ARKANSAS BLACK APPLES with great apple crisp recipe

1. THE ARKANSAS BLACK

A seven-acre orchard with about 240 trees doesn't make me an expert, but I know a little something about fruit.

Coyotes, turtles, birds, deer, and raccoons love it, and they will all eat the  Arkansas Black if there is nothing else around.

Seems you don't pick Blacks until it frosts. The longer you have them around the blacker and sweeter they become.
Last night I picked a bushel off of one tree, and it's not your typical apple tree. They are gnarly, skinny, and as atypical as can be. There is only one out there I would consider an apple tree

The main reason so many folks have never tasted them is that they are not marketed in your local grocery store, where the number one apple is a Red Delicious. It is red, sweet, and delicious. Clever name, huh?
My favorite apples are Gala or

Fuji. If you've never tasted different apples, branch out. Open a bag and put one of each kind in and see which you like best. It probably won't be Red Delicious.

An Arkansas Black Apple is a cross between a Winesap and a Pipkin, or so they think. Someone in Bentonville, Arkansas grafted trees together and came up with the apple. No one heard of an Arkansas Black before 1840 which takes Johnny Appleseed out of the picture. He was born in 1774 and would have been seventy-five by then.

Everything has a bright side. The bright side of blacks is that we will be eating the last of them in late February or early March.
My method of storage is rather simple. I don't wash them. I wrap each one in a square of newspaper and stack them in a cooler. 
The coolers (sometimes it takes several) ae stored in the barn. 
When we run out of apples in the house, I take a basket out and refill it.
As they age, they get a waxy feel to them. I wash them off because I don't know what might have touched them while they were on the trees.
We don't use pesticides or commercial fertilizers here. Poisons destroy the good nutrition apples provide.
Now that I am familiar with the apple I realize they are used in advertisements regularly. Before they sit in storage they are dark red with an almost lime green top.
I've added a great recipe I think all of you apple lovers will like. This recipe can be made with any variety of apple.
Apple Crisp Recipe

10 cups apples, peeled and sliced

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon lemon zest  (optional)

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup golden raisins (optional)

Topping Mixture:

1 1/2 sticks butter

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

1 1/2 cups oats

2 tablespoons lemon zest

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

Vegetable oil or cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2.  Butter a 9 by 14 by 2-inch oval baking dish.
Peel, core, and cut the apples into large wedges. Combine the apples with the
3. sugar, and spices. Pour into the dish.
4. To make the topping, combine the flour, sugars, salt, oatmeal, and cold butter in the bowl of an electric mixer
5.  Mix on low speed until the mixture is crumbly and the butter is the size of peas. Scatter evenly over the apples.
6. Place the crisp on a sheet pan and bake for 1 hour until the top is brown and the apples are bubbly. Serve warm.

Meet Kay, the Halflinger Mule

Meet Kay the Halflinger Mule
Kay, affectionately known as Kaybo, is going on twenty-eight years old. The good news is the lifespan of a mule can be fifty or more.

I am sure most of you know what a mule is, but for those who don't, here's a little lesson. If a female horse and a male donkey get together, the offspring is a Mule.  If a male horse and a female donkey get together, the baby is called a Henny. A donkey is a donkey.
We bought Kay and her younger sister, Bec from a man in Joplin who was too old to care for them. They were twelve and thirteen. 

  

Bec who was a year young is no longer with us. She is in the great pasture in the sky. I know dogs cross the Rainbow bridge. In my heart, I don't think any type of animal is turned away and not permitted to cross.

When Kay began to look thin, we brought her out of the horse pasture and gave her free reign of the entire place  (except for the horse pasture). 
Since it is apple season and we have an orchard, we had to close the gate to it for now. She would go out and eat every apple on the ground and it wasn't beneath her to pull the ones off the low hanging branches. We were going to have to go from fattening her up to putting her on a diet.

She is both funny and a pain in the butt. Today when I tried to take her picture, she followed me so close she pushed me back to the yard.

One night I took a golf cart down the lane to get away from the light so I could watch an eclispe of the moon. 
I got out of the cart to get a better look at the sky. When you get away from the light of the house and outbuildings,  turn off the lights on the vehicle, it is pitch black. You can't see your hand in front of your face. 
I was there a few minutes when something touched my shoulder. I didn't know I could still move so fast.

It was Kaybo. She came up behind me and rested her head on my shoulder. If she had been a person I bet she would have said, whatcha doin'?

There are sheep in several of the places she can go. For the first six weeks, they ran from her. The only protection sheep have is to make a circle like a wagon train, stretch their necks to the ground and don't move. They get so close together, you couldn't put a hand between them.
 If we see that from the house, one of us runs out

to find what is causing them to be afraid. To realize how helpless they are upsets me when I see them in that position.

Thank goodness they have learned to walk around her. As with most animals, Kaybo lives for food. We keep treats in the golf carts and tractors for the horses and donkeys. Kaybo knows where every can is stored in every machine. If you don't give her one, she will get her own. 

 Come back and visit me again. Lot's of things happen on a farm.

Apples, Apples, and more Apples

  

Here on the farm, we have five varieties of apples-Gala, Fuji, Red Delicious, Jonagold, and Arkansas Blacks.
Seems like each year one variety takes the spotlight. This year it was Fuji. 

Due to the draught, our apples were small. When I sold them at the Farmer's Market next to a man who had 5000 apple trees (we had 154), he would laugh and say my apples were too small. His fruit looked as if it came out of a catalog. Of course, it looked like that because it was sprayed every month, twelve months a year.
 We are all natural. We use no sprays or fertilizers other than chicken, sheep, and cow manure.
 The Farmer's Market is where I learned how few children and adults in a certain group eat fruit. 

I took a wicker basket and filled it full of apples and pears. Every child who passed my truck, I offered a piece of fruit. At least two children a week ask - which is the apple and which is the pear? Kids were familiar with applesauce and apple pie, but not real apples. Most had never seen or eaten a pear. My goal the first year was to educate children about fruit.  Now mind you, it wasn't all the kids. But the ones who didn't know fruit belonged to the parents who visited the pie lady, the cookie lady, and the guy with the honey sticks.

I was so upset about it I wrote a children's book about how apples are grown in an orchard, Diggitty Dog on the Farm.

Do you know stone fruits, such as peaches, plums, and nectarines
bloom first and then leaf out? Fruits like apples get their leaves first and then the blossoms. Many peach crops don't make it in the colder regions because of it. We only get a peach crop here at the farm about every five years. 

 There are so many stories to share about the farm. Come back again soon. 
You can email me at susankeenebooks@gmail.com or leave a comment below.
Peace.

Life on The Farm, Part Two

  Our farm is almost 100 acres. To some it is large, to others, small. When I walk around the perimeter, it is large. When someone wants to hunt on it,it is too small. We have a road in front, a road on one side with houses and animals in every field.
We have a "do no harm" policy here. There are no sprays or insecticides on the fruit or veggies. The animals eat natural food and we mow and burn rather than spray the weeds.


The down side is it is nearly impossible to keep up with it and still have any kind of life. We had to make our mark in the sand and declare sustainable or pristine. Unless one works 24-7, it will not be weed free and mowed all at the same time.


Our apples and pears are some of the sweetest you have ever tasted. Because we have to fight every bug and bird for two hundred miles, they are small and have blemishes. When I was selling them at the Farmer's Market several years ago I used the slogan "Beauty is only skin deep, healthy goes clear to the core."


It worked. I sold everything worth eating.. We make cider, applesauce, applebutter and dried apples with the rest.


The only sad parts of the farm are the cows and sheep. We don't want to eat meat from the grocery store. I don't want antibiotics, hormones or extra fat in my meat. I am a true believer that you are what you eat eats.


Cows are cute. They are not the smartest creatures on earth but they become like pets. The sad part is we can't keep them all. The boys get sold as either bulls for another farm or they go to market for meat.We sell them off the farm and deliver them to the butcher for our customer also. It is decidedly more humane than a feed lot. Farm fresh meat tastes like nothing you eat in a restaurant.








The sheep are even harder to part with. We lamb in the spring unless a ram gets feisty and goes to visit the girls without permission. It happened last week and we may be having lambs in January. Oh joy. I love lamb and again, I don't eat meat away from the farm. You will never see me order chicken or lamb or a burger out. I have become an expert on Caesar salad. I am going to a dinner Friday night and there are no choices other than meat or seafood. I will choose the shrimp and try not to think about it.


There is not a feeling in the world like walking out on a brisk morning and watching the horses run. They love the cool weather. The sound of horses hooves pounding on the cold hard ground is refreshing.


My second favorite sound is cows and horses chewing hay or grass. Sometimes it is the only sound I hear in the early morning.


I can be in the worst mood ever and turn it around by taking a walk around the farm. I love that the tip of every tree branch reaches to the sky. I love it that the squirrels run and play when I am within three feet of them because they are used to me.
 Every sunset is spectacular and every sunrise promises a fresh start to a new day and infinite possibilities. Do yourself a favor and spend part of each day in nature, if you do nothing more than to sit quietly on your back porch.


I sometimes play a game where I close my eyes and listen. What do I hear close to me? Then I expand my awareness and listen for things far away. Try it. You will be surprised how relaxed you are in only a minute or two.


People ask why I live so far out and make the drive to Springfield when I want to go somewhere like  church or see a movie. It is because there is no substitute for my nature fix every day.


Life is Good and it just keeps getting better.