This summer has been an adventure in wonky weather - as you have read in my earlier posts! We had a regular Late May warm spell that we thought indicated that Spring has sprung - but alas- not so fast! After about two weeks of great weather, the apples bloomed, the cherries blossomed (those that weren't still under snow), and we thought we were on our way to a banner year for fruit at Wicked Raven! Sadly - it dropped down to well below freezing for a week solid, and froze everything solid. Many of the fruit trees went false dormant and did not recover for the whole summer - I have cared for them and am hopeful that they will come back out next summer.
This is the lone apple from Wicked Raven this year! It is a Westland and it is the first fruit that this tree has produced. This particular tree is in its second year at Wicked Raven and so is well established. The Westlands are super hardy - I got this one because a couple of years ago - three to be exact - we began "baby sitting" our "Grand Dog" - Brix. Brix is Rye's dog and when he would go to the North Slope for work for two weeks at a time we would often watch the dog. We have him full time now. Another reason we have to get out of bed in the morning - like it or not.
I mentioned it in an earlier blog, one of the times we were keeping Brix - he was only about 6 months old or so - I was planting the first Westland apple tree - I had the hole dug, the compost in, watered and had the tree in the hole ready to bury. All of a sudden I heard a commotion near the house and I see Brix running at full speed ahead towards me. I braced myself - steeling myself and flexing my knees - ready to jump out of the way or at least not have him take my legs out from under me. Away he went past me at full speed and I looked and peered and braced myself for whatever was chasing him - there was nothing. What the heck? I turned back to my tree planting only to find the whole tree gone!!!
Brix had run past me and stole the whole tree and was out at the end of the yard! By the time I got there he had chewed the tree in half and had eaten part of it even! With a sad heart I planted the little stump of a tree - and it lived! So I ordered another Westland. The one shown above is the second tree. Hale and Hearty with one lone apple upon it! Its little stump of a brother is still alive and trying to grow toward the sky - it will be a few years before it recovers enough to produce though I fear!
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Above is the beautiful Westland Apple next to two Early Girl tomatoes out of the greenhouse for size comparison. My dad has a Westland at Snowfire Gardens and his got bigger than this but his has produced before and his first apples were small also. They are tasty though! This apple was tart and crisp and juicy! A perfect lunch apple or for anything you might want to do - I am wishing I had a bushel of them for Halloween - they would be great caramel apples!
And so I continue to go forward with faith because I was able to produce this lone apple! Stay tuned - Ill update you on the Wicked Cherries soon and we got a ton of those!
