I'm in the orchard areas here at Struan Farm every day at this time of the year, sometimes two or three times, to harvest fruit. Right now it's the three peach varieties, Golden Queen, Blackboy, and Piopio Heritage White, fast and furious. Whatever is on the ground gets collected, plus each tree gets a shake. Not too hard, since I really don't want too much fruit raining down on my head that needs to be put to use or shared before it goes off. Even so, I've been gathering 30+ peaches each day, with plenty still on the trees.
I've been keeping an eye on our quince trees, Monty's Surprise and Granny Smith apples, and Winter Nellis and Comice pear trees too. Everything has been so early this year that it doesn't pay to operate by last year's schedule. The fruit needs to be checked.
And the quinces on one of our two trees are just about ready.
I've asked an experienced commercial orchardist who grows quince along with other fruit how to tell when quince is ripe. First and foremost, it's yellow, not green. And it's definitely ready if fruit has fallen on the ground. The latter hasn't happened here at Struan Farm, but the fruit on that one tree is pretty yellow.
Given the peach frenzy still happening I'll give the quince some time. The birds don't go after it because it's rock hard, so there's no race on in that respect.
John does not share my affection for quince, but he does enjoy quince paste. I'll sneak some roasted quince past him for dessert or mixed with apples in fruit crumbles once or twice this autumn to keep testing that. Maybe they'll grow on him, like green beans.
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