Originally Posted on TheRecord.com
WELLESLEY TOWNSHIP — One of the most unusual orchards around is hidden in the farmland between Kitchener and Stratford.
To get there you take a winding gravel driveway off Carmel-Koch Road, and you’ll see a two-storey house with small trees planted on the flat land around.
They’re not much to look at in November: bare, with a silvery coating of ice around the slender branches. But they’re incredibly rare.
They are heritage crabapple trees, with masses of brilliant white blossoms in the spring. Their deep-red fruit, about the size of a cherry, is the key ingredient of Appleflats crabapple jelly and mixers.
The company, owned by brothers Glen and Alex Smyth, was featured as a signature local food business at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. Photo: Peter Lee, Waterloo Region Record
Visitors were able to taste the jelly and mixer, along with many other treats produced across Ontario.
Appleflats combines the tart juice of the crabapple with a little sugar to make a drink mixer and — with the addition of pectin — crabapple jelly.