. They may be biennial bearers. Maybe the core is too big. Maybe they're misshapen. It's one thing that may keep them out of our supermarkets, but many of these are not only excellent apples, but really give us a sense of just the range of this amazing fruit that has anything from pineapple flavors in some cases to banana, to orange, to nuts. And to get all of that, you've got to try some of these non-traditional apples. Well, we're lucky we're not dependent on grocery stores for our apples. Yes. Although you should be able to find New England apples pretty much throughout the year in the grocery stores, our storage methods have improved so much that I've had some of the best Macintosh I've had as late as April and a Stamen. That's an old, it's a wonderful heirloom apple and it's one of the best apples I had last year was a Stamen and it was in the month of April. So we've gotten a lot better and we can expect a lot more from our supermarkets. And I think it's helpful when consumers appreciate the difference between a locally grown apple and some of these varieties that are trademarked that we are not even eligible to grow here. Cheryl Johnson. Yeah, I didn't hear you speak about Cortland apples, which are among the favorites of my in-laws and family. Cortland, to me, it's one of my all-time favorites. The Macintosh apple, in addition to being our most popular, has been apparent to some of our other popular apples and Cortland is one of them. So is Macown, so is Empire. But Cortland, its other parent is Ben Davis. And Ben Davis still exists as an heirloom in small quantities. It's not a highly regarded apple for its flavor. But when you combine that with the Macintosh to get a Cortland, it is just one of the best apples because it's reliable as a tree to grow. It has good size. It's excellent as a fresh eating apple because it's known for its flesh being slow to turn color. So it's really appreciated for salads. It tends to be used in Waldorf salads. And yet it's a great baker. People will sometimes ask me if they're planting trees in their backyard, what varieties they should use. And I almost always include Cortland in the answer because it's so versatile and so reliable. Thank you. Nancy Yeti. Thank you. My former next door neighbor. Nice to see you. And I'm sorry, I came in a little late. So if you've already talked about this apple, forgive me. My father's favorite apple was a Jonathan. And we found a Jonathan tree to plant for him for about, I don't know, probably his 70th birthday at his home. And I can never find Jonathan's in the stores or in the local farmer market at all. They are today primarily a Midwestern apple. And their fans are devoted. Some across people in New England who are searching for Jonathan's. I know a few orchards that grow them. Clark brothers up in Ashfield. Oh, okay. But there are several others. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. There's a stone mountain farm in. Belmont, New Hampshire. I was there recently and they have them. One thing you can do. It's not perfect. But if you go to our, the New England apple association website, which is new England apples.org. You can search for the variety. And it will tell you who grows it. Not every grower has kept up their listing. So if you go to, you can certainly call ahead and see if they have Jonathan's, but they are out there and they do have their fans. Yep. And they're also the parents of John, a goal. The apple I was referring to earlier, which I think. They must be. Yeah. Uh-huh. Nina Scott, did you have your hand up before? No, no, I did it on chat. I didn't know the procedure. I had another question, which are, uh, what are some of the oldest breeds of apples? You talked about some old breeds going back hundreds of years. And what are some of the oldest ones that are still around? Yeah. One of my favorites is an early season apple that, uh, probably is too late in the year, but you might find some as Gravenstein. And that typically comes out in late August. Uh, some people love it as a pie apple, but it's a really delicious fresh eating apple. I know Atkins has had them in the past. And, uh, that goes back to the 1500s. Lady, the apple I showed earlier, this goes back to the 1600s. If I can get it in the right place here. Um, so this is one of our very old apples and Calville Blanc is from the 1500s. So we do have a number of them that go back to the, um, 1700s and a few to the 1600s. Um, the apple itself goes back thousands of years, originally originating in, uh, forests in Kazakhstan. And some of those forest still have a range of, uh, genetic material for apples. Some of the trees look like oak trees and some have very misshapen and weird looking fruit. That's where the apple began. So, um, do people go back there and try to get more genetic material for apples? They do, but it's limited access. You have to have permission to be able to, to go there. I would love to go there, but. I don't know. Yes. I actually had a different question to ask beforehand. Um, Russell, do you bake pies yourself? Yes. Okay. Then my question is this, um, I know, um, I usually go to Atkins and they, they, excuse me, have a whole list of which apples are suitable for what? Now to make an apple pie, uh, you select among the baking apples. Now is it, is a mixture of several apples good for better for a pie or should you just stick to one variety? You know, there's no right answer to that. Uh, we've been, uh, judges, uh, a pie contest at metal or choose it for the last nine years. Uh, we've done an event in, uh, in Connecticut where, uh, pies were made by a baker using just single varieties. And, um, you know, it's hard to choose the basic rule when it comes to making a pie is that, uh, almost any apple that you love will work. Um, I tend to mix varieties in part because I love Macintosh for its flavor and its aroma. It is a softer apple and tends to cook down. So I will tend to mix Macintosh with maybe a couple of courtlands or something else to improve the texture, but there really is no, uh, wrong answer to that. The things that we emphasize when it comes to cooking with apples, one is to leave the skins on because much of the apple's nutrition is concentrated near beneath the skin. Um, it also adds some color and texture to whatever you're cooking and not to mention the fact that it takes a little less time if you don't have to peel all the apples. Um, and for a lot of recipes that we come through, this is, this is changing very slowly, but for many of the recipes that we find in cookbooks from the fifties and sixties and even seventies, they have far too much sugar. The apple is naturally sweet. And when I bite into a pie or a turnover or any baked apple good, I don't want to taste apple. I don't want to just taste it. So we will often cut the sugar back by as much as a half. And, uh, we never feel like we're not getting enough sweetness out of it and you get more apple flavor. Um, we also will sometimes substitute apple sauce for some of the fat or all of the fat. Um, that's another way to make it a little healthier. And this doesn't relate specifically to apples, but we also tend to use a mix of white and whole wheat flour. Uh, the exception being pies because whole wheat flour is very difficult to work with if you use it, uh, for rolling out pastry. Yeah. A lot of the dishes, dishes we make, we do about a 50 50 blend between regular and whole wheat flour. Thank you. So how did you become interested in apples at first? Well, it's a good question. As I said, both my grandfathers grew apples in central mass. And the farm that I grew up on was no longer, uh, producing apples when I grew up. We had a couple of blocks of trees on the property, but I still remember the other farm Elm Hill farm in Brookfield, which coincidentally was a home of the original LC, the cow. Um, they also had Morgan horses and they had, uh, an apples and I remember going to the apple barn and that smell of apples filling up the whole room. And, uh, and yet then I went on to a career. I began as a print journalist and I worked in public relations. I came to the area to work at Hampshire college for many years. I worked at Greenfield community college. And then just coincidentally, uh, uh, partnered with a woman who was, uh, working with the apple association in the nineties. And, um, we worked together for a couple of years. She had two young boys and dropped out and I was left as the, as the guy and I've been doing it ever since. Elisa, did you have your hand up? Yeah, I just, a couple of reminiscences. When I was a kid, our family made applesauce from grab and stains for bushels every August. So it's, you know, I was part of the group sitting on the porch, peeling and taking out cores. And our mother was the one in the kitchen with the steam and whatever. Um, the other apple that we really liked from Pennsylvania was wine sap, which is absolutely delicious, but really isn't grown in New England. I think it's not frost hardy or sufficiently. You can find it here. It's had an interesting history because it was discovered in New Jersey, but we think of it really as a Southern apple. It does need a longer growing season. Having said that, I have seen some wine saps this fall. Uh, it's a smaller apple has a beautiful red, almost cherry red color and great flavor. Great flavor. Yeah. So if you are lucky enough to find a wine sap, uh, by all means, you should try them. And when you're trying a new variety, we suggest that you buy three or four and you eat one right away. And you put the others in your refrigerator and you try another one in about 30 days and you notice the difference because some varieties improve in storage. And what you may find is an okay apple. When it's picked a month or two later is outstanding. Uh, sun, Chris, Eider, red, ribs and pit. And those are all examples of apples that are good when they're fresh picked, but, uh, really excel when they've had a couple of months in storage. Any other questions? Well, if not, then thank you for your time. Uh, very informative about apples and, um, I look forward to tasting some of these varieties you've talked about. Thank you very much. You are most welcome. I do, uh, before we sign off, I do publish my, uh, Apple web, weblog weekly from mid August through November. And if anybody would like to receive it through email, if you send me your email address to Russ, are you SS at New England apples.org, I will be happy to put you on that list. It comes out before the weekend so that if you're making plans on what to do, this will have some suggestions. We talk about the different varieties and have orchard photography and recipes. I'll be posting one later today. That's got a wonderful recipe for apple lemon cake. So if anybody's interested, just send me your email.