Growing fruit in Kansas is a strange endeavor. I’m not a fan of gambling, yet as I consider our orchard, I’m wondering how much distinction there is between planting a fruit tree and playing the lottery.
Brian knew of my attachment to the 70-tree apple-plus orchard I left behind at my family’s home in Ohio when we got married. So in sweet forward-thinking, years before we actually moved to the farmstead, he already began building our future in fruit.
Or at least, he tried to. I’m not sure how many trees he’s planted in total, from apple to plum to nectarine to apricot to peach to pear to cherry, but our success rate is so far below even 50/50 that I don’t want to think about it too much. He even put in a dozen grape starts, and while one yielded a handful of uber-flavorful green grapes for a couple years, even that one gave up now. Currently we have two galas, a honeycrisp, and a pear — but of course I know to hold them lightly, as the red delicious tree that produced well for several seasons literally just fell over with no warning a couple years ago.
Even the big old peach tree that Brian’s grandma “planted” when she threw scraps to chickens needs to come down. For decades it’s been there between the weathered coop and the red diesel tank, sturdy enough to climb up its branches and onto the chicken-house roof in order to pick infrequent yet incredible peaches.
Speaking of infrequent…that’s the other part of the gamble. As if basic survival weren’t enough of a challenge, seasonal weather patterns render any annual fruit harvest pure luck. There’s always hope — and while hope deferred doesn’t make the heart sick in this case, it does make the belly empty. Our two well-established gala trees have been heroes at producing at least some apples almost each year, but otherwise picking fruit every other year is really the best we can ask for. I feel like some fruit crops follow the biblical jubilee idea, having their rotation be more like every seven years.
But on those years, I tell you what. Kansas can come through in a flurry of pent-up generosity, effectively erasing the memories of famine and instilling a hope as bold and heady as the rush of natural sugars to your bloodstream as you eat the harvest.
I would know; that’s where I’m at. Because while our apricot tree finally finished its slow march to death, our friends enjoyed one of those effusive harvests. Their tree was suddenly yielding more than they could keep up with, and although we weren’t their first recipients of overflowing fruit, they still showed up at our door with an apricot-heavy trash bag of fruity gold. The apricots were tiny and harvested early to avoid the birds, but there were hundreds of them; allowed to ripen in the basement, they transformed into explosions of orange-fleshed sweetness that melted in your mouth. I couldn’t help but grab a handful of them every time I neared their vicinity, savoring the juicy richness all the more knowing it could be (will be) years before the next windfall harvest.
But thanks to the in-their-nature generosity of our friends and the capricious generosity of Kansas nature, our apricot experience this year was very sweet. We won the lottery in this case for sure.
Classic Cozy Apricot Crisp
Our friends simply requested a crisp in return for the load of (picked for us!) apricots, and of course I was more than happy to comply. Brian loves both apricots and crisps, so naturally he was happy for me to comply as well since I made us one too. I typically play with my food in how I modify recipes, but I knew the apricots needed to be the star of the show so I kept things very classic. No one was sad.
Prep tips: the most important part of this recipe is that you pronounce it ap-ri-cot crisp, not ape-ri-cot. That is all.
4-6 cups fresh (or frozen, thawed) apricots, roughly chopped
a splash of lemon juice
1 tablespoon cornstarch
¼ cup sugar or honey
¾ cup all-purpose, whole-wheat, or oat flour
¾ cup brown sugar
a good pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons butter, room temp
½ cup rolled oats
Toss together the apricots, lemon, cornstarch, and sugar, and transfer to a glass pie pan.
Separately, stir together the remaining ingredients, cutting in the butter until it’s distributed well. Crumble this evenly over the apricots. Bake at 385° for 30-40 minutes, until fruit mixture is bubbly and topping is golden.
