The Apple Club  NEWSLETTER

WINTER 2013



Welcome to our winter newsletter. I would like to wish all our customers and friends a happy Christmas. From a farming perspective, what can I say, except that 2013 has been an exceptional year. Crops were good and livestock were happy. Hopefully we can look forward to a continuation of the same in 2014.

Pylons

It is often the case that when we hear or read about something happening somewhere else, that we do not pay too much attention. So it was with me also, when I heard about plans to put electrical pylons “up the country”. However, when “up the country” became “down the road”, it was time to find out more.
The company planning the work is Eirgrid, a state-owned company charged with looking after the transmission network. They are currently making plans to put up high-voltage overhead cables across Ireland; a project with a budget of about four billion euros.
The project is part of a Europe-wide upgrade to power networks, to facilitate the movement of electricity from country to country, and to accommodate renewable power.
But not every country is approaching the issue in the same way as Ireland. For instance, in the Netherlands all new high voltage lines must by law be buried. The decision has been made in order to gain public acceptance for the project. Instead Ireland is opting for old-fashioned overhead cabling like we might have expected or accepted fifty years ago. The European Commission, more than ten years ago, said that undergrounding should be considered as part of the Europe-wide grid plan, as the savings to be made by having a Europe-wide grid outweigh the costs of undergrounding in any case. Hopefully someone in Ireland will see the light, before the power goes out.

Bees

Two years ago I wrote briefly about the native bees we had on our farm. Since then, bees have hardly been out of the news. And unfortunately, as is so often the case, it is bad news that makes the headlines.
It is reputed that Einstein said (though apparently it was somebody else), that if bees disappeared, that mankind would also perish within two years. The point of course being, that bees pollinate our flowering crops, and without the bees, we would have a very limited range of foods to live on, and we could not survive on these for long.
For the past few years, bee numbers have been on the decline, because of habitat loss, bad weather, more parasites, and new pesticides. Because it is of much concern, governments as well as citizens are worried.
And so, due to concerns about specific pesticides, earlier this year the EU decided to limit permissions for the use of three neonicotinoid insecticides.  These are a class of insecticide, resembling nicotine, which have become widely used in the past decade. They work by being taken into the plant, usually from a seed treatment, and moving to the foliage and flowers, which when fed on by pests (or bees), are toxic to them. At the time of introduction the chemical companies involved produced data to show that they were safe for bees. However, in more recent years, data has accumulated which shows that they are not as safe as originally thought, and that the original company data underestimated real-life exposure levels, and non-lethal but nonetheless damaging effects.
Needless to say, the companies making the chemicals are not happy that they can’t be used for the next two years, and say that billions of euros worth of crops will fail, and tens of thousands of jobs will be lost in agriculture.
Having spoken with farmers here in Ireland, they don’t seem as concerned. In fact, many of the farmers were unhappy that, when buying seeds, the only ones they could source from merchants came pre-treated with these chemicals, whether they wanted them or not. Indeed, farmers could not understand why only treated seed were available, when they knew themselves that certain fields would not need insecticide-treated seeds, due to low levels of pests, cropping history etc. Of course, the fact that the same companies produce the pesticides and supply the seeds might explain why the seeds mostly came treated, but that is a story for a different day.
So now we have a Europe-wide suspension in use of these neonicotinoids. The question is whether the bee populations will improve as a result. Farmers will still have to use insecticides under certain circumstances, but will revert to using ones that pre-date the bee decline, and are definitely not as harmful. Will the bee populations stage a recovery? It is very difficult to say for sure, but I suspect they will. If they do, it will be a major embarrassment for the manufacturers continuing to lobby for a reintroduction of these chemicals, and the politicians siding with those companies.

In the farm shop

We have our usual range of apples, including really beautiful Elstar, as well as that traditional favorite, Karmijn de Sonnaville. We are just about to begin with our newest variety Wellant, and will soon have the famous Jonagored, which I mentioned above. Bramley cookers are also available, as are Golden Delicious.
In addition, we have a number of new products especially for Christmas, the most seasonal of which are our mulled juices, which we have as mulled apple or mulled apple & blackcurrant. These are juices with spices, which make a lovely warm drink, but without the alcohol. Simply heat before serving, and warm yourself up on a cold winter’s evening.
Our juices are as popular as ever and really good value, with a case of 12 large bottles flying out both to people who call in and by courier as Christmas gifts.  In fact, if you like you can even include a personal message when ordering online, and we will include it with the box when sending to your lucky friends.
The sparkling juice is going from strength to strength, with people coming from all over Ireland to get it, as well as online orders.
All the juices and jams make a great Christmas present, either in a presentation basket or bag, or with a few fruits. The apple jelly goes especially well as a glaze for the Christmas ham.
Lastly, we have hampers of juices, jams and fruit in our farm shop. These are popular and practical Christmas gifts.

Marie-Louise O’Donnell

The Sean O’Rourke show on RTE radio 1 decided to do a piece on apples, and who did they send but reporter Marie-Louise O’Donnell. Such was her enthusiasm for apples that she turned a five-minute slot into twelve minutes. She elaborated on the smell of the apples, the “green soldiers” of trees, “golden orbs” and “red orbs”, not to mention “green spheres” hanging from the trees like Christmas decorations. “Sour and sweet, full and frothing”. For anyone that missed it, you can listen to it again here.
If you fancy a smile and have 12 minutes to spare, listen back today.

Differences between Irish and imported apples

Customers who call to our farm for apples regularly comment about the difference between Irish-grown and imported ones, and how ours so often seem juicier.
And when I chat to the customer about the reasons for this, my mind always goes back to my days in UCD, and to what we learned about the physiology of apples; that is to say, how they grow. The reason, as with so much else in Ireland, comes down to the weather.
Apple trees go through a very distinct cycle when producing apples. First they blossom, and then, once pollinated, the base of the flower expands to become the fruit we will eventually eat. The growth of this basal part of the flower from a few compressed cells to the many hundreds of thousands bursting with flavour in a fully-grown apple follows a very predictable route.
For the first seven weeks after blossom, the small fruitlet grows by cell division, which is one cell becoming two, these two becoming four, these becoming eight, and then sixteen, with many doublings to give what will, by sometime in June, be the total number of cells that that apple will have. No more cells are added after the seven-week period.
For the rest of the summer, through July, August, September, and maybe even October, the apple continues to grow, but now by cell expansion rather than adding more cells.
So how, you might ask, will this make Irish apples different to imports? The answer lays in the weather, or rather temperatures, during the seven-week cell division period after blossom. In warm weather, cells divide quickly; in cool conditions they divide slowly. In countries where May and early June are warm, the cells will divide more often than in countries like Ireland, where temperatures at this critical time are cooler. More regular division will lead to apples with more cells; perhaps twice or three times as many as we might expect here.
So while our apples may be just as large come harvest time as those from warmer countries, ours will contain less cells, but each cell will be individually larger; perhaps twice as large as a warm-climate apple.
And when you bite into an Irish apple, the chances by breaking open a cell, releasing the juice, rather than biting between cells, are increased. So our apples seem juicier, with a particular type of crispness. The imported apples, with more but smaller cells will seem more dense, because the cells require more biting or chewing to release all their juice. They may also seem harder when handled, which is a difference that apple pickers sometimes also comment on when they pick otherwise similar apples in regions with different climates.
Apart from commenting on the difference in perceived taste, Irish apple growers are now hopeful that the cell size can be used as a sort of proof of origin. Unfortunately, while consumers are eager to buy Irish apples, some unscrupulous sellers pass off imports as Irish, fooling consumers and causing problems in the market for genuine Irish producers.
This year University of Limerick are running a project to define the typical number of cells, and size of cells, found in apples of Irish-grown varieties. These are being compared with apples sourced in the UK, France, Poland, and so on. Once the benchmarks are known and defined, it will be possible for a body like the department of Agriculture to scientifically determine the type of climate an apple has grown in, by just taking a few samples and examining the cell size under a microscope. Given our uniquely cool May and June temperatures, it will be possible to say for sure whether or not the apple is Irish.

Rose Morren and Jonagored

One of the apples that is widely grown in Ireland is Jonagored (properly called Morren’s Jonagored). It is a natural variant or clone of a variety called Jonagold, originally from the United States, though this variant was discovered in an orchard in Belgium in 1980.
And so began the story of the Jonagored apple, because this apple did not appear in any old orchard, but rather that being run by Jos and Rose Morren. Seeing the potential of this bright red version of what was typically a faintly coloured fruit, they decided to commercialise the apple, and given that Jos was the farmer, it fell to Rose to bring the apple to the World and sell it.
This she did with great enthusiasm, propagating trees and selling them, and encouraging growers to try her new variety, which she knew would sell on its good looks and productive nature. She brought apples to competitions around the World, and won accolades such as “tastiest apple” in the UK and USA, “finest dessert apple”, “best skin finish”, “best new apple variety” and “best stored apple” in various other countries.
Seeing the potential, Rose pursued the idea of having the apple categorised separately from its siblings, which though similar in taste, looked somewhat different. She succeeded in this too, and within twenty years of its discovery, the apple was the 7th most important in Europe, with an annual production of 270 thousand tons (more than a billion apples a year).
The first plantings of Jonagored in Ireland were in 1990, and growers here were also delighted with the fruits, and because of the productivity of the trees, it marked the end of the rapid decline in Irish apple production that had proceeded from about 1970 until then.
Rose visited Ireland on a few occasions, to see how her trees were doing here, and to keep in touch with growers, including myself. She also said that she thought her husband’s name of Morren may have had Irish origin, as Moran, so maybe we can claim this apple as partly Irish too.
A few days ago I received the sad news that Rose had died after an illness. She was just past retirement age, though there was no sign of her retiring. Her success in creating one of the World’s most successful apples in an incredibly short time will mean her name will remain known long into the future.
Certainly every time I bite into a Morren’s Jonagored, I will think of Rose, her visits to Ireland, and her love of apples.


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