Westsylvania Cider

05/07/2026

Welp..the verdict is in and we lost nearly 100% of the early and mid-season apples from April 20th‘s deep freeze. It’s been raining dead blossoms that should be baby apples.

Our late season varieties-English cider apples like Dabinett and Yarlington Mill flowered later, yet we had another freeze this past weekend. Ugh!

Interestingly some of the varieties hit by that freeze are sending out a couple very late flowers-an adaptation that they must have evolved for events like this.

Even if it’s only a half dozen apples-the trees want to at least attempt to get seeds out to reproduce.

04/26/2026

04/24/2026

If you grow any kind of fruit in the northeast, this past week has been rough.

After a solid week of 80 degree days and the trees in abundant blooms, we bottomed out at 24 F Tuesday morning. Not just a little freeze but a hard, killing freeze. Pure devastation.

While it’s hard to put an exact figure on the loss we’re looking at a 90% loss of our crop. Ugh!

While late freezes aren’t new, warmer “false Springs“ are happening at a greater frequency and destruction. And farming-all ready a tough living-becomes even harder with climate change.

04/15/2026

Seems like except for the Hewe’s Virginia Crab, most of the apples survived the deep freeze (21 degrees) last week.

A number of trees moving into King Blossom ten days earlier than last year. And unlike last year tons of flowers so should be a good crop this year.

04/09/2026

This Buds for you-Bud 118 rootstock that is.

Planted 40 new cider apple trees so far this spring and hopefully the early leaf out on some early varieties survived the 21 degree F from last night.

03/31/2026

Grating scions onto rootstock-year 6. These scions are all from wild, feral seedlings found in Butler County,Pennsylvania.

Our first grafts (done during the COVID shutdown ) should bare their first crop this year.

03/24/2026

Typical lousy sMarch weather in Western Pa-28 degree high with 4 inches of snow 6 days ago, 81 degrees yesterday, 33 degrees today with snow showers today.

Wolf Creek Orchard in Slippery Rock, Pa.

03/22/2026

Spring is rapidly advancing here in Western Pennsylvania. Here at our Timberwolf Orchard in Mercer County, we have made it through Winter and with warmer days, the landscape and apple trees are prepping for Spring.

I know Spring is here when I hear the Red-winged Blackbirds, the Eastern Towhees, and the Field Sparrows across the orchard.

I use these days to add wood chips and other natural additions to the soil, to prep these trees for summer. I‘m also planting new trees, adding copious amounts of organic materials to the the soil.

Nothing beats hard work and enjoying the fruits of one’s labor.

03/06/2026

Happy Friday! Here’s a cider that has really rounded into form after almost 2 years in the bottle.

This is our barrel-aged “1799”; fermented then aged on its primary lees in an old whiskey barrel.

This cider has Golden Delicious, Stayman, Winesap, Tolman Sweet, and a large amount of wild apples from Butler County, Pa.

Has wonderful fresh fruit aromas and just a hint of barrel funk to make a fantastic cider on a warm Friday evening in March.

Cheers!

02/28/2026

Pruning Part 3. As we end February and anticipate spring, I always finish with my large, seedling rootstock Stayman and Golden Delicious trees. And the way they produce fruit couldn’t be more different so I prune these differently as well.

These trees are 50-plus years old, and in the Stayman’s case 35 feet tall. I prune this tree heavily every year, removing suckers and waterspouts while opening this tree into an open vase look. This way I get heavily baring trees annually.

The Golden Delicious is very different in its growth style and pruning strategy. Since it’s spur bearing and produces less growth annually, I’m much more conservative on how I prune. Mostly just taking out suckers and making sure there’s light able to enter the center.

In just a few weeks these trees will be awash in massive blooms of ivory white flowers, and hopefully leading to 10-15 bushels of apples per tree.

Finito.

02/21/2026

Happy Friday!