Author's Note
I thought about waiting until April Fools' Day to post this, but decided to just go ahead and post it now. Please keep the author in mind when reading it. ;)
Yuck!
One day, Applejack was walking through her orchard. "What a beautiful day!" she said to herself. "I think I'll eat an apple."
So she looked around at the trees, chose one that she thought was good for some reason, and bucked it. The entire tree's crop of apples came crashing down on her at once, and she only just dodged them.
"Wow, that was close," Applejack thought. Suddenly she wasn't sure bucking apples was such a good idea. It seemed unsafe.
"Well, at least I got an apple," she thought, and picked a disgusting-looking apple up off the ground. "This looks good, because I like apples for some reason," she said.
She took a bite, but to her surprise, it didn't taste good. She looked at the apple and there were mealworms in it. "Yuck!" she shouted, and scraped mealworms off her tongue with her hoof. She tried another apple and the same thing happened again.
"That's it, I'm not growing apples anymore!" she said. "They're terrible!" She went back home and told her family that she quit. They could join her or not, but she would no longer grow apples with the apple farm.
"But what can we do instead?" Apple Bloom asked. "Our family's always grown apples. We're the Apple family!"
"I don't like this," Granny Smith said.
"Don't worry, it'll be fine!" Applejack said. "We can just grow something else instead!"
"Like what?" Apple Bloom asked.
Applejack thought for a moment. "Like strawberries!" she said. "Strawberries are sweet, juicy, and delicious! Everypony would love strawberries!"
"Strawberries?" Granny Smith said. "That does sound better than apples."
So the Apple family set to work knocking down all their trees and throwing out all their disgusting apples. They tried to give them to ponies in Ponyville, but nopony wanted them because they were too disgusting.
It took a long time to destroy their entire orchard, but once they'd done it and thrown all their awful apples in the dump, they started to plant strawberry plants. "Wow, these are great!" Apple Bloom said. "We should have been growing strawberries all along!"
"I know, right?" Applejack said.
While they were waiting for the strawberries to grow, the Apple family decided that they needed to make some other changes, too. After all, if they weren’t going to be selling apples anymore, the “Apple family” moniker no longer made sense. They announced their next move to a crowd in Ponyville.
“From now on, my name will be Berryjack!” the former Applejack said.
“And I’ll be Berry Bloom!” the former Apple Bloom said.
“Berry Mac!” the former Big Mac said.
“And I’m Berry Smith,” the former Granny Smith said.
“Together, we’re the Berry family!” Berryjack finished.
“Those are definitely better names than you had before,” Twilight said. “I’m glad you decided to take a step to improve yourselves!”
Eventually, the strawberries were ripe. The Berry family went around their property together and collected all of them in baskets.
“Wow, this is so much better than apple bucking!” Berryjack said. “And safer!”
“How could we have ever thought apples were better?” Berry Bloom said.
“Apples? Yuuuck,” Berry Mac said.
Once all the strawberries had been collected, the Berry family began to sell them to the town.
“Yay!” Fluttershy said. “I’ve always loved strawberries! I just pretended to like apples because you’re my friend.” She covered her mouth as if regretting what she'd just said, then added more quietly, “I hope you don’t mind.”
The rest of Berryjack’s friends were less reserved about their praise.
“Strawberries are so much more fabulous than apples, darling,” Rarity said.
“Forget 20% cooler,” Rainbow Dash said. “They’re 1000% cooler!”
“It's even been scientifically proven,” Twilight agreed.
“Time for a berry party!” Pinkie Pie said, and she threw a party to celebrate the Berry family’s new business.
As the days went on, the Berry family made sale after sale after sale. Before long, it was time for their annual cider tradition.
“I hope everypony will like strawberry cider,” Berryjack said.
“Are you joking? It’s made of strawberries! Of course they’ll like it!” Berry Smith said.
And they did. In fact, the strawberry cider sold much better than their gross apple cider ever did. Even I went and got some...and then went back for seconds.
Before long, the Berry family was rich! They even had to plant more strawberries in the middle of the season just to meet demand.
And then a miracle happened. As they were picking strawberries from their second crop, their flanks began to glow and all four rose into the air.
“What’s happening?” Berry Bloom asked. The situation seemed strangely familiar.
“I don’t know,” Berryjack said.
There was a flash, and then they floated back to the ground again.
“Your cutie mark!” Berry Bloom said.
“Yours, too!” Berryjack said.
“What about mine?” Berry Smith asked.
“Yup!” Berry Mac said.
All of their cutie marks had changed to depict strawberries instead of apples, while otherwise remaining mostly the same - Berryjack’s cutie mark depicted three strawberries, Berry Mac’s depicted a strawberry cut in half, etc.
“Wow, these are so much better than our original cutie marks!” Berry Bloom said, looking in a mirror at her own cutie mark, which still featured a shield, but now with a strawberry on it.
“Definitely,” Berry Smith said. At a glance, her cutie mark still seemed basically the same, but she just knew that it was now a strawberry pie instead of an apple one.
Word began to get out to other apple farms that strawberries were selling significantly better than apples. Some of them stubbornly chose to keep farming apples despite this, but others made the right choice and switched to strawberries. Thanks to these changes, the fruit industry was booming.
When the Berry family and the other berry farms sent in their taxes for the year, Celestia was surprised to find that they had contributed much more than expected. Upon reviewing their income statements, she made a decision.
“From this day forward, farming apples is now strictly prohibited! All apple farms must switch to strawberries under penalty of imprisonment in Tartarus!” Celestia announced, sure that this would increase the amount of taxes paid to the royal treasury.
The last apple farm holdouts were forced to comply, and from then on apples were no longer grown anywhere in Equestria. The orchards were destroyed, down to the last seed, and with nopony growing them anymore, apples finally went extinct.
The End
