Frozen Apples

 

I went for a crunchy walk in the crystaline white woods to see how things are faring now that Winter is upon us in earnest.

The thermometer showed five degrees (-15 C) as I paused by the side of the car to pile on an extra layer, decide on the hood instead of the hat, and hoist my camera pack onto my back. I was facing a predicted high of twelve measly degrees (-11 C), but with light winds and a chance for a fair bit of sunshine, it looked like a good day to be out in the world.

The snow was about ten inches deep – fluffy, powdery, swishy and brilliantly white in the sunshine. I quickly turned off the trail and dropped over the side of the ridge to get into the trees.

I happened upon an overturned van that I had not visited in a couple of years. It lays on its side crumpled up against a tree with various parts scattered around it – a wheel here a fender there. Very little of its original paint is left; replaced by a rich brown rust oozing out from the bullet holes.

I moved on until I ran into the trail again as it curved across my path running on top of a little spine as it plunges downward into the big ravine. I decided to follow it down.

At really steep sections my footsteps would cause little avalances ahead of me. Tiny coins of snow, some no bigger than a nickle, rolled mousey lines over the wind smoothed snow. I started kicking up snow on purpose just to see how far I could get them to roll before they fell over sideways or ran into trees. The smaller ones usually went the farthest. The bigger heavier ones would quickly bog down, lose speed, and flop over like that guy on the tricycle in the old “Laugh In” TV shows.

There wasn’t much happening down at the ravine floor since the stream was almost completely frozen over. Which left me with a stiffish climb back up the hill with the added bonus of a layer of ice under the snow in the more exposed areas of the trail. Falling became a regular thing – usually followed up with an alarmingly fast backward slide ending abruptly against a tree trunk. I should have expected this since a good part of the trip down was spent skiing on my feet or sliding on my hip. At least the struggle warmed me up.

Finally back on top of the hill I took a break to examine an apple tree. I was surprised to see that it was still heavy with apples. I expected a few stragglers sure, but this was like a full crop still holding out against the winter winds. Animals had trampled and dug a wide circle all the way around the bole of the tree as they hunted for fallen apples and maybe if they could stretch their necks just a little farther they could grab some off the branches.

I was thinking that the apples couldn’t be any good anymore and that the deer and the squirrels were pretty desperate to eat them. After all they had hung on the tree for weeks in sub-freezing weather. They had turned an interesting, but not very appetizing bronzy brown color and I assumed that the insides were all brown and mushy and rancid. Au contraire! A little Internet research would prove me wrong.

Not only are frozen apples good fodder for birds and animals, they can even be made into something called ice cider (or ice apple wine) in much the same way as frozen grapes can become ice wine. Quebec apple growers were some of the first to apply the ice wine concept to apples. Here are links to a couple of articles on the subject; Canada and CBC.  You can go to Domaine Pinnacle to see some of their ice apple wine products.

I decided that I had better take a closer look at a frozen apple. I went out to an apple tree that grows next to the house and picked up a recently fallen apple. It seemed impervious as stone at first, but I found that it would dent if I pressed on it hard enough. I took it inside and easily cut out a wedge.

The flesh inside had some veins of brown running through it, but didn’t look too bad. It wasn’t soft and mushy and blech nor was it tough and dense like a fresh apple – it was grainy with small crystals almost like damp compressed sugar.

I tasted a piece. It still tasted like an apple, but lighter, more subtle. The sharp “in your face” apple-y tartness of a fresh apple was smoothed out by lots of sweetness. The freezing and aging process concentrates the natural sugars. After warming for thirty minutes or so, I could squeeze the apple in my hand to release a clear thick syrup which I believe is what gets used in making ice cider. Interesting.

As the saying goes; you learn something everyday.

MDW

Redkey Indiana

You’ve probably never heard of Redkey before. Not many people have. As of the 2000 census there were about 1400 people living here. Just one of many little mid-western towns that got hammered by changes in American society since WWII.

I was here visiting relatives over the holidays so I didn’t have much time, but one night just after dark I took a walk toward downtown. The side streets are unlit and the sidewalks are dangerous in the dark – cracked, twisted, humped, crumbled, sometimes non-existent, and often dotted with an assortment of kids’ bicycles and empty trash bins - so I walked in the road. Very few cars are out so it’s not a problem.

This is flat land. A place where the highest point for miles around is the highway overpass. A place where cold winter winds flow unhindered over the acres and acres of corn stubble surrounding the town.

There aren’t many businesses here anymore. For every occupied building I pass three abandoned ones. Some are in decent shape, some are boarded up, and some the wind flows in one side and out the other trailing tattered curtains out empty window panes.

Once this was a social and commercial center for people from the surrounding farms, but no more. Large modern farms now employ more machines than they do people and the highway curving around the edge of town whisks drivers away to bigger towns with mega shopping centers and chain restaurants.

The post office lobby throws some light along one street. A man takes his dog for a walk to pick up the mail. A freight train slowly moves through the middle of town. Everything is flashing lights and bells and whistles and rumbling for a few minutes and then it falls quiet again.

The Redkey Palace Theater, a surprisingly popular blues venue, is dark tonight – it’s a weekday. I went there once years ago back when I lived in Indiana.  Leon Redbone was playing I think.

The buildings often double as billboards. Many of them urge me to chew tobacco. The one pictured here is about flour.

Walking around town and driving through the farmland around here presented me with lots of ideas for images - old barns and houses, beautifully formed trees standing alone in fields against wide blue skies, broken glass on the sidewalk. I’ve kept those ideas, those phantom images, in my mind waiting for a time when I don’t have other things to do and I can make them real.

MDW