Applejack was trying to focus in her apple harvest routine:
Step one: “place baskets around the tree”
Step two: “give a good buck to the tree”
Step three: “pick up baskets”
Step four: “rinse and repeat”
Thing was: step two usually required an Earth Pony to focus, which was something that Applejack was currently unable to do, which in turn had her wasting hunks of time on the usually unnecessary step two-and-a-half: “pick up the apples that your lack of focus made fall outside the baskets.”

It wasn’t until she came to a Grand Alexander tree and then managed to get more of the jumbo apples on her head than on the baskets that she finally accepted defeat, let herself collapse and let her mind roam.

Just this morning, she had received the replies to those drops of blood she had sent on the mail last week. And while her own had been ‘good news’, Applebloom’s... hadn’t.

And well, it was good news for the Ponyville branch of the Apple clan: it wouldn’t be like the Apple orchards at Trottingham some twenty years ago, when the four Apple mares living there all failed to ever get pregnant, and had to eventually accept a very fertile Orange mare moving in with six Orange foals. Well, not like the Apples were in bad relations with their sister clan, but it still hurt to loose an orchard to the city dwellers.

Anyway: Applejack now knew for certain that she would be able to pop out Apple foals to keep up the Ponyville farm. That was okay, as her lifeplans had always included trying to have her legal minimum of two foals. What her plans hadn’t included had been for her to not stop there: Applebloom had always been much more marvelled by foals than Applejack, and Applejack had been hopping that Applebloom would be the one to fill the house with little ones.

What would Applejack do now?

Well, for starters she would have to go and get herself into a stallion’s service schedule. And that wouldn’t be easy for her: the Apples had been the founders of the town, and with their luck of having at least a stallion per generation, pretty much the entire town was too close to blood to be good. Just her Papa had some thirty foals, and her Grandpa had closer to fifty!

But she would need a big, strong stallion for her to pop out some good Apple foals. Too bad that Big Mac, the strongest pony in Ponyville, happened to be her direct brother.

So... Snowflake...?
Applejack rapidly shock her head free from such motion: he sure was a mighty piece of eye-candy, and in fact the protagonist of many of her late-night fantasies, but Snowflake wasn’t naturally strong. He was rather a nutter who kept popping muscle stimulants, and as rumour had it, his business end was so small and so underdeveloped that he was unable to even make it work half of the time. Besides, his four foals to date were all subpar: the two retards Snips and Snails, the severely underweight Featherweight and Peppermint Twist, who had been born with leporine lip. Too bad for those foals, but Applejack was far from desperate enough to get subpar blood for her clan.
Well, she could always march into City Hall and pay five bits for a list of stallions with open spots and no consanguinity with her. It would then just be contacting them and getting in agreement for a spot on a service schedule.

But, of course, that would take her being married. Unmarried mares could not get themselves legally serviced. Well, that would just take having a word with Big Mac: by his own word, he was in no risk of falling in love with any of the mares he was currently servicing, and with no other prospects, he was in little risk on missing on a love marriage. After all, normal marriage was little else than a legal declaration between two ponies that they would both care of the foals birthed by the number of mares in the relationship. Applejack had hoped for a love marriage, just like any little filly, but she knew how rare those were: Lyra and Bon-Bon last year, then the Cakes the year before that, then Derpy and Time Turner four years ago. Thus, she may marry her brother.

But then: what about Applebloom?

After thinking about it for a while, Applejack thought about a different approach: she could talk to Applebloom, then wait the four years left until Applebloom was legal to marry, and if Applebloom didn’t have marriage prospects, she would marry her. Hay, perhaps she could check how the flower sisters had done it and then the three Apple siblings could all marry each other!

Finally with a plan in mind, Applejack could stand up again and finish her daily chores as usual.

Author's Note

After seeing how the chapter had come out, I thought about renaming it “Sweet Apple Banjoes”, but refrained by considering it too revealing. Besides: YUCK! THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!