On the eighteenth of September, a quite lovely yet overbearingly sunny day, I decided to pay a visit to the Cornell Orchards. I really did want to be on time, but it had just so happened that I had a physics problem set due the same day that I was scrambling to finish. However, it was a blessing in disguise because I ran into someone finding her way to the orchards herself, also lost and late. We asked around to find directions for the rest of the group, and once we did, we learned about the plethora of apples the Cornell Orchards had to offer.

Some fun facts about the Cornell Orchards:

• Cornell patented two new apple plants, called the Snapdragon and the Ruby Frost. The snapdragon earned its name for being sweet, cool, and crunchy, and the Ruby Frost is red and is harvested during the frost season.
• Cornell then sold said patents to the New York Apple Association.

Here’s a picture of Genesis and me sinking our teeth into some SnapDragons:

Genesis and I sinking our teeth into some freshly picked SnapDragon apples!

Some more fun facts about apples:

• no two apple plants will be exactly the same
• there are rows of apple branches spaced out just perfectly for the neighboring rows to receive the proper amount of sunlight
• farmers are constantly trying to invent new ways to increase apple production
• honey bees are vital to apple production
• reject apples that aren’t worthy of being sold get turned into cider

Later on in the tour, we learned more about the cider making process. Here’s a youtube video on Cornell Orchard’s cider making process:

I had such a great day learning about the Cornell Orchards and the apple production process as a whole, a great way to end my week!