The Musings of a Simple Country Man<\/p>\n
By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n (Brookfield, NY \u2013 Nov. 2013) My beautiful wife Lois sits regally on our old slate patio.\u00a0 She holds in her loving hands several large red beautiful apples.\u00a0 These apples are heart shaped, interestingly light in weight and yet firm, with a rather rough textured skin.\u00a0\u00a0 When we cut into them the taste is deliciously sweet.\u00a0 Later we\u2019ll make applesauce from several of them, and it too is mouthwatering.<\/p>\n What is unusual about these delicious gems is that this year is the first time in our three decade old memory that the tree has borne fruit.<\/p>\n Our apple mystery began several weeks ago.\u00a0 We were picking yellow apples from a wild apple tree growing near an ancient barn foundation.\u00a0 While standing on a small aluminum stepladder propped in among the fruit laden branches I spotted in a nearby apple tree among the leaves the bright color red.\u00a0 They were in the top of a small unassuming tree that had never borne apples before.\u00a0 Using a homemade apple pick and carefully balancing on a tippy ladder, we discovered to our delight and amazement a half dozen large red heart shaped apples.\u00a0 Lois and I were as excited as kids, as if we had won the lottery.\u00a0 Money, I might add, that we would no doubt have given away to the more needy.\u00a0 We are two simple country people who treasure love, peace and independence before anything material.<\/p>\n For over 30 years my incomparable and indomitable lovely twenty-first century pioneering wife has lived without just about every modern convenience, all basically in one room without electricity or a single closet.\u00a0 We have lived close to and in harmony with nature and the natural world, enjoying its seasonal beauty as well as innumerable challenges.\u00a0 We work hard under pretty primitive circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0 Like many American Indians what we need and receive from nature we give back in kind.\u00a0 Never exhausting nature\u2019s gifts or our deeply ingrained stewardship of the land, water and its precious flora and fauna.<\/p>\n Every fall we excitedly renew our annual love of apples:\u00a0 finding, picking and processing them.\u00a0\u00a0 Nature has blessed us here in the hills of Brookfield with an endless variety that we have enjoyed for many years.\u00a0 Annually we can literally hundreds of pints of delectable applesauce, many that we gladly give away in our travels.\u00a0\u00a0 We use raw sugar called Turbinado and pure spring water.\u00a0 We often combine many different varieties in our sauce.\u00a0 I do all the apple cutting; Lois does the rest on our small Norwegian cook stove.<\/p>\n The apples that we pick will never be found in Price Chopper, Hannaford or Walmart.\u00a0 Their apples are perfect, shiny and generally tasteless.\u00a0 Chemically\u00a0 sprayed many times, waxed for shininess and grown for a long shelf life.\u00a0 Today only a relatively few varieties are commercially grown.\u00a0 Sadly the vast majority of Americans will never have tasted a real apple.<\/p>\n Several generations ago our ancestors were familiar with many of the varieties growing wild in our hills.\u00a0 We try to identify these apples.\u00a0 Recently we checked out from the wonderful Colgate University Library the massive two-volume book Apples of New York State, published in 1903 by the U. S. Department of Agriculture.\u00a0 Beginning in 1883 when the Experiment Station in Geneva, New York began, Dr. Emmet Goff and later Dr. Spencer A. Beach compiled, by 1900, 1700 named varieties of apples plus a large number of unnamed apple seedlings.\u00a0 Literally there was an apple at one time for every taste and use.\u00a0 Several years ago the Experiment Station was gracious enough to identify several apples that we had discovered.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the apples that we sent was a Winter Banana that originated in Cass County, Illinois in 1875 and was commercially introduced in 1890.\u00a0\u00a0 The other specimen we sent was identified as a Transcendent Crab Apple.<\/p>\n Before returning Beach\u2019s Apples of New York State to the library, I carefully examined the details and colored drawings of some of the most popular varieties in 1900.\u00a0 The closest I could come to the apples Lois is holding is the once popular home orchard variety called the Chenango.\u00a0 An apple first grown in the 1850\u2019s, possibly originating in Lebanon, Madison County or, according to another account, brought into Chenango County from Connecticut by early settlers.<\/p>\n I also identified\u00a0 another of our popular yellow apples.\u00a0 It is called Early Harvest because it is one of our earliest summer apples.\u00a0 It makes fantastic sauce, pies, cobblers, and yes, it\u2019s good eating too.\u00a0 (This summer this tree produced so many we were able to give our wonderful neighbor Kate two or three bushels.\u00a0 Kate annually cans over 90 quarts of peeled apples that she\u2019ll make into delicious pies.\u00a0 Many of them she\u2019ll donate to community causes.\u00a0 She is truly the most loving and lovable Mother Teresa of this rural community.<\/p>\n Beautiful Lois and I feel incredibly blessed to live in this chemical free apple paradise.\u00a0 These two simple country people look forward to the fragrant apple blossoms in the spring and the incredible fruits of these blossoms in the glorious days of fall.<\/p>\n Before long we\u2019ll be picking our winter apples, carefully wrapping each in paper and storing them in bins buried in the ground.\u00a0 In the depth of winter we\u2019ll treat ourselves to fresh apples.<\/p>\n But then again these are only the musings of a simple country man and the special \u201capple of his eyes,\u201d his wonderful wife Lois.<\/p>\n Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Musings of a Simple Country Man By Hobie Morris (Brookfield, NY \u2013 Nov. 2013) My beautiful wife Lois sits regally on our old slate patio.\u00a0 She holds in her loving hands several large red beautiful apples.\u00a0 These apples are heart shaped, interestingly light in weight and yet firm, with a rather rough textured skin.\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}