Apples Please by Helen Henderson

Fire and Redemption by Helen Henderson
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The weather is changing and you won't hear any complaints from me. Autumn is probably my favorite season. Cool nights are perfect for sleeping, while warm (but not overly hot) days lure you outside. Harvest is is full swing. Pick-your-own pumpkin sites and haunted hayrides have sprouted in fields. It is also the time of year when I miss living up north. 

Peaches reign supreme where I now live. While my family farm had a peach tree, the fruit was really only suitable for the deer. Apples are my preference. Unfortunately, the clime here is not suitable for apple orchards so apples are only available in 3-pound bags in the grocery store. Quite a change from autumn in my old town. In addition to five large apple orchards where you could pick your own or buy them by the bushel, bins of many apple varieties including MacIntosh, Granny Smith, Rome, and Winesap were neatly lined up across the front of the markets. To supplement the locally grown apples, additional large bins were transported down from upstate New York.

 

As a child, our farm had a small apple orchard of about a dozen trees. They weren't the short, well-trimmed ones from the professional orchard. Instead, they were tall, ungainly, and fun to climb. Picking apples from the lower levels required standing on the hay wagon and snagging them with an apple picker, a small metal cage attached to a long pole. For fruit higher and out of reach, we climbed the tree then extended our reach with the apple picker.

Picking was just the start of the work. The apples had to be washed, peeled and cored, and cut into slices.

A snippit of what could easily be an autumn get-together. From Amulet and Redemption.

Nearing the central fire, Feldt gestured everyone to benches. As soon as she sat down, Deneas could tell the seats were recently vacated. A wave brought over several girls bearing plates of steaming fruit pastry and mugs of chilled water. As they ate, Deneas paid attention to both her friends’ conversations with the caravan leader and the people he waved over, and to the group gathering on the other side of the fire. While some faces reflected hope, for most of the traders, their eyes held fear and mistrust.

Betrys handed her plate to a waiting girl and leaned over. “Feldt is taking me on a walk around the second camp.” Then added in a whisper Deneas swore she heard in her mind rather than her ears. “They are good people. Just scared.”

Whether the fruit is baked into pies, cobbler, crisp, in the middle of puff pastry, or Amish apple cake, I will take apples please.

~Until next month, stay safe and read.   Helen

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Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a matronly husky and a youthful feist who have adopted her as one the pack. Find out more about her and her novels on her BWL Author page.