CSA Update
October 26, 2025

Hello folks! Our season down at the orchard is coming to an end — but only in terms of being open on the weekends and picking apples. There are still a ton of apples in the cooler not to mention all of the pressing to go along with this season of abundance. We finally have some picture perfect fall weather, so I hope you’re able to enjoy it.

We were able to fulfill some apple requests this week for those of you who (1) liked yellow apples; (2) preferred Honeycrisp & SweeTango; or (3) preferred Frostbite. And the rest of you got an assortment of the apples pictured above.

Northern Spy is a superlative apple: excellent eating if you like it tart, its acid and size make it perfect for baking, and it even makes a delicious single-variety cider, which we’ve been known to make. It was planted in 1800, rescued and replanted after it initially died from mouse damage, and first bore fruit around 1825.

Bonnie Best was discovered by LaVon “Bonnie” Keehn in Cooksville, WI in the late 1980’s. It is a beautiful apple – large and striped with a lavender hue. It is the best apple we’ve found for baking and sauce. In every other instance we recommend using a combination of apples but when Bonnie Best are ripe, they shine on their own. I have a hunch that one of Bonnie’s parents is Northern Spy – the size is right as is the hue and the flavor profile.

Frostbite is an astounding apple: it is a parent to Keepsake and Sweet Sixteen and a grandparent to Honeycrisp. Its flavor has been described as sugar cane, molasses and malt. To me, its notes of deep warm spices and a nod to savory makes me think of mincemeat pie. It is extremely cold hardy and was used in the breeding program at the U since 1921 (!!!) and finally released in 2008.

We love Ruby Jons and they seem to thrive here. They’re an especially beautiful apple on the tree where they appear to be nearly black. Ruby Jons are sweet and balanced – good for eating and excellent for baking and sauce. Ruby Jons are a sport of their parent, the Jonathan apple, which means they are simply a deeper red color but otherwise the same (but even so, I think Ruby Jon is better than the original).

Honeygold is another classic release from the University of Minnesota that took Minnesotans’ favorite – Haralson – and crossed it with one of the world’s favorites – Golden Delicious. Honeygold is crisp with a sweet-tart flavor that leans sweet. It keeps about two months in storage. Excellent for fresh eating and when cooked, holds its shape.

Winter Banana is an attractive yellow apple with a red blush. It’s one of the few varieties that is self-fertile. It’s a highly aromatic apple with a pleasant perfumed aroma that some people perceive as banana, but usually only in the most ripe fruits. It usually has a mild flavor but this year I’m impressed by how big its flavor got to be and how juicy it is – clearly it loved this year’s growing conditions.

SnowSweet is a crowd pleaser: its firm, fine-grained flesh is low in acid with a sweet, rich flavor. It has bright white flesh that’s slow to oxidize (turn brown) when exposed to air. Sharon is a cross of McIntosh x Longfield, developed in Iowa in 1906. Connell Red is a chance bud of Fireside, an apple variety released by the U of M in 1943, which itself is a McIntosh x Longfield cross. Apple genetics are so interesting, aren’t they?

Haralson is Minnesotans’ favorite apple BHC (before Honeycrisp). A good eater and baker. Use in combination with Cortland for an unbeatable pie or crisp (2/3 Haralson, 1/3 Cortland). Stores well, up to four months. The tree itself is extremely cold hardy; however, it is a strong biennial bearer, which means it produces a lot in year one and nothing in year two.

Prairie Spy is an extremely dense apple; a bushel of them weighs more than a bushel of any other apple variety. Prairie Spy is a bit of a sleeper apple but the folks who love it love it a lot. It is an excellent keeper and is good for fresh eating and baking. Not related to the Northern Spy, a favorite of ours for cider making. In fact, nobody knows the parents of Prairie Spy. Perhaps with the DNA testing occurring these days, we’ll finally be able to find out.

When it comes to hard cider this week, we had a lot of different stuff going out: you got No Fair if you’re a half-share subscriber; Minnesota Mule if you’re a full share subscriber; a four-pack if you said you prefer four-packs; or Perennial if you said you like a dry cider. (I don’t often have the wherewithal to be able to satisfy individual requests during the peak of the season but had enough help this weekend that I was able to take those requests on).

Mark your calendar for our 2nd annual Pork n’ Cider Harvest Dinner on Saturday, November 8!

CSA Update
October 19, 2025

We’ve got some new apples in the mix this week!

First up is Ruby Jon, which is making a repeat appearance in CSA boxes but it always ranks as a favorite and it’s a total looker.

Second is Prairie Spy, which just got picked this week. I usually pick Prairie Spy on a cold day with a brisk wind that seems to do the job of polishing the apples right up. This year, Nora picked them on a warm-ish day; picking Prairie Spy when it’s warm just doesn’t seem right. Even though it’s October 19, the weather has been feeling more like the beginning of October. I’m as confused as the apple trees are!

Third on the list is Haralson, the Minnesota classic.

Next up is Frostbite, which I think is the weirdest apple you’ll ever taste. It is a parent to Keepsake and Sweet Sixteen and a grandparent to Honeycrisp. Its flavor has been described as sugar cane, molasses and malt. To me, its notes of deep warm spices and a nod to savory makes me think of mincemeat pie. It is extremely cold hardy and was used in the breeding program at the U since 1921 and finally released in 2008. I’m so curious how nature came up with that one!

The yellow apple in the bag this week is Winter Banana. I don’t know if it absolutely loved the growing conditions this year or if I got the picking timing just right, but it’s fully flavored with a fantastic texture at the moment. It’s almost coming off more like a russet with its high sugar and acid. You can taste the banana . . .if you have an active imagination.

Lastly, we have Northern Spy. Northern Spy might be my perfect apple. It’s apple-y with a nice hit of acid in there and a rich, rich flavor. I love it for fresh eating, cooking, and hard cider. It’s also really pretty with a red that hints toward pink and violet (which is a reason I think Bonnie Best might be a sport of Northern Spy — more on that in a subsequent week!).

This week for hard cider, I included No Fair. I usually think of No Fair as a summery cider that’s a cider version of an Arnold Palmer, but this year the lemon didn’t figure in as prominently as I had hoped and so its black tea-forward flavor ended up tasting right for fall. The tea in No Fair comes from Teasource; I use their black iced tea blend.

That’s it for this week. Picking and pressing continues. This week in particular we’ll be picking Keepsake — a lot of Keepsake — and also Roxbury Russet, Ribston Pippin, Hunt Russet, and probably Golden Russet too.

CSA Update
October 12, 2025

This week’s apples are the same as last week’s apples, so please check out the photo and video below for details on those.

This week’s cider was also the same as last week — Whippersnapper — so I hope you enjoy the effervescence and sweetness of that. Full-share subscribers got Cherry Rhubarb — or whatever preference you expressed at sign-up.

This week at the orchard is more of the same zone we’ve been in for weeks now: picking (so much picking!), pressing (once a week, which I’ve never done nearly so much before), and then weekends with our open hours. We have a great teenage crew this year, mostly bottling juice, slicing cheese, packaging meat sticks and washing glasses on the weekends; and we have a new employee, Nora, who stopped by with her parents earlier in the season, newly back in Minnesota after college and post-college work — after coming here for years and years as a kid and then a teen. It’s fun to have her here picking and pressing with me! And we have a great returning roster of adults in the barn, for whom I am so thankful.

And thanks to you too for all of your kind notes during the week.

One last thing: mark your calendars for our second annual Pork & Cider Harvest dinner, scheduled for Saturday, November 8 as long as the weather cooperates.

CSA Update
October 5, 2025

It’s another week of abundance at Sweetland Orchard with — at least — the five apple varieties pictured at right included in this week’s boxes.

Zagerbau Russet is a German apple reputed to have been planted from seed in 1885. It’s a triploid variety, which means it’s likely to be bigger than other apples and that it has two pollinators rather than the usual one pollinator.

Honeycrisp is next — I figure I need to include at least some of those!

Chestnut Crab is pictured in the middle, looking lovely and redder than usual this year (due to the cool nighttime lows at the end of August, I think).

Ruby Jon is kind of a favorite of folks around here because it’s beautiful, yummy, and hard to find. It’s like a Jonathan except (I think) better. It’s appearance out in the orchard is absolutely striking.

And then we have Haralson all the way on the right, which is another variety in abundance this year and is a classic favorite of Minnesotans. I can’t be entirely sure, but I would be shocked if Haralson ever made an appearance outside Minnesota, the Dakotas, or Wisconsin — maybe Canada — so enjoy our little cold-climate secret.

Whippersnapper is the hard cider of the week, which is our young cider that is absolutely delightful. It’s just begun its fermentation journey and I hope to have gotten it to you early enough that it will still be deliciously sweet and effervescent if you can’t drink it until Saturday morning. Keep it in the coldest part of your fridge to keep that fermentation under control and I absolutely advise against holding on to it any later than next weekend, otherwise it’s going to move past its whippersnapper stage to something a bit more of an adult hard cider.

CSA Update
September 28, 2025

So many apple varieties this week!

From left: Regent, Liberty, Macoun, Kerr, Egremont Russet, Cortland, Sweet Sixteen, Chestnut Crab, Zabergau Reinette, Honeycrisp, Ginger Gold. Check out the video for more details on each of these varieties.

This week’s fresh-pressed juice was made from primarily Ginger Gold and Haralson apples plus a few hangers on from the early season picking. The crop is so beautiful and so abundant this year I put apples through the press I never would've in the past.

This week’s hard cider is Scrumpy Original, from a bottling I did in late August or early September. Scrumpy Original is my take on a British-style cider, which is characterized by lower acidity and higher tannins. This batch is a bit higher acidity than usual but I also find it to be quite fruity. It has zero sugar in it and is also unfiltered, in an attempt to be a true farmhouse cider.

CSA Update
September 21, 2025

Apples in this week’s box:

Wealthy
Wealthy is the apple that proved Minnesota could be home to an apple growing industry! It preceded Minnesota’s statehood and took root in Excelsior as a seedling grown from Peter Gideon’s obsessive quest to grow apples in Minnesota. He was quite the character, by all accounts, and there’s an entire book that’s been written about him called The Great American Apple Wizard. I recommend it!

SweeTango
The apple breeder at the U of M ranks apples in development on a 1-10 scale. The only apple that’s ever gotten a 10 was the SweeTango. SweeTango is a cross of Honeycrisp and Zestar! and displays the best of both of its parents with Honeycrisp’s texture and Zestar!’s flavor.

Egremont Russet
Egremont is a lovely mid-season russet that displays the characteristic intensity of russeted apples with higher sugar and acid than what we usually find in apples. It’s a full russet and so if you’re disinclined to eat it fresh (don’t be!), it’ll cook up fabulously.

Sweet Sixteen
Sweet Sixteen is a cross between Frostbite and Northern Spy. It’s a tricky apple to get right in terms of its flavor. If you nail it, it’s a complex flavor with a bit of a cherry popsicle overtone. If you don’t, it’s sweet and hard. Released by the U of M in 1977.

Ginger Gold
We had the best crop ever of Ginger Gold and it tastes particularly delightful to me this year because it’s flavor and texture are so pleasant — light and sweet and crisp and juicy. I’m actually eating them more than SweeTango.

For fresh-pressed cider this week, we’re still working off of our first pressing, which was primarily a blend of Zestar and Paula Red.

For hard cider this week:

• Full share subscribers got Cherry Rhubarb unless you said “no flavored cider” or “dry cider,” in which case you got Perennial, which is a dry cider made from heirloom apple varieties.

• Half share subscribers got Strawberry Lemonade, aka Summer Crush, which just hits the spot on a hot day.

CSA Update
September 14, 2025

The first of the CSA boxes went out today with summer and early mid-season apple varieties.

Speaking of SweeTango — it’s my favorite eating apple. It’s just perfect with its flavor and texture, so it’s really something that Ginger Gold is giving it a run for its money this year. SweeTango is a cross of Honeycrisp and Zestar! and displays the best of both of its parents with Honeycrisp’s texture and Zestar!’s flavor.

Lastly, we have St. Edmund’s Russet, which is my earliest russet and has been a bugger to pick every year, just because it’s hard to get the timing right. Russets usually have an intensity of flavor — more sugar! more acid! — and being an early version of a russet, St. Ed’s offers a glimmer of those attributes. Its russeting is uniform and I think it’s a handsome apple.

As for hard cider, you got a real mystery bottle this week because it’s my Roundabout label, which doesn’t offer you any clues to what’s inside. What’s inside is Summer Crush — a strawberry lemonade hard cider. It’s really yummy and I hope you enjoy it and wanted to get you the new creation for the year while we still had summer weather.

More details in the video below. As always, I’m happy to answer your questions.

Our CSA is back for Fall 2025!

We love shopping the best of the orchard and are so excited to share this year’s banner harvest with you.

We deliver CSA boxes to four locations on Sunday mornings from September 14 through November 16 — ten weeks total. Sign up for a weekly delivery (full share for a total of ten deliveries) or a half share (every-other-weekly delivery for a total of five deliveries).

Our drop sites include Dogwood Coffee St. Paul, Dogwood Coffee East Lake, Dogwood Coffee NE, and France 44. You can also pick up your CSA box at the orchard. Want to host an additional site? Get in touch!

Choose your preferred package below and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page for add-ons like apple crisp, farm bread, hard cider, jam, and more. Questions? Get in touch via email at sweetlandorchard@gmail.com or text to 651-252-4337.

Essence of the Orchard
This CSA package offers a basic version of what we do around here — apples, fresh-pressed cider, fermented cider, and cider donuts.

• Half peck of apples

• 1/2 gallon fresh-pressed cider

• Half-dozen cider donuts

• A four-pack of cider or one 750-ml bottle

Freshie Fresh
This package is alcohol-free and bumps up the quantities of apples, fresh-pressed cider, and cider donuts.

• Peck of apples

• Gallon of fresh-pressed cider

• Dozen cider donuts

Freshie-Fresh with Fermentation
More apples, more fresh-pressed cider, more donuts, and hard cider too!

• Peck of apples

• Gallon of fresh-pressed cider

• Dozen cider donuts

• A four-pack of cider or one 750-ml bottle