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Rebecca LaClair

Ask a Foodie

Rebecca likes to try new food from a trendy restaurant, or one she hasn't been to yet.

Effortless apples found at Knowlan Family Farm

Thursday, October 27, 2022 ~ Updated 10:49 PM

When I was a kid in Michigan, one of my favorite things to do after the first frost was pick apples from my great-uncle's farm (that was tradition up there, folks said it made the apples sweeter). It was an old apple orchard full of huge, gnarly trees, and it had been let go for some time. These trees were no longer pruned, no longer protected from bugs, no longer perfect and bearing the optimum amount of fruit. What they were was numerous, and we would drive down the grassy lane between trees looking for a tree or two that had more than its fair share of fruit clinging to the branches. When we found one, my dad would climb it until he got to a smaller branch, then shake the stuffing out of it while we stood back and listened to the apples hit the ground like softball-sized hail. Then we all scrambled, scooping up apples as quickly as we could and throwing them in milk crates, because we were in a race for our prize.

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