Applemania

It’s as Kazakhstani as apple pie.

Which is not as they say, whoever THEY are . . . but as they should say, if they knew.

I learned of the origin of this nationalized icon some years ago back in a fabulous article from Orion Magazine, which you can read for yourself as long as the internets allow.

Meet Yggdrasil.

When I met Yggdrasil in January 2019, I was not sure it was still alive. The only indications of the possibility of life were a couple of thoroughly withered post-rotten unto mummified small apples still clinging to the tree that could not have been there for much more than a year.

My new neighbors-to-be assured me several weeks later that it was quite well. They had collected good apples off of it while the property was abandoned. 10-12 years ago it fell down in a wind storm, they estimated. Which is 15-17 years ago now. How time flies. Despite (or perhaps on account of) being completely sideways for roughly 1/4 of its existence and neglected for at least that long, Yggdrasil is, as another neighbor put it, “just living its best life.”

The first autumn of our acquaintance, I made the journey to Mossyrock in time to pick the apples before the first really hard frost. (Apples suffer frost damage at around 26 degrees.) I found the quantity boggling. About 140 lbs! Many had scab or bug damage, but most were salvageable, and they were delicious. And they kept in the garage of my Seattle rental for over 3 months. I ordered a cider press, a simple but well-crafted manual one along with a grinder with a hopper and hand crank that fit over a 5-gallon bucket. “Nectar of the GODDESS!!” my roommate declared when I shared a glass with her. And she was right.

Spring of 2020, pictured above, I set about trying to free it from the blackberry thicket that had infested its northwest quadrant with canes up to 20 feet long. I cut all of them at ground level and got most of what was within 8 feet of the ground before it started to break bud and I was afraid of harming it yanking on canes and trying to tease them out of the snarl.

Fall of 2020 – upwards of 200 lbs of good apples! A notably higher percentage were intact and unblemished compared to the year before, probably because the fruit had not been left to rot on the ground and on the tree. Pest and disease affected bits went off to perish in the Seattle municipal compost instead of lingering to re-infest in spring.

At least a third of that generous haul I sold, gave away, or used in trade. For elk and venison, among other things. At the time the root cellar still had a bit of service in it. I made 3 batches of cider (one 5-gallon bucket yields 8-11 cups) and froze a bunch of applesauce. Maybe a dozen quarts. It was a cold winter. The apples kept in the cellar into March, nearly 6 months. The few most perfect ones sorted out in January went in the fridge. I ate the last of them June 1.

---

Spring of 2021, I got the rest of the blackberries out and started very gently to prune, mostly what was clearly dead wood, to see what was still there. The tree had good branch structure at one time, one can tell. It had been pruned well in its early years. For probably 15 years it had not been pruned at all. If you prune too aggressively or at the wrong time, you send it into sucker/water sprout mode and you can never take it back. Prune slow.

I could see into the center of the tree now, get a ladder in. For two years (’21 and ’22) I got a yield in the low-to-mid 100-lb range again. Enough for fresh eating, a batch or two of cider, and a bit of trade. More apples spoiled winter of 21-22 even though I had fewer because it was not as cold and because the roof and the facade on the root cellar are starting to fail.

Last year, 2022, I thought I would barely get 50 lbs of apples. May rained and rained and rained. Too cold and wet for the pollinators to fly. Too wet perhaps even for the pollen to stay viable and on the blossoms. The Spring of Eternal Sogginess followed by the Summer that Wouldn’t End–brutal heat and drought and hot dry wind and wildfire smoke. Summer lasted 3 weeks into October. 4 months without meaningful rain brought visible stress to even a heavily self shading 50-60 year old tree. Midsummer the crop was looking very thin and I was not sure it would put on size.

Apples grow on trees. They do not just show up on trees. They grow . . . from a nub. From pea sized, to grape sized (which is when one is likely to first notice them), to golf ball sized, until one has full sized apples.

Green apples are easier to see at night by headlamp, lit from below, than they are to see during the day when shaded from above by a dense canopy of green leaves. Partway through September of ’22, a bunch of tennis ball sized green apples appeared on the tree that were not there before. I had been walking past it with a headlamp on every night since probably mid-July. Those apples were not there. I would have seen them. They just appeared. The apple population of the tree roughly tripled in a week’s time.

Yggdrasil is magic.

In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the World Tree, connecting the over and under worlds via Middle Earth, the realm of living mortals and the namesake of Tolkien’s epic setting. My Yggdrasil is decidedly a portal to another realm, as one can see when approaching from the Northeast, especially when it is lit from behind. One can also feel it. It exudes a stillness, a sort of slowing down of time, of Memory in a small way reminiscent of Tane Mahuta, the mammoth kauri tree in the Northland region of New Zealand that has presided over a myth-worthy forest for more than 1,000 years.

Sometimes I duck inside and sit on its lower limbs when I am stressed or sad. It feels like being held.

---

The first two pictures below are from early spring 2021 just before I started to prune.

Fast forward to late spring 2022. The quadrant that was nearly bare from blackberry choking had more than half filled in with leaves and blooms.

And on to September 30, 2023. Harvest eve. It’s just loaded. There look to be nearly as many apples as leaves.

I used to wonder why there were so many twigs growing straight down in the middle of the tree. Now I know.

Halfway done. Just before picking on October 14, it looks like a somewhat normal highly productive tree. You would have no idea I had already brought in more than the total harvest of the year before.

At roughly 30′ long x 20′ wide x 15′ high, the apple tree is more than double the volume of my house. 

How do you like THEM apples?!!?!

I started making cider before I finished harvesting to free up buckets.

October 26, a few dry hours before the first really hard frost. Last call!

Mischief well underway.

What had seemed to be barely a feature of the property when I encountered it turned out to be a treasure. Yggdrasil continues with effusive generosity to give. Hummingbirds drink straight from frost-softened apples in its upper branches, their needle noses a perfect straw for the perhaps slightly hardened juice. Deer sleep in its embrace and eat the windfall that is too bruised or buggy for me to bring inside. This fall, a family of Northern Flicker (first spotted hanging around in January, absent for the summer) pecked at the lingering bounty that was not worth my effort to reach. Bees feast on its blossoms in the spring, putting away provisions against leaner months for sisters they will not live to see.

I put the apples in my mouth and in canning jars. Some dried, some heat canned and shelf stable, some in the freezer. And I bake. And I sell. And I trade. And freeze apple mash from the cider making process and cubed fresh apples for making fruit leather and muffins and pie and crisp later on. Fresh apples, apple pie, apple blackberry crisp, apple muffins, spiced chunky apple sauce, apple butter, apple rings, apple blackberry leather, sweet cider, cider vinegar, hard cider, apple wine, apple syrup. I might need to learn how to make apple fritters this year. One of those gallons of wine might have a future as brandy. That’d be fun.

Applemania 2023: 1st quality apples straight off the tree = 541 lbs. 2nds, either visibly damaged but still salvageable off tree or intact-appearing off the ground = 139 lbs. Over 100 lbs left on the ground (too damaged to bother) and roughly 50 lbs left on the tree (not worth heroics reaching) for the critters to enjoy, which they have done. 830 pounds of apples. 830 pounds!

I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting Yggdrasil, Orchard of One.