By Craig Thomas Naylor
I was in love after the first bite: creamy flesh with golden indigo skin, juices exploding in my mouth. I’d never experienced such flavor!
I’d walked through the small food co-op, past the Golden and Red Delicious, the Rome Beauty and Granny Smith, and there was an apple new to me: an Arkansas Black, sitting there as if saying, “Hello, take me home.” I’d never tasted them so I bought a couple and, after biting into one, went back and bought more. And so began my journey studying old-time apples.
Fast forward to 2001: My wife and I moved from Montana to Virginia for a decade of school teaching. I tracked down a pomologist (an apple expert), a specialist in heirloom varieties. This was back in the days when we used an archaic device known as a phone book and called information and asked a real person to help you find a number. I dialed Tom Burford and, after a few pleasantries, asked what would be a good tree to plant in my new home near Fredericksburg.
The silence was almost deafening and I imagined him saying to himself, Oh, good grief, not another one! Finally, he asked, “What’s your favorite apple?” “Arkansas Black,” I replied. Another silence. “Hmm,” he said, “I guess you do know a little about apples. I’m giving a presentation at Monticello in two weeks. Come over, listen, and we’ll visit.”
And I saw this short man stand in front of about sixty people, hold up an apple, and talk about how Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved servants grew them for him, how they were pressed into fresh cider, a common beverage since water was often polluted and unsafe to drink. Mr. Burford spoke about how America wouldn’t be the same without the apple. It was a staple feed for livestock in the winter, a food source for people that would store through lean and bitter months, and how Johnny Appleseed was really a land developer because planting apple trees was an acceptable form of development to prove rights to a homestead claim. Mr. Burford also apologized that, out of the 7500 known varieties of apples in the world, he only had time to share twenty-five. A few years back, he compiled his pomological knowledge into a beautiful book, “Apples of North America.”
I was fascinated by Mr. Burford’s talk and planted a few in my yard.
After a decade in the South teaching music and immersed in Civil and Revolutionary War history, we returned to Montana and built a home on a remnant of my wife’s great-grand-parents’ homestead.
I fenced three-quarters of an acre for our garden and orchard and dug into the history of apples in Montana. I learned that, until Prohibition ended the fermented cider business, the Bitterroot Valley was one of the premier apple regions of the country. To keep markets open, the growers invented a new slogan: An apple a day keeps the doctor away! Happily, the orchards have returned to the Bitterroot and are rippling out to the Flathead Lake and other regions.
I selected my apple trees and planted fifty, all heirloom varieties. It took a decade for them to get established but now, as I trim and tend them, I imagine the travails of my ancestors as they brought seeds and cuttings to their new home in North America.
It could be that one of my great-grandparents brought over the full-flavored and impudent Ashmead’s Kernel. “This is not an apple for wimps!” said Mr. Burford. It’s a fruit grown originally by Dr. Ashmead in Gloucester, England.
The Roxbury Russet was the first apple named in America, around 1650, and came from a single tree in a suburb south of Boston. It was so popular that, as people took cuttings to graft into their orchards, they took so many they killed the original tree! It makes a wonderful pie.
The most beautiful apple in my orchard is the Black Oxford, with ripens to a deep indigo with white spots like a starry night. It was discovered in Maine over a century ago.
Apple breeder Albert Etter (1872–1950) developed the sassy Wickson Crab. Many are surprised to hear that some apples are patented. This is one.
The Prairie Spy, yellow blushed pink as if caught with its hands in the cookie jar, is one of the earliest apple varieties developed by the University of Minnesota. It was selected in 1923 from seeds planted in 1914, and introduced commercially in 1940. Bred to be cold hardy for the Plains, it is perfect for my Montana plot.
And, of course, I planted Arkansas Black, which originated in the Ozarks around 1870. I’m sad to say the ones I grow do not compare to those I tasted so many years ago. I guess my terroir, my blend of soil and climate just isn’t the same.
My orchard is a composite of American history, a melding of fruit from all regions of the United States. These apples carry important genetic stock that may, in future years, be useful in propagating new varieties like the Cosmic Crisp. They are preserved by the Cornell University Orchards, the Montana Heritage Orchard program, the University of Idaho Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center, and growers like me.
I find that these older apples mean more to me as I, too, become heritage. These days I find myself looking back as much as forward, and the history of these miraculous fruits connect me to my parents, my grandparents, and the generations before who emigrated from Europe and scratched out a living on the Plains, often in hard times.
So, this fall, drop by your local farmers’ market and check out the apple growers. Try some you’ve never heard of and, if you find Roxbury Russet, buy some and bake a pie for the most mouth-watering treat you’ve ever tasted. If you find Arkansas Blacks, add a few to the pie but keep some in the fridge. They’re like cannon balls when first picked, but like we elders, soften as we age. Along about December, pull one out, set it on the counter for a day to warm up and become aromatic, then experience a bit of American history like never before. Your taste buds will thank you. MSN
