By Heather Retberg, Quills End Farm
What Rests in an Apple
Quite often in the fall, while I walk up from delivering the cows to their latest patch of grass, I swing by an apple tree or three and taste. Every year it amazes me how such a variety of flavor and experience comes from the same genus. I suppose it shouldn’t, as the milk from every cow tastes different, makes different cheese and different yogurt.
However, the apples seem more distinct. One warms and comforts like a fire, the next refreshes like a cold shower in the summer. They remind me of why fall is my favorite season. Food is everywhere!
And apples are a hope for the future.
A pippin is the hope that we will be here to taste, that the world will be at peace enough to enjoy the complexity of flavors, that the land will still yield. A lot rests in an apple. Yes, it is immediate alimentation. However, beyond satiating our hunger there is an inexact map that leads a casual disposal of an apple core to become an act of exploration. This happened many many times around our haunts, and has led to glory and disappointment, but always hope. All of the varieties now cherished by our populace were chance encounters with hope, and eventually, with the palate. Tasting fall, with its beautiful foliage and crisp air helps me remember what hope tastes like.
Editor’s note: Phil continues to write “View from the Farm” while Heather recovers from her surgery. Send her a card/note at Quill’s End Farm, 192 Front Ridge Road, North Penobscot ME 04476
Heather and Phil Retberg together with their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.