FRUITFROMWASHINGTON.COM WEB-LETTER
March - April 2004
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Order redwood or cedar outdoor furniture from our Classic Garden Catalog* such as this Large Redwood Picnic Table. The classic redwood picnic table made in Ellensburg, Washington, with attached benches is a generous six feet long, seats eight to ten people and holds loads of food.

Also available is our Smoker or Barbecue Cart made by FFW Manufacturing of Ellensburg, Washington. The Redwood Smoker Cart is specially designed to hold the large sized (21-inch) smoker unit called The Big Green Egg® (known as the "World's Best Smoker and Grill"®) or a similarly sized model such as Grill Dome or Primo™ Cooker (please call 1-877-AT-FRUIT to inquire about a custom order for any smoker model other than The Big Green Egg®). Big Green Egg® or alternate smoker unit sold separately. Smoker Cart with wheels - Regular price $460.99 (including shipping*)

Printable Order Form for Fruit From Washington Yard and Garden Furniture

We offer other solidly constructed and beautiful retro-styled pieces including Potting Tables and Planter Benches that are functional and attractive in any home setting. *Free shipping on furniture, UPS Ground to addresses in 48 contiguous states.

Read our Customer Satisfaction and Order Fulfillment policies as well as more information for business gift giving on our Corporate Gift Giving page!

" I really like your apples. Thanks." - Garrett, 2/17/04

List of Current Washington Grown Fruit Available from FruitFromWashington.com (check our order form for updates on availability)

Gift Box of 15 Red d'Anjou Pears Order # ra15 priced at $24.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Red d'Anjou Pears Order # ra006 priced at $26.95 (+ shipping)*

Gift Box of 15 Cameo® Apples Order # ca15 priced at $22.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Cameo® Apples
Order # ca006 priced at $26.95 (+ shipping) Available after Oct. 1*

Gift Box of 15 Fuji Apples Order # fj15 priced at $22.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Fuji Apples Order # fj006 priced at $26.95 (+ shipping) Available after Oct. 1*

Gift Box of 15 Gala Apples Order # gl15 priced at $22.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Gala Apples Order # gl006 priced at $26.95 (+ shipping)*

Gift Box of 15 Red Delicious Apples Order # rd15 priced at $22.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Red Delicious Apples Order # rd006 priced at $26.95 (+ shipping)*

*Availability of fruit varieties subject to change. All fruit gift box prices are shown without shipping. Shipping is calculated based on destination and shipping method selected.

How to Place An Order - Place your order for a 15-count Gift Box of fruit or order a fruit subscription by phone - call our sales desk toll-free at 1-866-448-9442 or print a copy of our fruit order form and send it by fax to 1-509-968-3655 or mail it to us at:
Fruit From Washington
PO Box 877
Ellensburg, WA 98926

Apple of the Month - We ship one of our varieties of Washington grown apples based on the pick of what's in season during harvest or what's fresh out of cold storage during the remainder of the year each month that your fruit subscription is in effect. Some of our featured apples include Jonagold, Granny Smith, Gala, and Red Delicious. Available in 3, 6 and 12 month apple subscriptions.

It's always easy to buy gift boxes of Washington grown apples from FruitFromWashington.com! - Printable Order Form for Fruit From Washington.com Fruit Gift Boxes. For all phone orders, call toll-free 1-877-AT-FRUIT.

In March the earliest signs of spring are seen in Eberhart Orchards. Snow which has hung onto the north slopes finally melts away. Underfoot, the soil makes an unhurried transition from its frozen state through melt, some run-off to mud, as daytime temperatures gradually rise. In the Kittitas Valley, hordes of winter birds have left for nesting grounds elsewhere and Grandma Barbara and Grandpa Dee no longer need to fill the feeders on a daily basis. Robins and red-winged blackbirds are back.

Urban reports that first leaf in the orchard is a bit later than last year but not by much and bloom is predicted for mid to late-April. We hope for warm days and no rain throughout the bloom period so that honeybees will be encouraged to fly. Cool, wet, inclement weather keeps bees in their hives which does not help with fruit pollination. Ideally, the weather cooperates, blooms open and bees work steadily for the five to seven day bloom period (depending upon the variety).

Given your preference, how would you spend time on a warm spring day when the sun shines in the orchard?
I would spend my time sitting under a tree reading a good book, like The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse. - Ben

Playing flute on the back porch and listening to the notes dissipate up into the black walnut tree, the breeze and off into the orchard. I especially liked playing Mozart, maybe because I was playing Mozart the first time Dad commented that he enjoyed my playing...but it would have to actually be warm enough or it would be bad for the flute and cold for the fingers. - Barbara

I'd find something to jump off of. But seriously, I've only been to Ellensburg in late July and early August so I have no idea about springtime activities in the orchards. - Michael

In the name of science, on a sunny spring day, I would do a traffic study of the number of times that bees and other pollinators visit a cluster of blossoms on a tree. It would require a notepad and pencil, a comfortable seat, and a tall drink. - Cory

Perhaps Spring comes in like a lamb, politely, quietly, without ferocity or fanfare where you live. Here in the Northwest, we suffer through spring's false starts as winter reluctantly departs, but these ups and downs are nothing to compare with the trials which you hardy New Englanders bear, whose epic struggles from winter to spring should be set to music and sung for kings, best as written by Charles Dudley Warner in "How Spring Came in New England" (1874). We have excerpted more than a bit of it from the Gutenberg Project etext.

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings of a double hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets, most delightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope, devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so much thought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them! And a northeast storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail hat is offered up to the implacable season. In fact, Nature is not to be forestalled nor hurried in this way. Things cannot be pushed. Nature hesitates. The woman who does not hesitate in April is lost. The appearance of the bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it. They assemble. For two days they hold a noisy convention, with high debate, in the tree-tops. Something is going to happen.

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur....This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: A moaning south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain to snow; what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; a north wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snow increases the evaporation and the cold. This was the office of the northeast wind: it made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; but then it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The air was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the wind changed, went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a cat by its tail. The mercury approached zero. This was nothing uncommon. We know all these winds. We are familiar with the different "forms of water."

All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was to come,--the Flying Dutchman of the air. There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides; only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind of the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Its breath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible. It peddles rheumatism, and plants consumption. The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of the weather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, from the glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast, leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the other conflicting winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos. It was the Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marching into the "dreaded wood of La Sandraie." Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is no name. Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does it leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is prostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent medicines. This is an epic; this is destiny.
For the complete Gutenberg etext, see: Charles Dudley Warner in "How Spring Came in New England" (1874).

Make a list of pairs of things that naturally go together and it would likely include the stereotypical horse and carriage, shoes and socks, stars and stripes, bees and honey, peanut butter and jelly, and kids and bugs. The National Agricultural Library must have agreed with that last pairing because they just published a 26-page booklet titled, "Insects: The Good, The Bad and the Unusual" designed with kids in mind. It includes the official State Insect List (Washington State's official insect is the Green Darner Dragonfly) and even includes a recipe for Chocolate Chirpy Chip Cookies which calls for 1/2 cup dry-roasted crickets in the ingredients. Now what kid wouldn't love that? I can hear the "Ooh, gross!" already. You'll need Adobe Acrobat's Reader to view.

"Pollination is without question the most critical event in the yearly production cycle (of apples)." So says, R.C. Rom in an Agricultural Extension Service Publication on "Variety and Cultural Considerations Necessary to Assure Adequate Pollination in Apple Orchards". (Source: The Indispensable Pollinators", Ark. Agr. Ext. Serv. Misc. Pub. 127, 1970).

Enlarged section of the flower of a Bartlett pear (Source: The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A. I. and E. R. Root, Medina, Ohio, 1920, p. 353)

Although long before R. C. Rom's time, Merton B. Waite, United States Agricultural Department Special Agent, appointed to the agency in 1888, likely would have agreed. Merton Waite conducted extensive pear pollination research during 1893. Historic photographs of Mr. Waite at work appear in the Galloway Photograph Album in the Special Collections of the National Agricultural Library. He was the first in America to offer evidence that many commercial fruit varieties are self-sterile, and cross-pollination is essential for productivity. Mr. Waite demonstrated that imperfectly pollinated fruit will have fewer, less well developed seeds.

(Photo from Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, ARS, USDA, Beltsville, MD)

This detail from a photograph of Waite's early pollination study shows shriveled, underdeveloped seeds taken from self-pollinated pears and contrasts them with more fully developed seeds from cross-pollinated pears. Waite observed that, "Much better results are achieved with cross-pollinization. Trees bear larger and finer fruit with well-developed seeds; while self-pollinated trees gave smaller fruit with the seed usually wanting or abortive...." - Source: The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A. I. and E. R. Root, Medina, Ohio, 1920, p. 352, 355.

In a Beneficial Hierarchy Order of insects useful for the pollination of orchard fruit, bees and wasps reign first, followed by flies, then moths and butterflies and lastly beetles; although it is noted that "Ants are invariably hurtful" and "sometimes certain beetles and flies do more harm than good." - Source: The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A. I. and E. R. Root, Medina, Ohio, 1920, p. 358.

For more information on "Insect Pollination of Tree Fruits - for Apple Bloom and Pollination from the Online Pollination Handbook" originally published by S.E. McGregor, see gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/book/chap5/apple.html, for Pear Bloom and Pollination, see gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/book/chap5/pear.html

For more about Honeybees and Beekeeping, visit the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center at http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/

Under my tree-roof
slanting lines of April rain
separate to drops
Text after the Japanese of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

The American Egg Board provides food safety advice on decorating eggs around Easter or other occasions. If you are wondering how you can dye and decorate hard-cooked eggs safely for Easter, see the American Egg Board's "Egg Handling and Care Guide". It includes reminders to wash hands frequently when handling eggs; refrigerate hard-cooked eggs in their cartons after cooking and cooling; color uncracked eggs; and much more. More about the safety of egg handling at: www.aeb.org/safety/egg_handling_and_care_guide.html.

Last year Sophia wrote up instructions for decorating plastic eggs, thus avoiding the whole food safety question. Here's the link to that arts and crafts page which also includes some cute springtime pictures.

Send a Free Digital Spring or Easter Card from the early 1900's showing showers, fresh flowers, and cute little peepers.

Quick Click Highlights for Spring
Grocery List • Calorie Search • Fruit Calorie Search • Searchable recipe database • Springtime Literary Quotes • Virtual Art Gallery of Fruit Still Life, Farm & Orchard Scenes • Spring Blossoms Screensaver • Spring Garden Tips • Computer wallpaper by Katie Eberhart: Spring Orchard Images • St. Patrick's Day Poems & Song Lyrics • Egg Decorating Arts Project • Ellensburg, Washington - Badger Pocket Web cam

The Sower by Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)
The winds had hushed at last as by command;
The quiet sky above,
With its grey clouds spread o'er the fallow land,
Sat brooding like a dove

There was no motion in the air, no sound
Within the treetops stirred,
Save when some last leaf, fluttering to the ground,
Dropped like a wounded bird:

Or when the swart rooks in a gathering crowd
With clamorous noises wheeled,
Hovering awhile, then swooped with wranglings loud
Down on the stubbly field.

For now the big-thewed horses, toiling slow
In straining couples yoked,
Patiently dragged the ploughshare to and fro
Till their wet haunches smoked.

Till the stiff acre, broken into clods,
Bruised by the harrow's tooth,
Lay lightly shaken, with its humid sods
Ranged into furrows smooth.

There looming lone, from rise to set of sun,
Without or pause or speed,
Solemnly striding by the furrows dun,
The sower sows the seed.

The sower sows the seed, which mouldering,
Deep coffined in the earth,
Is buried now, but with the future spring
Will quicken into birth.

Oh, poles of birth and death! Controlling Powers
Of human toil and need!
On this fair earth all men are surely sowers,
Surely all life is seed!

All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow,
Which with slow sprout and shoot,
In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow,
Will blossom and bear fruit.
Source: Victorian Women Writers Project: an Electronic Collection Perry Willett, General Editor. Blind, Mathilde (1841-1896): The Ascent of Man (1889) Mathilde Blind London Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly. See the transcribed copy.

Thomas Tusser was a 16th Century English poet who dabbled at farming without great success and authored a "Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandrie" (later expanded to "Five Hundred Good Points"). Of Tusser it was said by Thomas Fuller, he "traded at large in oxen, sheep, dairies, grain of all kinds, to no profit". Moreover, he "spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon". Although we're not completely sure what that means, it sounds like an all too familiar tale. Click for more about English farming during the Tudor time.

Good Pointes of Husbandrie
by Thomas Tusser (1524-1580)

In March is good grafting, the skilful do know,
so long as the wind, in the east do not blow:
From moone being changed, til past be the prime,
for grafting and cropping, be very goode time.

In March and in April, from morning til night, in sowing and setting, good housewifes delight:
To have in a garden, or other such plot,
to trim up their house and to furnish their pot.
More of Tusser's Pointes of Husbandrie at www.pastonsites.co.uk/cla/history/Tusser.html

Global climate change is in the news a lot these days. Evidence of change appears in phenological records. Phenology is the fascinating study of how vegetative change occurs throughout the seasons. Records are based upon simple observation. Thank Carolus Linnaeus, 18th century Swedish naturalist, for developing the idea of recording nature's firsts: a species of plant's first leaf-opening, its first flowering, first fruiting, and finally leaf fall. The study of phenology in your own neighborhood is something your family can do. Dated records of nature's change likely have been kept by many people, but few records have lasted over multiple generations on the same farm spanning two centuries. Maybe your record won't be as extensive as that of the Marshams of Norfolk, England whose recordings spanned six generations and included observation notes on many common species of wildflowers, trees, even frogs, birds and butterflies, but there's no reason not to start now for you never know what good it will do or where it will end up. Find out more about Phenology and Paleoclimatology at: www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/phenology.html

Vertumnus and Pomona by Alexander Pope

'Twas all her joy the ripening fruits to tend,
And see the boughs with happy burdens bend.
The hook she bore instead of Cynthia's spear,
To lop the growth of the luxuriant year,
To decent forms the lawless shoots to bring,
And teach th' obedient branches where to spring.
Now the cleft rind inserted grafts receives,
And yields an offspring more than nature gives;
Now sliding streams the thirsty plants renew,
And feed their fibres with reviving dew.
- Alexander Pope, From the Fourteenth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses (The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope)

Curious about how to graft a fruit tree? Here's a link to a Horticulture Fact Sheet prepared by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences titled, "Grafting Fruit Trees in the Home Orchard."

Ah, Spring, time for seeding the garden with high hopes for great results—Recently I was reminded of a 78 record produced by The Children's Record Guild in 1950, that we used to play as kids (over and over until we wore it out). The recording was based on Ruth Krauss's children's story "The Carrot Seed," with song lyrics by Raymond Abrashkin and music possibly by Bernard Wagenaar. Rather than a Gregorian Chant, this I believe, especially the Brother's refrain, is an example of an "Agrarian Chant".

Boy's Song:
Oh, carrots grow from carrot seeds
I'll plant a seed and grow it.
I'll water it, I'll pull the weeds
Carrots grow from carrot seeds.

Brother's Song:
Nyaaah, nyaaah, It won't come up
Nyaaah, nyaaah, It won't come up
Nyaaah, nyaaah, It won't come up
Your carrot won't come up.
(Text from back jacket of The Carrot Seed LP (Young People's Records, c. 1965) See more about "The Carrot Seed" song based on the book by Ruth Krauss.

Starting a garden?
See Fruit From Washington's Spring Garden Tips!

FruitFromWashington.com Q & A — Question: Can you tell me who is responsible for the "Red Delicious #4016 Produced in USA-Washington" apples that one gets from the supermarket? Thanks. - D.F, 2/18/04

Reply: You should be able to find the answer at the apple commission website: www.bestapples.com

Question: Why don't you carry the blueberry, peach, rasberry pepper jellys? They were the best! - P.G., 2/15/04

Reply: The pepper jellies which we used to offer on our website were once manufactured by the Quinns in our hometown. Since they sold their business to Seattle Gourmet Foods, we dropped the line. You can still get these products, but not through us. The toll-free number for Seattle Gourmet Foods is 800-800-9490. They can give you information about where it could be purchased in your area.

Question: My family tried your Anjou pears and...they are still real hard. Can you help me? - F.H., 2/8/04

Reply: We would like to refer you to the USA Pears website for detailed information about ripening your winter pear varieties. Please follow their specific ripening instructions for your Green D'Anjou Pears - See at: www.usapears.com/delicious/produceguide.asp.

Please let us know if you these methods do not work for you. - C.E., 2/8/04

For many more questions and answers see the FruitFromWashington.com FAQ page.

Eastern Washington acreage for sale

Rural lot with panoramic view of Kittitas Valley and Cascade Mountains for sale by owner. Located on southern rim of the Kittitas Valley. Nearby recreational opportunities abound for outdoor enthusiasts interested in fishing, birdwatching, hiking, backpacking, skiing, horseback riding with many trails available for the serious equestrian. Rural acreage near Ellensburg, in central Washington, is a natural choice for those who desire a simpler, quieter existence and a hearty outdoor, active life in an area of picturesque beauty. (Click for more)

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March 29, 2005

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