That's a beautiful sight there! A nice mix of apples will make for some really good cider too.
Are you near a lot of state forest land or logging sites you can roam? I have a few places I forage for random things around here, but I've never come upon a good free apple tree yet, nothing bearing fruit of any account anyway.
Do you all battle with fireblight much in your neck of the woods? It's wiping everything out around here the past 3 years. I'm seeing huge old pear trees getting it and obviously they've avoided it for a very long time. It will eventually kill them. The big apple tree on my dad's farm has it now it too. That thing is at least 20 years old. But anyhoo, even what you've got there looks like a good haul to me. What do you think are those big red apples in the back left corner? They're really pretty.
Around these parts folks didn't seem to plant apple trees as much when they first settled the land...not sure if it was due to different nationalities and such? Up in the mountains it was mostly Germans, Italians, Irish folk and possibly they had brought such things over with them for the planting? Not sure, but there are definitely more apple trees and even apple orchard farms in the eastern panhandle portion of the state, which lies fully within the Appalachians instead of just the foothills like around here. Could be the weather and soil was just more conducive to apples.
Not seeing much fireblight out in the wild trees but in mine here at the homeplace we've seen some kind of blight on the leaves since early spring...doesn't look exactly like fireblight but just a browning of the leaves all over, possibly a fungal blight? They produced well for all of that, but the squirrels picked us clean before they even ripened.
Those big red apples seem to be growing on the same trees as the more yellow and red apples, though the more red ones are located at the top of the tree....not sure what kind it is but those were the trees we zeroed in on. The fruit was bigger than the other varieties we found, it was less bug eaten and the flavor was out of this world. Thin skins, crisp but not too hard nor too soft, excellent fine texture(not a bit mealy), white flesh, tons of juice and the flavor is a sweet/tart with plenty of that wild and clean flavor we've only tasted on the apples from the mountains.
We also came upon trees where this type of apple was clearly grafted in, but that was in someone's actual yard, though they could not tell us the type or who grafted it, as it was an ancient tree.
I stepped out in the yard last night~the stars were out by the billions and so bright I felt I could reach out and touch them!!!~and I could smell these apples on the night air....heavenly, it was. I'm betting the wild animals for a mile around could smell those apples.