Yesterday morning I drove our van over to the orchard. My husband and Cedi had picked a few bushels of apples the previous night and I had them in the back. He had told me that there was one bushel of snow sweets in the back. Now, keep in mind, this is only the second year that we have ever had the snow sweet trees produce any apples. So, three of the bushels 'looked' like Fireside, two cortlands, and the other ?...we assumed snow sweet (remember we've been busy and sleep doesn't come frequently in long stretches...).

Once the group of the day was over, Diane, figured she'd get the 'snow sweets' on the shelves. She sorted them and weighed them into 3lb bags (we're only going to have one bushel of snow sweet apples this year). We started to get more people in the afternoon so I started sampling them. One lady had already tried two apples and didn't have room for a third...so I tried it for her...wow, was it TART! Why would they call that a snow sweet? I sampled to others and I think one person bought a bag after trying a sample of the 'snow sweet'.

Here's where things get interesting. Frank and Jared got back from there second round of picking and the fireside are sitting in there designated pile to be sorted (they do this for me...I'm the one that usually gets the apples confused!) He looks at the bushel on the top and says, "These are not Fireside." After a few taste tests and confusion...we agree. I go in the store, take a closer look at our "snow sweet" samples and ask my husband if there had a been a bushel of empires in the van this morning. The answer, "Yes." Mystery solved.

So, after all of that, we (Diane) accidently sorted a bushel of empires, thinking they were snow sweets and put them on the shelves. Once we realized this we took them off, sorted the correct bushel and quickly fixed our problem. Now, I'm pretty sure that I only sold bags to people that had previously sampled the apples...but if you happened to get a bag of 'snow sweets' that look suspiciously like an empire, (deep dark red, with red stems) please let us know.

Once we figured out our problem we had to have a good laugh about it. Good thing Frank noticed that the 'fireside' looked a little off!