The barn Doug heads inside is indistinguishable from many of the other barns dotting the Apple landscape. Single story, sloping roof that nearly makes a circle, and wide double doors that split horizontally. Regularly spaced glass windows, three to a side, that provide plenty of light within. Pink walls, white trim, and purple roof, just like the main farmhouse. He doesn’t need to duck to get inside, spotting Granny Smith along one of the walls. She’s standing next to a stack of papers and in front of row upon row of wooden crates. Each crate has the lid off and a pile of nails, a hammer with a bright green handle instead of the wooden brown of his own.

The green mare looks up as he walks inside, eyeing him for a few long seconds. Her muzzle curls to the slightest of disappointed frowns, and Doug almost immediately regrets whatever it is he did, or didn’t do, to draw her ire. He stops, glancing around the barn, though nothing jumps out at him.

“Fergettin’ suntin’?” Granny asks, her accent especially difficult to make out.

Almost like she’s doing it intentionally. Come on, it can’t be this difficult. Doug almost slaps himself as he turns all the way around. Duh. The apples! What did you think you were coming in here to do? “Just anywhere?” Doug asks, looking at the wide open space in the center of the barn.

Granny Smith’s eyes narrow, her inspection of Doug seeming to double in intensity. “Hmm,” she mutters to herself, a foreleg almost audibly creaking as it comes up to stroke her chin. “How’s’about,” she drawls out, “you do what’chu think is best.”

“Um, sure,” Doug says, stepping outside to grab the first two of the forty baskets.

“You’ll have to pardon mah old ears,” Granny Smith says, loudly enough for Doug to hear her outside, her accent getting a little easier to understand. “They ain’t what they used to be in mah younger years. Mah grandfoals, they always say either ‘Eeyup,’ or ‘Nnope’, and it’s easy to tell apart. But did you say, ‘um, sure’ or ‘yes, ma’am’?”

Doug grimaces to himself as he drops off the two baskets, his legs starting to protest again. “Pretty sure I said ‘um, sure’.”

Granny Smith raises an eyebrow. “You sure you didn’t say, ‘yes, ma’am?’”

“Yes, ma’am,” Doug replies, briskly walking out for a second pair. Should I have said ‘eeyup’ there? Copying their accent feels wrong, like I’m making fun of them.

“Most ponies would have said ‘yes, ma’am,’” Granny Smith continues.

“Well,” Doug says wryly, motioning to himself, “as you can clearly see, I’m not most ponies.”

“Most ponies would have said that they said, ‘yes, ma’am,’, too,” Granny Smith says to herself, as if she didn’t hear Doug. She looks to be contemplating this conundrum for a long time, long enough for Doug to bring all the baskets inside, and he is happy to let her think. It gives him time to stretch his arms and legs again while he takes a look at the papers. Order forms, actually, detailing how many crates of what kind of apples need to go to each person or business.

Even when he finishes stretching she still sits there looking pensive. Is there more to this test? Do what I think is best? He grabs the first form. Three crates of Red Delicious, two of Granny Smith, for the Hayburger in Ponyville. Doug turns to the baskets. Already sorted by type, since each basket got filled by one tree, and one crate gets about two baskets worth of apples. He drags three crates over, about to dump the first basket of Red Delicious inside when Granny Smith clears her throat. Doug freezes, holding the basket in midair, as he turns to the green mare.

“Here at Sweet Apple Acres,” Granny Smith explains in a slow, patient voice; yet, behind that voice, Doug can detect a biting undercurrent that brooks no disagreement. That this is how things have been done, are done, and will be done, here at Sweet Apple Acres. “We only sell the finest apples.” She leisurely walks up to the closest basket, an effortless push of her hoof toppling it over. Red Delicious spill onto the hard packed ground, though none seem dirtied by the contact. “Now,” she demands in that uncontestable voice of hers, “how would you go about figurin’ that out?”

“Well,” Doug says, setting the basket down before dropping to sit cross-legged in between the apples and the crates, “you’ll have to forgive me, since I’m making this up as I go along, but I would start with the exterior. How does the apple look.” He grabs the closest apple, holding it up. He rubs it on his chest, though the action barely affects the shine. “It should be clean. Unblemished, no visible marks or punctures.” He spins the apple around, inspecting it from every angle. “I would say this one looks pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Granny Smith mimes, raising an eyebrow. “It’s either an ‘eeyup’ or a ‘nnope’. No hedgin’, gotta make up your mind.”

“This one is a yes, then,” Doug says, moving to place it in the crate. He stops when Granny Smith clears her throat again. Did I do something wrong? Or is there more I need to explain?

Granny Smith motions to one of the apples next to Doug. He picks it up. When it fell from the tree it must have landed on the side of the basket, gouging a large groove into the red skin. “What would you do with an apple that ain’t perfect?”

“Well, you’d still have to test the rest of it,” Doug says, spinning the apple around to look at the undamaged sections. “Make sure it’s still good. And while you might not sell those apples at the marketplace, or ship them for grocers or something, you could still get some use out of it.” He sets it off to the side.

Granny Smith gives the most imperceptible of nods.

Doug continues, holding up his first apple. He starts to feel more confident as he explains, “Now, whether or not an apple looks good is relatively easy to determine. And while the visual side might be important, and a big determiner of taste, it’s not the most important. Not by a long shot. The most important would be what lies underneath.” He gives the apple a testing squeeze, methodically working his way around the exterior. “No noticeable bruises or depressions, or areas where the flesh underneath feels mealy or soft.” His lips purse as he tries to think of any other ways he would inspect the apple. Worms? There’d be a hole or something.

He goes to place it inside the crate, hesitating slightly.

“Can also use smell,” Granny Smith says with a frown, plainly showing her disappointment that he wasn’t able to correctly identify every sense they use.

“Ah,” Doug says, nodding. “Unfortunately, my sense of smell isn’t very refined. I might be able to tell if something is bad, but only after it’s gotten so rotten that it’d be obvious just by looking at it.” He glances around at the freshly harvested apples. “I doubt I could discern between any of these apple’s smells.” He offers a grim smile, a short, “Sorry,” and goes to place the apple in the crate, hesitating again.

This time, Granny Smith makes no move to stop him. He places it inside, turning back to the green mare.

Granny Smith rolls two apples to him. “And if there was somethin’ wrong?”

“Well,” Doug says, picking up the two apples. Both look good, though he quickly finds a light spot on one of them. The good one he puts in the crate. He peels away the skin of the other with a fingernail, exposing the bruised flesh underneath. “You could cut away the bad part. But that leaves a gaping hole, which would quickly spoil as well. You could throw them away, or find something else to do with it. Could ignore it, eat it anyway.”

Granny Smith takes a long look at him before slowly nodding. She picks up an apple, with multiple visible bruises. “Apples that ain’t right on the inside? Those bad apples we don’t throw away. We grind ‘em up to make applesauce, or we bake ‘em into breads and pies. Don’t matter what an apple looks like on the outside. If it’s no good on the inside, you can’t keep it. All it’ll do for your trouble is spoil the rest of the barrel.” She starts a pile off to the side, one Doug hopes won't get much bigger.

Doug adds, “I guess you could also use them to feed the pigs.”

“Don’t keep pigs ‘round here,” Granny Smith says neutrally. She points to the apple by his side, the one with a large gouge. “Some apples, though, they just got a scratch on ‘em. Rest of ‘em’s still good.” She motions to the side, and Doug rolls it further away, making space for the large pile of apples they will likely end up with. “Some got a scratch that’s a bit bigger’n most. It took a little more of the apple away.”

“Okay,” Doug says, noticing how Granny Smith is starting to take longer, deeper breaths. He continues sorting through the apples; either he was unlucky earlier, or Granny Smith’s keen eye picked them out to make a point, but the vast majority of the apples are spotless and quickly find their way into the crate.

“You realize,” Granny Smith says quietly, “that this ain’t only about apples, right?”

Doug gulps. I guess it could be taken as a metaphor. For life? Or for something more personal? Or is she talking about how she’s using this work to size me up? “Afraid I don’t quite understand, ma’am.”

“Mm,” Granny Smith demurs, resting her head on her hoof. It slowly scratches at her chin as she considers. It’s not that she looks like she doesn’t believe Doug, more that she suspects he knows a little more than he’s letting on.

Doug stonewalls, his expression carefully neutral, as he sorts through the pile.

“If the season’s right,” the venerable mare slowly continues after the long pause, “we take those nicked apples and make cider, fresh pressed from the farm.” She gets a far-off look in her eyes, a hoof waving as if to indicate a vast crowd. “Always a hit, ponies’ll line up for hours just to get a single glass. If it ain’t the right season, we barrel it up, let it age. Some we let get harder’n others.” She glances over at Doug, catching his eye as he finishes sorting the first basket. “You like hard ciders?”

“Mm,” Doug rumbles as he considers, eventually shaking his head no. “Can’t say I’ve tried very many. Never cared much for alcohol, but that’s mostly cheap beers, or some of the more expensive stouts. Prefer vodka and whiskey, mixed with something else.”

“Well, there’s one other, when we want to make somethin’ a bit stronger.” Granny Smith nods along, watching Doug’s intrigued look as he sorts through the second basket. “We wait till winter. Leave it out, let it get real cold, then scrape the ice off. ‘Freeze distilled’, if ya wanna get fancy with the names.” She cocks her head slightly as she focuses on Doug. “Ya know what that makes?”

“No, ma’am,” Doug says. More highly concentrated alcohol in your cider? Actually sounds pretty good.

“Well,” Granny Smith says as she reclines back, content to watch Doug sort through the apples and make sure he’s doing it right, “Ah’ll let you brew on that for a little while.”

Next Chapter: Ch. 21 - Dusktoe Estimated time remaining: 13 Hours, 47 Minutes