Let the countdown to winter pruning begin! While the cold temperatures sweeping the country this week may not be to everybody’s liking, at KFF we are thrilled about the prolonged cold snap. Our trees need consistently cold temperatures to drive them to dormancy, and we need dormant trees to begin pruning without fear of causing damage to them. Some years, we don’t feel that our trees are fully dormant even in January, especially if we’ve had a warm fall, but we are always chomping at the bit to get going with our pruning work so we can get as much done as possible in the brief period before the trees wake up again, typically the last week of February.

We know a lot of orchardists in this region who start pruning right after Thanksgiving or into December. We wish we felt comfortable doing that, but for us, concerns of cutting branches too early, before their tissues have the protection of dormancy outweighs our desire to get going. While we keep eyes on the long-term forecast and wait for January 1st to roll around, we still have plenty to keep us busy in the orchard, albeit at a more leisurely pace since most of the tasks we have to do this time of year don’t have deadlines beyond spring. ‘Tis the season for some of the least glamorous, but most important, work of the apple year. It’s annual soil testing time, when we gather soil samples from around the farm and send them in for lab testing, so that we know if our soil needs any tweaking in terms of pH, nutrients, or health in general.

It never ceases to amaze us how long it takes to collect our dozens of samples. We choose our sampling sites carefully to make sure that parts of the orchard with distinctly different soil types are well-represented. Depending on the orchard block, trees may be in solid red clay, rocky outcrops, sandy loam, and everything in between. You also have to be sure that you take a good site sample, which involves us sinking our soil collector into ten or more spots within a given area and mixing them for a composite sample that will be truly representative.

Before the weather turned cold and our trees started losing their foliage, we also collected bags of leaves for final rounds of plant tissue and plant sap analysis. We collect leaf samples for testing several times during the growing season, as the information we glean regarding nutrients, Brix, pH, etc., helps to give us a more balanced picture of our orchard health throughout the year when coupled with our soil sample results.

With all this hard science to analyze, thank goodness we’ve found time to enjoy some hard cider! In early October, Brittany traveled to Potter’s Craft Cider in Charlottesville, Virginia to sit for the American Cider Association’s “Pommelier” exam, a certification modelled after the “sommelier” for wine, but relating specifically to hard cider knowledge. Along with seven other cider enthusiasts and professionals, some of whom had travelled from as far as Pennsylvania and Florida to take the exam, Brittany endured an extensive written examination, as well as a series of tastings to test her knowledge of orcharding, cidermaking and cider appreciation. It was a very challenging exam, so she was particularly pleased, after six long weeks of nailbiting, to finally receive word earlier this month that, along with two other participants, she had passed her exam and Kordick Family Farm can now say we have a Certified Pommelier on staff!

While bragging rights and accreditations are always nice, Brittany actually pursued certification with the goal of simply learning more about cider making and appreciation. After all, much of our apple crop is now sold to regional cidermakers, so the more we know about cidermaking and growing the best apples for cider, the better. Around this time last year, Brittany spent some cold winter days studying to pass her Level 1: Certified Cider Guide examination online. (The Certified Pommelier is considered a Level 2 distinction, and in coming years, the American Cider Association plans to roll out additional levels of distinction to test the mettle of cider enthusiasts.)

However, her cidermaking knowledge quest actually dates back even farther, to about two years ago, when Brittany began attending enology (the study of wine and winemaking) and viticulture (grape-growing) courses at Surry Community College (SCC) in Dobson, NC. Cider and pomology programs can be found in jolly old England, of course, and increasingly internationally, as well as in the Northeastern United States, as well as on the West Coast, but other than online classes, there really isn’t anything in the Southeast. What we do have, however, is a premier wine education institution at SCC, less than an hour away from KFF.

Brittany had no idea when she signed up for an Intro to Enology and Viticulture course to learn some winemaking jargon that she’d soon find herself sucked in to all the fantastic learning opportunities to be had via Surry’s wine program. The college is pretty special in that it has a working vineyard and fully bonded winery on site; students provide the labor, and this is the real deal: our Surry Cellars wines are sold at festivals and wine shops throughout NC. Graciously, her teachers have indulged Brittany’s specific interest in cider wherever they can, and since her enology instructor actually has some family history with orcharding and cidermaking, the intersection of wine with cider has worked particularly well.

Brittany credits her SCC wine courses with providing the foundations that enabled her to pass the Certified Pommelier exam, and highly recommends the curriculum to any of our readers with either a hobbyist or professional interest in wine and cider. Many of the classes are offered in the late afternoons and evenings, so are possible to attend around a work schedule. SCC also has a suite of online classes available, so you don’t even have to be a North Carolina resident to take advantage. In fact, spring is when the 8-week Wine Tasting and Introduction to Enology/Viticulture classes are offered online, and these are particularly great options to get your feet wet.

For the Wine Tasting course, a different type of wine is featured for weekly, and students learn how to evaluate each one objectively, in terms of residual sugar, acidity, tannins, and overall balance. You’re also guided through aroma and flavor detection, and all these basic skills will serve you well, even if you’re just somebody who enjoys wine or cider by the occasional glass. If you’re local, you can build up to Grape and Wine Science, Wines of the World, Intro to Winemaking, Wine Production and Analysis, Finishing and Bottling, and so many more exceptional classes under expert tutelage.

And finally, in other news, we don’t quite know how they got here so fast, but apparently, “The Holidays” are coming. If you’re looking for an alternative Christmas tree or otherwise unique gift this year, we do still have several varieties of heirloom apple trees available, and as always, you can find lots of our orchard products, including our KFF mulling spices, available for online ordering and shipping from our Etsy store. If you’ll be in the neighborhood and want to swing by our farm to pick up anything, just call us at 336-351-5186 or email cheers@kordickfamilyfarm.com to set up a time.

In this off-year for the orchard, our Ingram apple trees stood out as one of the few blocks that were loaded with fruit. Those trees haven’t reached full maturity yet, so the overall yield didn’t add up to much, but what limbs the trees have were tightly lined with pretty, red, medium-sized apples. Now we can see why Ingram has a reputation for overbearing, which can result in smaller fruit and/or biennial bearing, where an excessive crop load is followed by a nonexistent one. If we weren’t so delighted to see some trees full of fruit this year, we would have certainly thinned the apples when small to help encourage balanced bearing (we can work on discipline next year).

Ingram is a Midwestern apple that got its start as a seedling planted near Springfield, Missouri. The seeds came from some ‘Ralls’ apples that a man named Lucius Rountree brought from his family farm to share with his neighbors at the nearby Ingram farm. After the Ingrams ate the Ralls apples, a son named Sidney planted some seeds by a fence in a corner of the farmyard, and a seedling tree eventually sprouted there. Sidney Ingram’s brother John, called Jack, took a liking to the little tree and traded his brother a knife for the right to take care of it. Jack dug the tree up and re-planted it in the orchard proper sometime between 1844 and 1855.

When the tree finally began bearing, Jack’s father Martin declared it to be worthless, as the fruit was quite hard and not great for cooking. While Jack was away in California, Martin decided to cut the tree down, but before he could do so, his wife intervened, reminding him that, after all, “It’s Jack’s tree.” (It seems easy to assign the origin of one of the apple’s pseudonyms, ‘Little Jack.’) What saved that original Ingram tree in the long term is its extraordinary keeping ability. Over the winter of 1861-62, soldiers scavenged most of the fruit from the tree, but some apples apparently fell to the ground and were buried under leaf litter and snow. While raking up the leaves under the tree in the spring, Martin Ingram discovered the well-preserved fruit, likely “dark red and solid as a cannonball,” as a future Ingram apple enthusiast described them. Mr. Ingram brought the apples inside to cook, and they passed muster to the extent that he abandoned any pretense of cutting down the tree, and instead, set about propagating it by grafting.

Over time, the Ingram apple trees spread locally to other family orchards, and a nurseryman by the name of Mr. McCracken became the first to disburse trees on slightly larger scale. Reverend David Steele Holman, a nurseryman and the treasurer of the Missouri State Horticultural Society, did what he could to promote the apple, then known as ‘Ingram’s Seedling,’ sending samples to The Horticulturalist, a major national publication at the time. Likewise, a local chapter of a pomological society sent Ingram apples to their parent organization in New York, along with their stated intent to re-name the Ingram apple ‘Palmer’ in honor of the organization’s president. After tasting the apples, Mr. Palmer would have none of it, proclaiming that “The genesis of an apple of such wonderful qualities should maintain its local triditions [sic] and bear the name of its originator.”

By the late 1800s, Ingram was a local institution, and “given the place of honor in the culinary department of the housewife.” Commercial orchards in the regional area had taken note of Ingram and incorporated the variety into their operations. As early as 1899, Ingram apples were being grown successfully in Arkansas, and presumably, farther afield. The variety warranted an entry in the 1905 publication of The Apples of New York, but author S.A. Beach noted that while Ingram ranked favorably in flavor, comparable to ‘York Imperial,’ it had “not yet been sufficiently tested in New York,” and he predicted that since Ingram was so much like its parent, Ralls, it probably was best adapted for warmer, southerly regions.

In the meantime, Ingram remained popular in the Ozarks: by 1914, truly extensive plantings could be found in Greene County, Missouri; the Haseltine Orchards alone boasted 600 acres of Ingram and local agricultural classifieds were full of advertisements for Ingram apples in quantities ranging from a single bushel to a thousand. The Springfield News-Leader, a local paper, noted in 1915 that The Springfield Ice and Refrigerating company considered Ingram apples to be the best keeping of its apple holdings, which included “specimens that were grown in 1913, 1914 and 1915,” all still “in a good state of preservation.” Ingram would remain a regional favorite in the ensuing decades, well into the 1950s.

While Ingram’s claim to fame will always be its phenomenal storage qualities, in recent years it is gaining a reputation as a valued cider apple, as well. Beyond fruit, Ingram has impeccable timing to recommend it in every way. For one thing, it’s a late bloomer in the spring, meaning that it tends to miss most spring freezes. It also ripens fairly late in the season, during the month of October in North Carolina. It does resemble its parent, Ralls, in size, appearance, and taste, but develops more and brighter red color with a lovely pinkish-purple bloom overlaying the surface of the skin. The flesh is firm, like a good late apple’s should be. Ingram also has a reputation for being a particularly disease-resistant apple, and so far that’s what we’ve seen in our orchard, where we have 7 trees growing strong.

Thanksgiving only whets our appetite for comfort foods, and one of our new favorites is “Kartoffelstock mit Birnen.” Mashed potato casserole with pears sounds a lot cooler in Swiss, doesn’t it? Whatever you want to call it, creamy potatoes and sweet, simmered pears hit the spot on a cold winter night. Apples also work wonderfully, but the pears add something special to this traditional Swiss recipe, and we thought they deserved another shout-out for their great harvest this year. For a distinctly KFF touch, we added some extra pear flavor to the recipe in the form of our pear cider syrup.

3 lb. pears, quartered, stems removed and cored (if pears are large, cut into eighths or large chunks)

3/4 cup water

¼ cup Grandpa Kordick’s Old World Pear Cider Syrup

¼ cup sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 ½ tsp freshly grated lemon zest

Approximately 8 cups mashed potatoes (made from about 4 lb of potatoes), seasoned as desired

2 cups plain breadcrumbs

1/3 cup butter, melted

Combine pears, water, pear cider syrup, sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest in dutch oven or frying pan with lid. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until pears are tender but not falling apart.

While pears are cooking, combine breadcrumbs and melted butter. Set aside.

In a greased 3 quart casserole dish, spread one third of the mashed potatoes. Top with one half of the pears and a few spoonfuls of the cooking liquid. Repeat with one third of the potatoes, remainder of the pears and a few spoonfuls of the liquid. Spread the last third of the potatoes over the pears and top with breadcrumb mixture.

Bake, uncovered, in 350F oven for about 15 minutes to heat through and brown the crumbs.

Note: You can substitute apples for the pears.