Just six more days and it will be Christmas
For my wife and I a new adventure as we settle into our retirement apartment, we will probably have a quiet Christmas Day on our own for lunch, and relax in the afternoon.
After more than 60 years of marriage we have enjoyed the full spectrum of Christmas celebrations. In our early years we would spend Christmas Day with either my parents or with my wife's family. Like so many families this changed as we had children and we became the entertainers.
We were fruit farmers, but back then we like many farmers bred Turkeys for Christmas; we produced about 500 and prepared circa 70 for local families. With a growing family, we enjoyed a Turkey Roast on Christmas Day and New Year's Day and plenty of cold turkey sandwiches as well!
This week's Journal is a short one, with an interesting piece published by HortNews about the discovery of an apple thought to be extinct! ;
Lost English apple discovered
Published in HortNews an apple variety thought to be extinct!
An old English variety which was thought to have become extinct has been rediscovered through DNA analysis of apple rootstocks in Australia and Kashmir.
Below: Stephen Ainsleigh Rice with Rymer on the left and Bramley Seedling on the right
The findings about the old culinary variety 'Rymer' were presented to a panel at the University of Reading which included Dr Matt Ordidge, curator of the National Fruit Collection. Stephen Ainsleigh Rice of the Marcher Apple Network (MAN), which works to conserve old apple and pear varieties, described the discovery as "astonishing". MAN collected grafts from potential surviving trees and conserved the resulting young material for analysis.
Historical catalogues from New South Wales, Australia, dating from 1843 onward, indicated that Rymer had been transported there and replanted across generations. Trees still known by that name remain on a farm near Braidwood in NSW. Dried leaves from these trees were sent to the UK in earlier this for DNA analysis and were found to match.
In addition, Rymer is believed to have been introduced to Kashmir by British officers involved in agricultural development. The latest DNA analysis confirms Rymer, paired with Northern Greening, as the parents of the cultivars Annie Elizabeth and Newton Wonder. Both Rymer and Northern Greening also appear as a parent or grandparent of Bramley's Seedling.
Click on: The Marcher Apple Network
As we celebrate Christmas 2025 in a troubled World where conflict is at the centre of the daily news, many small children will celebrate with an innocence, but sadly across the World, many will not.
Below: A classic scene out of the imaginary world of perfection
Below: Many children will be following Santa's journey on Christmas Eve
Below: Left. Waiting in anticipation for Santa and Right. He's been!!!
Below: With Christmas becoming so commercialised, it would be easy to forget the inspiration started with a small boy born in a cradle in a stable in Bethlehem
I wish all my readers a Very Merry Christmas & A Happy and Healthy New Year
The English Apple Man will return on January 2nd 2026
Take care
The English Apple Man