The countdown to the New Year has already begun, and tonight the orchardists of KFF will celebrate the start of 2026 along with the rest of the world. For us, however, January 1st mostly signifies the official start of our pruning season, and even in the years that weather precludes making the first day of the New Year a work day, it’s very important to us that we at least make a ceremonial first cut on even a single apple tree. This way, we get a jump on re-focusing our thinking to the task that will concern us most over the next three months. On your mark, get set, 5-4-3-2-1, ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your pruners, we’re off! (Well, actually, some of us have already been sneaking in a few discreet cuts here and there, a little ahead of schedule.)

For the past month, we’ve been trying to knock out as many of our various winter tasks as we can, so that as soon as January 1st rolls around, we can focus solely on pruning without worrying about other orchard distractions on the to-do list. This means, especially, taking care of any lingering orchard clean-up, in terms of mowing and weedwacking, so we have clean ground to drop, then pile, our prunings on. It also means getting any new tree plantings knocked out.

This year, our planting list included medlar trees for the first time, as we prepared an area to receive our first specimens of these pome fruits, which are in the Rosaceae, or rose, family, just like apples, pears, and quince. We are starting with two varieties, with the intent to graft many more different ones this spring for a comprehensive test row of varieties. We will monitor these for several years to see which, if any, varieties perform better for us than others before planting out a more extensive orchard of medlars.

While these old, interesting fruits share some characteristics with apples, the white spring flowers more closely resemble those of wild roses and the fruit itself, often completely russetted like many pear types, are shaped like overgrown rose hips. They are often grafted onto pear, quince, or hawthorne rootstock, but are not compatible with apple rootstocks.

Medlars are ancient fruits that were historically grown throughout what is today Europe and Asia. The fruit became popular during the Middle Ages, but due to the strangeness of its appearance (“dog’s arse” is a common descriptor throughout history and culture) and some interesting post-harvest needs, many of the written references that survive (including several plays by William Shakespeare) are not particularly flattering. Medlars are quite different from other pome fruits in that, before most forms of consumption they require a treatment known as “bletting” after harvest. This involves, essentially, letting the fruit break down for several days or weeks, as necessary until their hard, astringent flesh transforms into something more like a soft, mellow, caramelized paste, often described as resembling dates or stewed apples.

Once bletted, medlars can be enjoyed as is, or more commonly, are turned into jelly or “cheese” (fruit paste). Author Jane Steward, who literally wrote the book on medlars, gets very creative with her medlars and includes many fantastic-sounding recipes and processes (including how to make alcohol from the fruit). In recent years, medlars have begun to enjoy a resurgence among fruit enthusiasts, particularly in the United Kingdom where Mrs. Steward maintains her orchard and medlar goods business, and are no longer hard to track down in nurseries. In fact, as we increasingly seek to diversify our own nursery offerings here at KFF, we hope to be able to graft many varieties of medlars for sale going forward.

Finally, New Year’s Eve doesn’t have to mean the end of holiday parties. Consider this a friendly reminder that Twelfth Night is just around the corner on January 5th, and that means it’s wassail time! Don’t forget that, on the last of the 12 days of Christmas, it is traditional to bless your trees for the coming year with song, dance, cider, toast, and general merriment to do what you can to scare away any evil spirits lurking in the orchard and encourage a good harvest for the coming season. So locate your largest, or favorite, apple tree, or your neighbor’s, or even a wild one, and be ready to wassail for all you’re worth! If you want extra credit, you can make a special hat or dress in traditional costume to let the trees know you really care. Happy New Year and Waes Hael (Good Health)!

Hunge is a fairly obscure apple, as varieties go, which is why we initially grafted only four trees for planting out in our orchard. This seems like quite an oversight now. Easy-keeping, adaptable apple trees have always been appreciated, but as weather seems to be increasingly keeping orchardists on their toes, perhaps it has never seemed so wise to select un-fussy trees that do well in one’s particular climate. We have a winner: meet the Hunge apple.

While the birth of this variety is lost to history, it is assumed to have originated in 1700s North Carolina in Moravian settlements, and it was here in NC that Hunge experienced a modern rebirth. We find the first mention of this apple in the Downing brothers’ 1857 compendium, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America, wherein Hunge is described as a culinary and drying apple, “popular and long cultivated in North Carolina,” albeit with “origin uncertain.” The name is listed as being synonymous with ‘Hunger,’ and rather than referring to a family name, may simple be expressing colonial slang for the term in reference to the apple’s value in staving off that worrisome condition.

In the 1850s, a Mr. S.W. Westbrook of Greensboro, NC seems to have done quite a lot for the Hunge apple, in terms of getting the fruit into the right hands, publicity-wise. This person provided fruit samples to several parties during this time period, including The American Pomological Society for consideration in 1857, and as was typical, the fruit was favorably reviewed.

Hunge was available to a limited degree by Southern nurseries in North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia in the subsequent decades, and the 1869 USDA Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture notes that the variety is “valuable in North Carolina.” By the turn of the century, Hunge had expanded its range somewhat, at least to the Midwest, where it was listed in experimental orchards at the University of Illinois and the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Interestingly, the reports from both of those orchards are less than enthusiastic: from Ohio, we hear that Hunge proved “of only limited value,” and in Illinois, the fruit was deemed “not rich, only good in quality.”

Benjamin Buckman persevered with Hunge at his extensive experimental orchard in Farmingdale, Illinois, which still contained the variety in 1913. However, it appears that, for all intents and purposes, Hunge remained primarily an NC apple, but like most heirloom apples, suffered a decline in popularity and plantings as the mid 20th Century approached.

Thankfully, in 1940 a lady named Gertrude Morris grafted a scion from her father’s old Hunge tree in his Wayne County, NC orchard. She had found a seedling apple tree growing in a ditch in front of her home in Newton Grove and decided to use it to graft onto and grow a new Hunge tree. When author Lee Calhoun was seeking out old Southern apples in the 1980’s for preservation, he was contacted by Mrs. Morris regarding the Hunge apple. While Hunge enjoyed some regional popularity in the mid to late 1800s, by the end of the 20th Century the variety was all but extinct. In fact, as best as Calhoun could tell, the Hunge tree Mrs. Morris had grafted in 1940 was the last one in existence! Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Calhoun, the propagation of Hunge trees began anew, and today, several heirloom apple orchards and nurseries in the Southeast, including ours, again plant and stock Hunge trees as a matter of course. But the Hunge apple history really gets a shot in the arm when Kuffel Creek Nursery of Riverside, California contacted Horne Creek Farm, the repository of Lee Calhoun’s Southern apple collection, about obtaining scionwood of apple varieties for testing in warmer climates.

Once Hunge had proven itself in the Southern CA heat, Kuffel Creek’s owner, Kevin Hauser began shipping trees to Africa as part of the Apples for Africa aid project. Halfway around the world from its Carolina roots, Hunge is reportedly thriving; in 2013 Hauser reported that the variety is doing “particularly well in Zambia,” where the trees receive ZERO chilling hours! Perhaps Hunge’s considerable adaptability should not surprise. After all, thanks to the Morris family, we know that Hunge performed well in the sandier Coastal Plains soils of Newton Grove and Wayne County, which is unusual . . . but that’s still a long way from the tropics!

Historical sources often describe Hunge as having greenish-yellow skin sometimes with only a red blush (perhaps this was why William Coxe, a New Jersey horticulturalist, considered Hunge potentially the same apple as ‘Jersey Greening’ aka ‘Rhode Island Greening). As you can see from the picture of Hunge taken in our orchard, taken at the very end of August, with full sun exposure, it is possible to achieve entirely red fruits, eliminating the persistently green Rhode Island Greening apple as a possible synonym for Hunge in our book.

In fact, we have noticed that pictures of Hunge fruit grown in warmer climates does seem to be mostly or entirely red overlaid on green-yellow underskin, whereas the historical accounts, often deriving from cooler climate-growing, emphasize the yellow-green color. However, it does seem that, wherever it is grown, Hunge is notorious for its variability in size and color, as well as the degree to which it develops its somewhat characteristic russet netting from year to year. It is solidly mild, subacid, yet somewhat vinous in flavor, and pleasantly aromatic. Truly an all-purpose apple, there is some reference to Hunge being used in brandy, and we will look forward to experimenting with it in cidermaking in coming years.

We have to give credit where credit is due: while looking for an interesting basis for a baked, stuffed apple recipe we found this great recipe on none other than The Food Network and love it so much we barely changed a thing when writing it up here. The use of pistachios, raisins, and sausage with chopped apple makes for a tasty and elegant, slightly exotic stuffing that would be at home in winter squash, meat entrees, or by itself, but baked into an apple, it really hits the sweet spot. And do use sweet apples to complement the filling in this particular recipe; pouring a little vinegar in the bottom of your roasting pan will add enough requisite tartness. If you use smaller apples, these make wonderful finger foods.

6-10 sweet apples, depending on size
1 lb sausage
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot minced
2 oz. Calvados, or any brandy
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup pistachios, toasted and chopped
2 Tablespoons of fresh sage, thinly sliced
salt and pepper
about a cup of rice wine vinegar (or slightly dilute white or apple cider vinegar with water)

Cut the apples in half and hollow out the halves: use a melon baller or small scoop to remove the hard parts of the core, then scrape out most of the apple flesh and reserve this, leaving 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch layer of apple flesh within the skin shell. Chop up the apple flesh you remove and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Saute the sausage in the olive oil for about 5 minutes, then add the shallot and cook for a further 5 minutes. Deglaze your pan with the Calvados or brandy. Remove from heat, then add the raisins, pistachios, sage, salt and pepper, as well as your chopped apple.

Set aside briefly until cool enough to handle comfortably, then stuff your apple halves with this filling, pressing it down with a spoon or your fingers, leaving it slightly mounded out of the apple shell. Arrange the halves in a roasting pan, skin-side down, then pour the vinegar around the apples. Bake, uncovered, for 25-45 minutes, depending on the size of the apples (check the firmness of the apple shell). Enjoy warm.