Maybe his soil is very very different - and imparts ‘good flavor’ to Aunt Rachel. They are pretty - but rather flavorless, here.
I am waiting waiting waiting for Sweet 16, Keepsake, and a couple other grafts to start producing fruit. (My Ashmead’s is supposed to be very flavorful, too.) Haven’t had any apples mature yet, other than Goldrush, Grimes Golden, King David, (some crummy Pink Ladys), and the Aunt Rachels.
You’ve got some good high-flavored apples there: Sweet 16, King David, Ashmead’s. Grimes isn’t really in that group, but I find that when I’m walking through my orchard in the fall, I’m more likely to pick a ripe GG to eat than almost anything else. They’re very refreshing.
I’ll get three or four Sweet Sixteen apples this year. Some literature suggests they’re best Up North so please post your results and I’ll do the same.
For what it’s worth, Sweet 16 is very good here on the Northern California coast. My tree grew slowly and took a while to start bearing, perhaps reflecting its Northern Spy parentage. It produces well now (year 7, on MM111).
I like it enough that I subsequently grafted its other parent (Frostbite/MN447) and a sibling (Pipsqueak) onto a Frankentree.
I just bought an antique crank pitter at an antique store. It looks somewhat like a miniature crank corn sheller. I haven’t tried it yet. Is that what the pitter you remember looked like? There is no plunger on this model. I have some other pitters, so need to test which is fastest. If this one works well, I suspect it will be fastest. I have Juliets, Carmine Jewels, Romeos, Wowza, and possibly a Crimson Passion surviving yet.
I have a protein smoothie every morning with frozen black currants and sour cherries in it…Try to freeze enough to last me through the winter, but usually run out. Next year should have a larger harvest and I might actually get more than I need. I keep planting more bushes!
Here is the one I used:
It looks like you can buy a modern copy for $100… the actual antique ones are cheaper I think, I have one I think I paid $20 for.
Yes, that is the kind. I paid $29 for it. Will probably have to machine some new bearings, but then I think it should work well, based on a u-tube video I saw on it. We have been cooking cherry dishes with the pits in and spitting them out when only for our family, since pitting was such a bother before. We and friends harvested about 23 gallons of cherries last summer, which we froze with the pits in them yet. Now we need to get cranking!