TODAY IN THE ORCHARD

Last night was —24F, the coldest night in a few years. The truck engine moaned and groaned but, in the end, it turned over and came to life. I taught another session in my month-long Colby short term “Jan Plan.” Each of my 18 students is doing an individual project focused on a modern cultivar, most of them patented, trade-marked or both. Today the students were working on doing their phenotypic descriptions, after which we did a tasting of the 18 cultivars, all but three of which came from local supermarkets. One—Pinova—came from Scott Farm in Vermont. We grew the Redfield and Frostbite. I chose Redfield for its red flesh, and Frostbite because of its flavor and texture. Each student got three votes. They could only vote once per cultivar. Could it be time to put Frostbite in the supermarkets?

Here are the results (number of votes following the name):
Frostbite—11
Cosmic Crisp—7
Opal—6
Rubyfrost—6
SweeTango—5
Kanzi—5
Sugarbee—4
Pink Lady—2
Honeycrisp—2
Envy—2
Evercrisp—1
Lady Alice—1
Pinova—1
Autumn Glory—0
Gala—0
Juici—0
Redfield—0
Snapdragon—0