Yours for the Picking

The Bruce Peninsula in Ontario used to be an apple growing area. You can still see old, long-abandoned orchards and, on each side of secondary roads,  many volunteer apple trees. These have been planted by the numerous wild animals who feed on the apples, mostly the raccoons and the bears. These "wild" apples have self hybridized and produce fruits that often are not tasty or are woody. However, among the lot, are some delicious ones.

The vast majority of apples you can buy in grocery stores are "eating" apples, that is to say they are good eaten raw, even if you can also cook them. Most of the apples you find along the roads around here are "cooking" apples. They tend to be sour when eaten fresh, but are a great deal tastier than eating apples when cooked with sugar.

In the autumn, I check the various apples that grow along neighbouring roads and pick some of the best ones. Some are cooked to make pies, but most are peeled and made into apple sauce. They make a very tasty sauce that has no comparison with the bland stuff you find in stores. The best ones for sauce are the nearly white ones of the "Yellow Transparent" or "Harvest" type. When they are used in cooking, for instance to make pies, I don't bother peeling them, but only wash them. These trees have never been sprayed, but since they grow along gravel roads, the apples tend to be dusty.

Yellow Transparent type of apple

Despite the fact that they are not sprayed, these apples have relatively few blemishes. I don't know why that is. A possible answer might be good air circulation. When we lived in Kitchener, in southern Ontario, we had a couple of apple trees, but the fruits were so full of worms and covered with spots that they were not worth picking. The ones along the roads here are much healthier but tend to be rather small.  They would have to be thinned in the early summer to produce large apples.

There are also a few wild pear trees. However the fruits of these are very small and woody and so are not worth picking, even if they have even fewer blemishes than the apples.

"Wild Pears"

There is a long abandoned orchard near here which would be the best place to pick. However it is very popular with Ruthie, our local bear, and so I prefer to keep to the roads and let her get fat for the winter, undisturbed.

Apple Sauce