I’ve got four of them about the same age as yours. I agree they aren’t what I thought they would be.
I shake mine hard as I go by and some drop off, they are smaller fruit so hang on pretty good.
I’ve got plenty of room and plenty of fruit trees, they hang like Droptine, Golden Hornet, All Winter Hangover and many others that are touted to be very late season fruit.
I planted mine to do exactly that, hold way into winter crazy slow drop even into March.
My goal was to have fruit dropping from late summer deep into winter, they fill that space.
If you don’t really want way late fruit to help wildlife in winter don’t plant them.
Lots of late hangers drop really really slow, I would rather have that than just a bare wildlife orchard all through winter, but that’s just my personal opinion.
The Franklin was marketed as a wonder apple that would produce crazy heavy fruit loads, taste like Honeycrisp, have a slow steady drop through fall into winter and be a crazy good cider apple like Hewes/Virginia crab.
Mine have not lived up to that.
Deer/coon/birds still eat them so it’s not a loss, just not what I expected out of them.
