The keeping quality is excellent. They are the best storage apple you will find. Rain wont bother them or ice or snow. There were many years my face was stinging from the cold as i picked them. Our weather has changed and now it is warmer longer. Our winters are more intense when they come. The apples keep months once picked. Literally you can eat them until warm weather rolls around again if they are kept in cold storage. Once you eat one they are addictive. My problem is eating them to fast!
They are well balanced with an excellent true apple flavor. I caution everyone the tree tends to be to productive. If it makes more apples than leaves that can impact flavor and size on any fruit as you know. The thing unique is the flavor is very good even with a very heavy load of apples.
Apples are finicky and not like grafting other trees as most people think. If you cut a pear down to the main trunk and graft it you will get rapid growth. If you cut a mulberry down to the main trunk and graft it you will get rapid growth. If you cut an apple down to the main trunk and graft it you can kill the tree. This is my fault for not discussing this sooner. @smsmith knows it depends on the age and variety of an apple tree. Apples become very old very quickly. The standards seldom live more than 40 years and the dwarfs only half that time. They can live hundreds of years. Any apple that is grafted should be put on a healthy new vigourous rootstock. Clarks crabapple is a natural dwarf in that it produces apples heavily more than extra wood. All apples have some grafting issues. If you graft Clarks crabapple graft it on the tips of branches and leave the existing branch structure of the apple. Apples like to be invigorated with minimal pruning but never cut back. @alan is a good guy to follow when it comes to pruning apples.
Is likely growing them on mm111 because of its versatility in multiple soils. My soil is terrible at growing apples and the preferred rootstock here is 111. He also likes b118. My soil has a heavy clay composition and b118 does not work as well as mm111. I developed Clarks crabapple originally because apples are very hard to grow in my soil. Like the infamous healthberry of my grandfathers. Blackberries by the gallons
Many people look at my blackberries or Clarks crabapple or pears and think i can grow fruit well. The truth is slightly different. It is very hard to grow anything in Kansas well and often times i had to develop techniques and hardy varities to make it work for me over the years.