PNW Apple Offer

[cranky]

Do you live somewhere south of Seattle, or are willing to come down to an area between Seattle and Tacoma to pick apples?

Would you like to make apple brandy or cider but don't know where to get a crap load of free apples?

Well, I have a very special offer for some special person, or persons.

This year I will not be able to pick and process apples and don't want to disappoint the people who let me pick or lose access to the trees so I'm looking for someone who might be interested in picking and processing a crap load of apples.

To the right person or persons I'm willing to offer the locations of all my trees and help you get permission to pick. For the right person I'm even willing to loan you my apple chopper, picking pole and even food grade buckets to help with the process, but I will be kind of picky about who I am willing to loan equipment to.

Most trees I pick are late apples, so I generally pick in Oct-Nov which will give a person plenty of time to get ready, but there are also early apples that have been known to start dropping as early as the first week of July, but I think they will be late this year. I haven't picked the highest producing tree in a couple years but I doubt obtaining permission again will be a problem. I drove by that tree today and it is L O A D E D! but it will definitely be late this year, probably end of July or even August.

Early trees are a Yellow Transparent, that has produced as much as 800lbs in an exceptional year but tends to be quite low in sugar, an unknown variety in the back yard of the transparent's house that produces an extraordinary amount of small apples around the end of July, and a Vista Bella that's usually good for a couple buckets worth around the end of July.

Late apples are a very large green apple tree that is sort of just accessible to anybody, but nobody but me picks. A huge red apple tree that is probably an Arkansas black black, but nobody knows for sure. In the same yard as the Black is another tree that isn't quite as huge but produces enormous apples that resemble Honeycrisps but is too old to be Honeycrisps but they tend to be very good apples for eating, pies, or cider/brandy. Within a block of those two trees are two other trees that are smaller and very easy to pick. Every year the owner has no problem letting me pick but always says "Pick all you want but they're all wormy". It's not actually true that they are all wormy but the Roma runs about 2/3rds wormy and the other one, that produces small yellow apples runs about 1/3rd wormy. There is also a house across the street from the Roma that I have picked at in the past but I haven't asked to pick since the house changed hands a couple years ago. There is one more tree that's easy to access that isn't really a heavy producer but has decent apples around the same time, and a tree affectionately known as "Cousin It", which is a very late producer of small green, sweet low acid apples but the house it is at sold since the last time I picked and I don't have a clue who owns it because it's been under reconstruction since being sold.

All of these apples come ripe at the same time. Last year I produced 69 gallons of juice from these late trees and barely put a dent in the the two in the yard with the Black and the green one on the sort of vacant lot. I did pick all of the Romas and small yellows and it was actually an impressive amount given the ease of access and size of the trees. In truth I believe I could have picked as much as 2,000lbs of apples last year if I wanted to, so be ready to deal with a crap load of apples.

There is also a couple trees in Puyallup that I almost never pick but always have permission to. I think they come ripe around the end of August or early September.

So, if anybody is interested let me know and we'll see what we can make happen.