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FruitFromWashington.com
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FRUITFROMWASHINGTON.COM
WEB-LETTER
September-October, 2005
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FRUITFROMWASHINGTON.COM
WEB-LETTER
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The Little Apple Knocker, an established Kittitas County farm to market grower, prepares your fruit orders of 15-count and 6-count gift boxes of FruitFromWashington.com apples. Gala, Golden Delicious, Jona-go-red and Macoun apple varieties are available now. Fuji and Cameo® Apples will be available after October 25. Use the FruitFromWashington.com printable order form to phone or fax in your Fruit Gift Box order. Your orders will be filled, shipped and billed by The Little Apple Knocker. Click here to see a description of all our apple varieties.
Gift Box of 15 Jona-go-red Apples Order # jg15 priced at $28.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Jona-go-red Apples Order # jg006 priced at $32.95 (+ shipping)* Available after Oct. 15*
Gift Box of 15 Macoun Apples Order # mc15 priced at $28.95 (+ shipping) also available Classic Wooden Gift Box of 6 Macoun Apples Order # mc006 priced at $32.95 (+ shipping)* Available after Oct. 15* *Please call or email for shipping rates. |
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It was late summer and the Washington Agricultural Statistics Service reiterated the obvious when it reported, "Warm, hot August weather continued." In the Kittitas Reclamation District, a junior water rights district, farmers laid down their shovels at the end of the second week in August as the ditches dried up. The price of hay was expected to rise due to lack of water for hayfield second cuttings. Those who had deep wells applied for emergency permits to use them. To the east, severe thunderstorms carried off windrows of lentils laid out before the combines came and unharvested grass seed crops were pummeled by winds that shattered seed heads to smithereens. A freakish dust storm, the kind that hadn't been seen in Kittitas County since about 1969, pushed by a front out of Canada, brought power outages, pole top fires and a tragic vehicle accident caused by a dust cloud that reduced visibility down to about an eighth of a mile unless you were driving past a plowed field where visibility was lost completely. Lightning strikes seem to be the cause of most of the wildfires in Washington although one was reported to be due to sparks from a barbecue. Would have been better to have had cold chicken leftovers that night. Burnt Bread, Dirty Face, Lick Creek, and School are colorful names of some very serious wildfires this summer. Washington's Governor Gregoire declared a wildfire emergency and called for state resources to pitch in and help the fight. Even brother Urban got into the act, sweating it out one night in August, on the fire line at "The Nanuem High Fire".
Expressions such as epidemic, prodigious reproduction, population explosion describe what has happened with voles in Northwest farms and fields this summer. No good estimate of their total number has been made but it's got to be in the billions. Picture some really big, awesome number now multiply that by the number of times some kid somewhere said "whatever" and that's like the total number of rodents we're talking about. The Willamette Valley in Oregon was particularly hard hit. Some farmers estimated losses up to a third of their grass seed crops, others put it at sixty percent. Walking their fields, they discovered cleared areas occupied by entire villages of voles, also known as field mice or meadow mice. When the crop came off the field next to Cory and Bruce's, the voles moved into their horse pasture. You couldn't take a step without seeing the twitch of a vole as it dashed down a hole. The farm cats have been busy but by the end of summer they were so fat they just lounged around giving the rodent population a free pass. The sight of voles crossing the market road to town was a regular occurrence. They were big, fat and so slow you got a really good look at them as they bee lined across the center line. As if that wasn't enough, we've had swarms of flies, let me tell you about the flies! Bruce says, please don't. He's heard enough on the subject of our biblical quality plagues and afflictions this summer. "Hello, Danny Meadow Mouse!" exclaimed Blacky. "I haven't seen you for a long time. I've looked for you several times lately." "I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it at all," squeaked Danny. "You'll never see me when you are looking for me. That is, you won't if I can help it. You won't if I see you first." Blacky chuckled. He knew what Danny meant. When Blacky goes looking for Danny Meadow Mouse, it usually is in hope of having a Meadow Mouse dinner, and he knew that Danny knew this. "I've had my breakfast," said Blacky, "and it isn't dinner time yet." - Thornton W. Burgess, Blacky the Crow
Farmers markets provide family farmers with direct access to the full retail dollar for their products, and provide the public with access to some of the freshest, best-tasting produce available. Many farmers markets hosted special events to celebrate their growth and popularity. For farmers market locations in your state see www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/. "Admass. This is my name for the whole system of an increasing productivity, plus inflation, plus a rising standard of material living, plus high-pressure advertising and salesmanship, plus mass communication, plus cultural democracy and the creation of the mass mind, the mass man… It is better to live in Admass than to have no job, no prospect of one, and see your wife and children getting hungrier and hungrier. But that is about all that can be said in favour of it. All the rest is a swindle." - John Boynton Priestley Create a Want—you'll see this option on the booksellers' websites and may have used it yourself when looking for a rare, out-of-print or hard to find title with the hope that the bookseller will let you know when a copy turns up. Besides being a useful way to find old books, an ability to "create a want" can be applied to other matters. Commerce uses it all the time. It is the motivating force and prime directive of advertisers. Businesses by and large want people to want more. Wants and needs can be different things entirely. We all want a lot of things we don't really need. Thanks to advertising we come to believe we need things we ordinarily wouldn't want. To belabor the point, we know that ads manipulate consumers to believe they must have a particular thing—a kind of soap, a certain prescription drug, an energy efficient car or truck instead of a gas guzzler (what a kidder). We need, let's say, to be well scrubbed, less stressed, to get down the road using fewer gpm (still kidding)--but inundated by message exposure, we become convinced we want certain name brand products; fill in your own brand loyalty soap, drug, or make and model of vehicle. Advertisers are adept at hammering it home to us. But the idea that you can create a want yourself, that has not been tainted by any advertising influence, with only the influence of your pure heart's search, is really self-defining. The other day I was in the baking aisle of the grocery store. A mom was standing with her daughter in front of the cake supplies. They were engaged in a very serious discussion about cake and frosting choices. The youngster was having a tough time deciding. She was thinking about it very hard, busily working out the option she would be happiest with in a birthday cake. It's not as easy as it sounds to create a want that is unique to you, that is meaningful and satisfying to you. Give it a try. To realize a heartfelt want, and then overcome all obstacles to achieve it, is what defines us. So, there's the gauntlet. Create a want of your own and then make it so. What you really want may be something you need to think a lot about; when you know what it is, the real hard work begins as you do everything possible to move heaven and earth to satisfy that want; being tougher than the opposition; rallying your allies; not letting the petty ones stand in your way, even if doing so goes completely against your nature and seems as impossible as having your cake and eating it too. "I have always been delighted at the
prospect of a new day, Want a dog or cat? The need is great. Visit your local pet shelter. Think about it, please.
My grandfather in those days had much leisure time. He still kept an office at the rear of the house, although he had given up the regular practice of the law. But a few old clients lingered on, chiefly women who carried children in their arms and old men without neckties who came to him for free advice. These he guided patiently in their troubles, and he would sit an hour to listen to a piteous story. In an extremity he gave them money, or took a well-meant but worthless note. Often his callers overran the dinner hour and my mother would have to jingle the dinner bell at the door to rouse them. Occasionally he would be called on for a public speech, and for several days he would be busy at his desk. Frequently he presided at dinners and would tell a story and sing a song, for he had a fine bass voice and was famous for his singing. He read much in those last years in science. When he was not reading Trowbridge to his grandchildren, it was Huxley to himself. But when his eyes grew tired, he would on an occasion--if there was canning in the house--go into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother worked, and help pare the fruit. Seriously, as though he were engaged upon a game, he would cut the skin into thinnest strips, unbroken to the end, and would hold up the coil for us to see. Or if he broke it in the cutting it was a point against him in the contest. - Charles S. Brooks, There's Pippins And Cheese To Come
The apple orchard--where Dolly was stung by the bee--was set on a fine breezy place at the brow of the hill with the valley in full sight. The trees themselves were old and decayed, but they were gnarled and crotched for easy climbing. And the apples--in particular a russet--mounted to a delicacy. On the other side of the valley, a half mile off as a bird would fly, were the buildings of a convent, and if you waited you might hear the twilight bell. To this day all distant bells come to my ears with a pleasing softness, as though they had been cast in a quieter world. Stone arrow-heads were found in a near-by field as often as the farmer turned up the soil in plowing. And because of this, a long finger of land that put off to the valley, was called Indian Point. Here, with an arm for pillow, one might lie for a long hour on a sunny morning and watch the shadows of clouds move across the lowland. A rooster crows somewhere far off--surely of all sounds the drowsiest. A horse in a field below lifts up its head and neighs. The leaves practice a sleepy tune. If one has the fortune to keep awake, here he may lie and think the thoughts that are born of sun and wind. - Charles S. Brooks, There's Pippins And Cheese To Come
And now, although it is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in the kettle. To divert ourselves, we climb three trees and fall out of one. Is twelve o'clock never to come? Have Time and the Hour grown stagnant? We eat apples and throw the cores at the pig to hear him grunt. Is the great round sun stuck? Have the days of Joshua come again? We walk a rail fence. Is it not yet noon? Shrewsbury clock itself--reputed by scholars the slowest of all possible clocks--could not so hold off. I snag myself--but it is nothing that shows when I sit. Ah! At last! My grandfather is calling from the house. We run back and find that the lunch is ready and is laid upon a table with a red oil-cloth cover. We apply ourselves. Silence.... - Charles S. Brooks, There's Pippins And Cheese To Come Compare
fruit harvest and cider making scenes by artists painting from the mid
to late 1800's, including works by George Henry Durrie, William Sidney
Mount and William Tolman Carlton. Contrast these with Clare Leighton's
wood engraving from 1933. Other Orchard Landscapes and Fruit Still Life Paintings are found in our Virtual Art Gallery.
Webmasters - We invite you to link to our site. Drop us a line and let us know who you are so we can create a reciprocal link! Or you may already be included in one of our garden links or recipes links pages, in which case we hope we can have a reciprocal link. Choose from our link graphics or text or create a text link to a FruitFromWashington.com page that's pertinent to your site. |
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FruitFromWashington.com Web Letter Archives Index **
Editor's Note: This Web-Letter is in the FruitFromWashington.com Archives.
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Gift
Box of 15 
Gift Box of 15 
Gift Box of 15 
Gift Box of
15 
diets,
dried fruit makes wonderful homemade holiday gifts that are always
welcomed and appreciated! However, now when we process fruit by
drying, we use the standard commercial, electric powered food
dehydrators. A quiet hum can be heard from the kitchen as the
electric fan whirs and the fruit, whether apples, apricots, pears,
peaches or plums and every type of fruit leather, dries where
it lies, in tall stacks of white plastic, circular trays. If you
ever decide to try your hand at this method of fruit processing,
like us, we're sure you will find that if you "Dry It, You'll
Like It," too.
