A is for Apple

When children are learning the alphabet, the letter A is often featured with an apple. Did you ever wonder why a word that actually makes the sound of A (long A as I was taught) wasn't picked like ape? Oh, well. I guess it all works out because most kids eventually learn how to read.

But I digress. We're here today for me to ramble on about apples. Apples may be my favorite fruit. There's nothing better than a slightly tart, sweet, juicy apple.  If given a choice, I prefer my apples raw as opposed to cooked--unless, of course, they are cooked in a pie. 

In my apple world, life used to be simple. When I went to the grocery store to buy apples, my choices were red delicious, yellow delicious, and granny smith. Now it seems that there is a new kind every time I turn around. However, it's just not my imagination. There are over 7500 varieties of apples grown around the world and about 2500 of those are grown in the US. For many, many years, the red delicious apple was the most popular kind in the US. I never quite understood that because I thought they were tasteless. However, Uncle Billy grew red delicious apples for a while and I got to sample one right off the tree. It had a subtle sweet taste. Quite nice. Recently, the gala apple has overtaken the red delicious as the most popular variety in the US. The top five varieties are gala, red delicious, granny smith, fuji, and honey crisp.

When I was growing up, my apple world was simpler still. My father would pick up dropped apples that people would give him from their trees. He would bring home bushels of them that we would make into applesauce. Early harvest were his favorite variety with their tart taste. During the fall, we went through periods when my sister and I would have to make a canner load of applesauce every day after school until they were gone. 

Apples waiting to be made into apple butter at the Apple Harvest Festival
in the eastern panhandle of WV.

If we got apples from the store, we paid particular attention to golden delicious because they were discovered in West Virginia, not that far from where we lived. The golden delicious apple was found on the Mullins farm in Clay County and Mr. Mullin sold it to Stark Brothers who started marketing it in 1914. They called it golden delicious to market it with their red delicious variety. The golden delicious variety may have been derived from the golden grimes apple which was discovered in another part of West Virginia in 1832. West Virginia continues its apple tradition today with the eastern panhandle of the state being a large apple grower.

One of our old apple trees.

So what does my apple world look like these days? I have a gala apple most days. Gala is my apple of choice because of decent flavor and good prices. Unfortunately, even though we have two apple trees, they have not yielded more than an apple or two for various reasons, so we buy all of our apples. 

And as for what my apple world might look like in the future?  Last year we planted a small liberty apple tree that we hope will yield nicely for us in a few years.  

I think I'm about done with my apple ramblings. I will leave you with this one bit of apple trivia.

What was Johnny Appleseed's real name?

(John Chapman)