Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/481870
28 APRIL 1, 2015 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com T here was an eerie sense of déjà vu as the nearly 300 growers and fruit industry professionals touring with International Fruit Tree Association braved the snowstorms and snow banks of Nova Scotia fruit growers' orchards. Hadn't they seen this before? Well, many of them had. But it was in summer, during August in 2009, when IFTA last visited the area. The trees, most of them upcoming new varieties like Honeycrisp, SweeTango, Sonya, and Ambrosia, were smaller then, and growers have planted a lot more of them since. They still looked small now, the bottom three feet hidden under the snow. The Nova Scotians were enduring in late February much the same record snowfall as their American counterparts across the Bay of Fundy in Massachusetts and Maine. They were digging out after a fi ve-day snowstorm that grower Peter Eisses described as the Honeycrisp has become the signature apple of Nova Scotia, where size and color is good, bitter pit is low, rots are controlled, and packers have a storage regimen that works. These apples are moving through the waxer at Van Meekeren Farms, which packs about a quarter of Nova Scotia's apples. They are marketed under the Wink brand name. Nova Scotia REVISI Nova Scotia has earned a reputation for producing the best Honeycrisp apples. by Richard Lehnert Nova Scotia apple orchards in winter, as seen from the IFTA tour bus.