Hendersonville #AtoZChallenge

Be careful what you read, especially if you are a bit idealistic.  You never know what reading material will do to you.

In 1977, I got a new job in my then-home of Wichita, Kansas, after several months of temporary work.

My spouse was in the United States Air Force, and I followed him to Wichita for a posting at McConnell Air Force base.  After some searching, I found a full time job.

The job required me to take a three day training in Manhattan, Kansas, a city that will never be confused with Manhattan Island in New York City.

There, on a break, a magazine caught my eye - The Mother Earth News.  In those days, and perhaps nowadays, too, this magazine taught the virtues of the simple, homesteading life.

We ended up, two years later, heading to Northwest Arkansas (about a five hour drive) and buying rural land.  What happened next is a story for another time.

Mother Earth News, at the time, was headquartered in Hendersonville, North Carolina.  I chuckled reading this person's description of visiting their headquarters in 1979. (And, for the record, neither my spouse nor I have ever been substance-smoking hippie types).

In 2012, spouse and I made our own pilgrimage to Hendersonville, just to see what this western North Carolina town, about 22 miles from Asheville, North Carolina was like. Mother Earth News had left years before, so we were curious as to what the city had become like.  And what we found there were...

Bears.

Patriotic bears.

Bears decorated with sort-of a Mother Earth theme.

Bears decorated with trees.

Bears decorated with children.

What stories these bears could tell.

So, we never did find the Mother Earth News that made our lives take an unexpected turn all those years ago.  Still, without that turn, we never would have shown up, years later, in Hendersonville to make friends with these bears.

Such is life.

"H" Day for Blogging from A to Z challenge.

Mystery Blondes

 Blonde apples.  A joke?  No.

The apple crop in our part of upstate New York is not good this year.  Many local orchards are not offering U Pick. This is a blow to our local agricultural industry, but at least we have enough apples for regular sales, and for cider.

This was the result of our early spring, which came to a abrupt stop with a night of temperatures in the teens.   The apples were in bloom, and the freeze killed many of the blooms.  The only thing that saved our crop was the fact that apple trees tend to produce a lot more blooms than they need.

We weren't the only ones to experience Apple Fail.

Hendersonville, NC, which my spouse and I visited last Friday, also has apples in short supply. 
Hendersonville is in a major apple growing area of North Carolina, and some of these apples make it into the larger city of Asheville.

Some of the apples we saw at the tailgate markets in Asheville, NC, were seriously pockmarked with hail damage.  But, I understand from talking to farmers that the cause of their Apple Fail was similar to ours.

Finally, on the way home, we visited Maryland.  Seems like they had a good crop. At Catoctin Mountain Orchards near the Maryland/Pennsylvania border, we finally found some good apples- apples I haven't seen here in the Binghamton, NY area.

We bought some of these Blondie apples. 

But when I got home and looked these up online, I did not see anything on "blondie" apples.  It wasn't handwriting; these are listed on the orchard website as "Blondie", too.

I thought maybe I saw a heirloom apple. But it wasn't.

What I found online were references to "Blondee" apples, a yellow Gala-type.  The orchard did have Gala apples - they were even offering whole Gala apples for sampling. 

I wonder if this mystery "blonde" is a Blondee apple.  When I taste it, I'll see how Gala-like it is.

I love apple time. Do you?