This is the "apple time" of year. The time of year when leaves turn golden and apples turn scarlet red. The time of year when juice squirts between your teeth when you bite down on a cold, crisp Haraldson.

We had an apple orchard on our farm. Most of it was due to the efforts of my grandfather, who was known in our area as a man who knew how to graft one apple tree to another. Neighbors would call on him to come to their farmsteads and help their orchards produce fruit. I never picked up the intricacies of apple tree grafting, but I knew Grandpa was good at it, just by the orchard that surrounded our farm home.

We had red delicious, yellow delicious, Jonathans, Haraldsons, greenings and crab apples. In the spring the trees produced a scent that was almost too heavy to breathe. Bees hummed through the boughs, pollinating apple blossoms by the thousands. I would suck in a lung full of the aroma as I headed for the field with a plow on the back end of my tractor.

Each summer we would watch as apples started to bulge from blossoms. The most brave of us would grab a raw, green apple sometime in August and dare our friends to take a bite. Is there anything as sour as a green apple? We found that with a little rock salt, even one of the green apples could be devoured. More than one stomachache was caused by boys with green apples on their minds.

As summer turned to fall and school buses started grumbling down our gravel roads, apples began to take on a golden or reddish glow. My brothers, sisters and I would eye the orchard on our way to the bus at 7:30 in the morning. As soon as the first red apple appeared, it was eaten on the way to the bus. Soon our lunch bags all carried a fresh apple or two to school.

Our orchard was also attractive to those who drove by in their cards or tractors or pickups. With thousands of apples hanging from the boughs, we really didn't care if someone stopped and picked a few to enjoy along their way. Salesmen were particularly attracted to the orchard that stood beside the roadway. They would stop and ask if they could take a few with them and my parents always obliged.

My brother Tom and I did find a way to make an apple a crime one fine fall day. We were sitting in the orchard, chopping down on a few hard crab apples when somehow we decided that tossing an apple at a passing car might be sport. We lobbed a couple of crab apples at a couple of cars and then ran for the woods when the cars slowed down. We didn't expect to see a state highway trooper on our road, but when we tossed those crab apples through his open side window, he stopped and put the fear of God in us for the day. I don't remember ever doing that again.

My mother always canned or froze "greening" apples. Greenings never turn red, as their name implies. They get as big as a softball and are about as hard as a human tooth can bite through. Though they didn't make great eat-off-the-tree apples, they made about the best apple pie one could ever expect to eat. I haven't been apple shopping for some time and wonder if "greening" apples are still sold? Just thinking of a warm piece of apple pie with a large chunk of cheddar cheese alongside makes my mouth water.

The best apples were always thought to be at the top of the tree, and one fine afternoon my aunt and I sauntered down into the orchard to pick a few for her next day's work. I explained that I was an expert at apple tree climbing and proceeded to monkey my way to the tallest branch. I had just retrieved the largest, reddest apple on the tree when I felt the branch snap beneath my farm boots. I was left dangling, one hand clenched to a limb and one hand grasping a red apple. My aunt panicked and started screaming beneath me. I simply let go of the branch, crashed down a couple of stories and inched my way back to earth.

The apple wasn't even bruised. I was. Apples are worth the pain.

See you next time. Okay?