Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The FEDCO Wishbook

When I was a kid, I remember poring over the Sears wishbook in the weeks before Christmas. These days, my wishbook is the FEDCO Tree catalogue, and it arrived in the mail last Friday.

Who could resist this text?
Black Oxford Apple Winter. Unknown parentage. Paris, Oxford County, ME, about 1790. This outstanding apple, a favorite long ago around much of Maine, has been making a huge comeback in the last 20 years. Our best seller. Medium-sized round fruit, deep purple with a blackish bloom. From a distance you might think you’d discovered a huge plum tree. A 200-year-old Black Oxford tree still grows in Hallowell, and still bears large crops. Excellent pies, superb late cider. Leave the skins on for a delightful pink sauce. Best eating late December to March. They seem to get sweeter and sweeter as the months go by. Good cooking until early summer. Some insect and disease resistance. Becoming less rare every year! Blooms late. Z4-5. ME Grown.

The problem, of course, is that I cannot. I want one of everything. So over the winter, as I warm my feet by the woodstove, I will thumb through the catalogue again and again, and sort out what I can't live without, and what I can.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Black Oxford Apple sounds majestic to say the least. I too savor over the pages of catalogs. It's the best part of the mail!
Tomorrow (Fri) we're go'n up to see Dad & Mom & to take in the foliage, we'll take different routes up & back & get apples on the way, over the river (the mighty Hudson) & through the woods (the Catskill Mts). The weather is suppose to be very fine. Jack Frost is suppose to give our first heavy frost tonight. Lee covered the mums.

Anonymous said...

By the way, I reently saw the Victory Garden do a segment on making lightweight cement containers, they used 1 part each of peat, vermiculite & cement and used the similar idea of using plastic containers as forms.
v e r r y
i n t e r e s t i n g !