It's late September '26 and the old trial orchard is open BUT -- farming is farming and this crop is thin, mostly. We know some of you look forward intensely to chomping down the rows and picking your favorites... but again, farming is farming. This year we can probably blame two things. There was a severe freeze in May '26 that probably destroyed a lot of burgeoning fruit buds. Also, the gorgeous, epic crops of 2025 probably reduced this year's yields. Apple trees try to rest up after a bumper year. Below find the chart of varieties, downloadable and printable. But remember, it just won't look anything like as lush as last year.
Here's a chart to let you know the variety name, the expected harvest time, and the principal uses of each variety. Feel free to taste -- very interesting. Also notice that on a lot of trees, only a branch or two will be of the numbered variety -- the base tree will be growing Macs or Cortlands. The varieties marked "cider" on the chart taste very strange: they are grown for juicing and fermentation into "hard" cider. Many wine grapes tast weird too.
PAY ATTENTION to "Harvest Date" -- some apples may need more time! Taste, but please do not pick the late ones too soon. First week of October the early ones may be past their best and dropping, the mid-season ones should be pretty ready, and the late ones will be relatively starchy, dense, and low on flavor. Print your own chart from the link above or borrow a printout here when you come.
Let the late-season apples -- if there are any -- hang till the time shown on the chart! It's wasteful to rip great late, long-keeping apples like Baldwin or Yellow Newtown Pippin off the tree, before they reach their legendary best.
Also, heads-up for the ones designated "Bittersweet" or "Bittersharp" -- they're not grown for delicious fresh fruit! Like wine grapes, they're for juicing, then fermenting into "hard" cider. They can taste pretty weird. Feel free to try -- interesting, rarely enjoyable. Again, download the printable variety chart HERE or borrow a copy up at the stand.
To recap: decades ago we grafted a different variety onto each of the old Mac and Cortland trees in Two Below the Barn. Some trees we later "top-worked" with more grafts to cover the whole tree with the new variety. After years of taste trials and fermentation trials, we decided on several varieties and sent bundles of scions to wholesale fruit-tree nurseries. They "built" hundreds of new trees for us - grafted by joining scions to root-stocks selected for our conditions and the size of tree we wanted. Those new trees we planted in renovated orchards here. After years of keeping customers strictly out of that tryout field, back when we needed every apple for taste-testing or fermentation-testing, it was time to let people in!
(Be aware that there are thousands upon thousands of named apple varieties in the world, more all the time. Our little collection seems big, but it's a small snapshot. Also -- no two apple seeds are alike genetically! But that's a whole other string of stories.)
