Spent the weekend in orchard/farming related research. Specifically: Green Bluff.

I am still reeling from the impact of the crowds and the hype and the overwhelmingness of it all.

Nobody seems to grow the old apple varieties anymore. I felt very lucky to finally find Winesaps and Staymans, and they were good.....but they were not as good as what I had heard. Criterion, a newer apple, was only found on one place, and that was just as good as I'd remembered.

It's so much like the dairy goat world. Everyone dumps the old bloodlines and buys up whatever the latest, newest thing is. Today the newest thing is Honeycrisp, a variety that I have deep appreciation for myself. Here is the problem with Honeycrisp: it doesn't keep for very long before it starts to develop aldehydes which affect the flavor. This is an apple that is best eaten relatively soon after picking.

----> What does it say about our society that farming has become a major tourist attraction? I have never seen this kind of hype and excitement over farming before. It was like a county fair spread out over a bunch of farms.

We have nothing like that here- not even one farm of this type.

Speaking honestly, the lack of respect shown by the visitors to the farms really bothered me. It is not OK to walk up and break branches off of someone else's fruit and nut trees just for entertainment!

more...later.