Sansa - Now completely finished. We'll have to wait until next year for more of these lovely earlies.

Kougyoku - As of the end of September, the Kougyoku are completely finished and the trees are bare. This tasty apple has been extremely popular this season and, as we're still receiving requests for them, we'd like to recommend another source here in Nagano for this variety. We recently visited this family run business, Kougyokuya.jp, and were very impressed by the high standards they maintain in their orchards. They also have a large cold storage facility and are thus able to satisfy orders well after the end of the normal Kougyoku season.
Unfortunately, their web site and order pages are only in Japanese at this time, but if you're having difficulty with ordering you can contact us and we'll be happy to pass your order on to them.

Youkou - The Youko are almost finished, with some trees already completely bare and others getting very patchy. We have been impressed with the quality of these very attractive apples (bright to dark red blush with a creamy yellow base) this season as, to be honest, it has never been very high on our apples-to-buy list before. Like all of the other varieties this year, we've lost a disappointingly large number to disease, but the good, sound fruit has had a very good sweet/sour balance and has definitely been tastier than the Youko which we've sampled previously. We'll be sorry to see the last of them and can only hope that they'll be as good next year.

Fuji - The Fuji are now coming ripe and are just a few days away from the start of harvest (Update: As of 30th of Oct, we have started harvesting small quantities of Fuji, but typhoon #14 has slowed us down somewhat). The fruit are mostly relatively small (compared with those seen in the shops) and are (we think, anyway) just about right for a normal apple (ie:- a single-person size fruit). Currently the skins are a darkish pink, just turning to the standard Fuji red on some of the trees. We've already sampled some and, even though Fuji doesn't come anywhere close to being one of our favourites, we have to admit that, even not-quite-ripe, they are sweet.
Everyone has a lot of Fuji, so very shortly (and for well into the new year) the shops will be flooded with this variety (one of its good points is that it keeps very well). Our Fuji have, like the other apples in our orchards, been grown on a reduced spray schedule (we spray for problems, not just because the JA manual says so), with no artificial fertilizers and no weed killers used. Our fruit isn't "organic", but it's just about as close as we think we can get in this climate without jeopardizing the whole crop.

Sun 31st, Oct. 2010

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