Thursday, August 29, 2024

Many years ago we bought an apple tree that, if I recall correctly, was supposed to be a Cortland variety. As it grew and started to produce fruit it became clear that this was a crabapple. It has produced reddish fruits every year, some years more than others. This year, it is a bumper crop — large fruits (as crabs go), deep red color, and so many fruits. I’ve yet to learn the variety — maybe a Hyslop?

We are making our third pie with these beautiful ping-pong ball-sized fruits. Crabapple pie, as you might except, is a bit sour (although plenty of sugar sweetens the pie) and to me tastes like a sour cherry pie that my mother used to make from our cherry trees. I still marvel that she would pit so many small cherries to make a pie. Now we are chopping the flesh of nearly 40 crabapples to make a pie.

A partial harvest of our crabapples, August 2024

Pies are a gesture of love, especially when you harvest the fruit from your own yard. A group of my wildlife friends from UMaine gathered every year for Thanksgiving, with everyone bringing a pie. That’s a lot of love.

Our crabapple tree produces lovely white flowers each Spring attracting many pollinating bees and flies and birds in search of insects. All summer it provides shade in our front yard. In winter it houses our suet feeders, bringing in woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, among others. The trunk is ringed with rows of sapsucker holes. A few weeks ago a hummingbird buzzed around the holes, snatching some sap or spiders. Recently a doe that we’ve seen often this summer wandered past the tree, first nibbling on leaves then pulling off a few crabapples and mashing them around in her mouth. She didn’t show any surprise at their sourness.

The crabapple in May.