The orchard

Like a siren the orchard calls me this afternoon. The day is as crisp and clean as the first bite of a Granny Smith, and I need to be outside. I load boxes into the trunk and head north. This orchard is relatively small and family owned. On a weekday we have permission to simply arrive, park, and pick up any apples on the ground. The windfalls can’t be used for anything, so they are there to be gleaned. I find the owner sorting pumpkins and check in.

Then I see that road I usually take back beside the barn is blocked.

“It was muddy so we had a load of crushed ashphalt dumped,” she tells me in good Michiganese. Does anywhere else put an extra h in asphalt? We ponder how to get my car into the orchard since, unlike the tractor and wagon, I can’t just drive over the newly dumped piles. At her suggestion I take down one of the split rail fences, drive across the lawn, between massive pines, back around the cider press building, down between a row of apple trees and onto the road that leads across the hill and the orchard.

I drive to the back, knowing from experience that the trees in the back drop later than the trees in the front. Applesauce is best if made from a mix of apples, so I make no attempt to pick and choose specific breeds. My goal is to glean, fill boxes, and head home.

The seductive sunshine, the faint smell of fallen leaves mixed with apples, and memories slow me down. The siren has called again. In the distance I hear a highway, a dog barks faintly, but for all that I am alone in the world with just a few yellow jackets for companions. Many times I’ve come to this orchard. Hot September days with Keren in a stroller, a sunny morning with just the Bear – so small she could hardly get her boots through the long grass. Two years ago we had a gaggle of little cousins ranging from Boy Blue on a blanket on up. Little hands helping gather, then joining the applesauce process with glee. Some years it has been pouring rain and we come home soaked to the skin and covered with mud. Always an adventure. But time is flying and I need to get the apples home.

I take a bucket and head up a hill, down a long row of trees. Toward the back I find a treasure trove of bright red dotting the ground under two trees. One by one my bucket fills, gets emptied into boxes, and fills again. Soon the trunk is loaded with red and gold.

I head back the lines of trees, past the cider press, wave to the pumpkin sorter, weave under the pines and through the split rail fence. Then, relishing the final moments, I choose the gravel roads wherever possible so I can drive under canopies of gold and red. Autumn will pass and this glory will fade into winter, but before I start making applesauce, I want to revel in the color a little longer.