Rescheduled from 1/5: Apples All Year Long: Choosing Varieties (Adult)
Friday, January 12, 2018, 2:00–4:00 p.m.
$16 Adults; $12 Nature Center members
Paid reservations required by January 10, 2018.

Through sight, taste, smell, and a lesson learn which apple varieties you want in your home orchard.

Selecting the apple varieties you want to grow takes time, but this class will help you come up with a methodology as well as letting you taste a few different types of apples. Local ciderist Alan Yelvington and others will share personal knowledge as well as the common traits of apple varieties.

There is much to think about when choosing which apples you want such as flavor, what you intend to use them for, when they ripen, disease resistance and more. The best way to do that is to learn about the characteristics of apples and taste as many as possible. This class will provide you written and spoken information, resource guides, sources, and hopefully some tastes of many different varieties. Designed for those just thinking of starting an orchard for personal use, there will likely be some good tidbits for even the experienced orchardist.

Al Yelvington is a fairly recent transplant to the area after retiring from 33 years in the Coast Guard. Al started a cider orchard (Happy Dog Farm) outside of Russell, PA to provide juice specifically for hard cider makers. He is in his second year in the Virginia Tech Online Masters in Agriculture and Life Sciences (OMALS) focusing on pest and weed management. Happy Dog Farm includes a community cider mill that is registered with the Pennsylvania Departtment of Agriculture.