Counting The Days Til Apple Season?

Looking for something to do this winter while you’re waiting for the apple trees to bloom once again? We can suggest a few good apple activities to pass the time when the temperatures are frigid and the nights long and dark.

READ

• Apples and the Art of Detection, by John Bunker. In case you haven’t read it yet, this is your opportunity to hear more about the John’s adventures in tracking down and saving many of the apples offered in our CSA. Full of pictures and paintings, John’s quirky drawings, stories of Maine’s quirky orchardists and the kind of history they never taught you in school, this book will entertain you and teach you how to top work your favorite varieties next spring. You can order it here.

• Uncultivated: Wild Apples, Real Cider, and the Complicated Art of Making a Living, by Andy Brennan. John read this book before it was published and has been recommending it to apple and cider devotees as well as friends and acquaintances who don’t care a thing about apples ever since. I am just getting around to reading it now, and I finally understand why he is so enthusiastic. Andy (a quirky NY orchardist) is an excellent writer, an engaging story teller, and a deep and daring thinker about human-plant relationships, agriculture, economy and culture. His edgy ideas challenge me, often make me uncomfortable and keep me laughing. This book is as good as a bottle of Andy’s cider. One place you can order it is here.

• Wild Apples, by Henry David Thoreau. Not exactly hot off the presses, but this essay published in 1862 is by far our favorite piece of writing by Thoreau. In it he laments the demise of the foraging culture and the growth of the commercial apple industry. To Thoreau his favorite fruit was not only a symbol of peace but also a symbol of the country’s connection with the land. He warns Americans, who were at the time, engaged in an “uncivilized” war, of losing their connection with the soil because once lost, there was no going back. There are lots of places to purchase this essay, but you can download it for free here.

• Subscribe to Malus, a quarterly print zine featuring “bittersharp criticism and commentary by America's great cider thinkers”. In Malus cider and social justice speak a common language. The articles are informative and provocative - ok, they are also kinda geeky. The poetry is charming. You can subscribe here.

LISTEN

• 2020 Heritage Orchard Conference. Listen to the webinars recorded from The Heritage Orchard Conference hosted by the University of Idaho’s Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center. The conference attracts a diverse group of heritage tree fruit enthusiasts for presentations ranging from heritage fruit exploration to apple identification. You can find them all here.

• Apple Identification 101, a talk by by John Bunker, live streamed from the 2020 virtual Common Ground Fair. Find it by visiting the MOFGA website here. The talk took place at 1:00 pm Friday so you’ll have to fast forward through some other Friday talks to find it..

• An Apple History of Maine, a talk by John Bunker for the Maine Historical Society’s “Maine at 200” Series recorded on October 14, 2020. John’s presentation draws from the published and unpublished writings of Mainers over the past 200 years to connect the dots between the agricultural history of Maine and the importance of the apple in that history. A different kind of presentation than John usually gives. Listen here.

• The Maine Heritage Orchard: What is it and Why Should We Care?, a talk by John Bunker for the Skidompha Library”s “Chats with Champions” series, recorded October 29, 2020. In this talk you can hear John read Sufi poetry, talk about saving old apples, and sing. That ought to melt the snow in your orchard. Click here.

COUNT

• the days until the CSA begins on the exquisite 2020 Maine Heritage Orchard Calendar. The calendar features the amazing and wholly original photography of William Mullan whose pictures uncover the wonder and beauty in the common place, the scarred, the misshapen and the tossed aside. Once you view an apple through William’s lens, you will never see apples the same way again. Buy one for yourself or lots for your apple-loving friends here. You will be supporting the Maine Heritage Orchard with your purchase. (And don’t wait to order. Samin Nosrat tweeted about this calendar, and they sold out instantly. More are being printed.)

2020 Heritage Orchard Conference

Join Apple Detectives John Bunker and David Benscoter in the first of a series of webinars on orcharding this Wednesday, August 19 from 1-2:30 EDT.  The webinars are part of The Heritage Orchard Conference established by the University of Idaho’s Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center. The conference attracts a diverse group of heritage tree fruit enthusiasts for presentations ranging from heritage fruit exploration to apple identification.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s conference will be a free monthly webinar series. The series will begin in August 2020 and continue through April 2021, with topics ranging from restoration pruning to DNA profiling of varieties. Tune into the Zoom webinars by registering today. You will be able to submit questions through our moderator to be directed to the speaker during the Q&A session at the end of the presentation. All webinars will be recorded and available for viewing following the live presentations.

Aug. 19 — 1-2:30 p.m. EDT

Sleuthing for Lost Apples: Lessons from the Experts

Panel Discussion: David Benscoter of The Lost Apple Project, John Bunker of Maine Heritage Orchard
Moderator: Kyle Nagy of University of Idaho

The Pandemic and the Ancient Apple Tree

by John Bunker

Magnificent, ancient apple trees can still be found scattered throughout much of Maine.  Look for them behind old barns, next to abandoned cellar holes, along roadsides nestled in thickets, sometimes even beside a gas station or a convenience store parking lot.  The ancient apple trees of Maine were spreading their branches and producing bountiful crops even before Maine joined the Union two hundred years ago. They are the survivors, the ones who lived through the summer of 1816 when there was no summer; they are the ones who lived through half a dozen famously cold test winters, including the brutal 1933-34; they lived through the hurricane of 1938, the drought of 1947, not to mention waves of gypsy moth, browntail moth, scab, fireblight, decades of acid rain, polluted water and everything else. As we struggle to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, we might consider taking a look at these old apple trees. There’s a chance that everything we need to know about survival, these trees have known for millennia.

Here are a few tips gleaned from the trees themselves.

1. Don’t move. You don’t need to convince an old apple tree about the value of “shelter in place.” They’ve been perfectly content to stand in one spot for two hundred years. They’re well aware that everything you need in life is right here at home. They know that everything you need to learn you can learn wherever you are. If you’re willing to stay put, as the old jazz standard says, “you’ll see your castles in Spain, through your windowpane, back in your own backyard.” As Ram Dass liked to say, “Be here now.”  Or as Gary Snyder put it, “Don’t move.”

2. Build community. The old apple trees are masters at creating community right where they are. They understand the value of deep roots.  They are the ultimate collaborators. They know well the folly of competition. They share everything. They hoard nothing.  Often I’ll come across one of these old trees with “perfect” looking fruit.  It looks like it came from the grocery store cooler. Never sprayed, never pruned, never fertilized, living in a tangle of grasses, goldenrod, yarrow, milkweed, elderberries, alders, even white pine. How do they do it? At first glance it looks like they’re living in chaos. But they’re not.  They’ve created a community above and below ground with an organization so elegant and so complex that we humans may never understand it. It’s a balanced ecosystem. There they are living in harmony, sharing their fruit and everything else, feeding and healing one another, all the while communicating through their own solar-powered subterranean original version of the World Wide Web.    

3. Waste not want not. You don’t need to tell an old apple tree about being conservative.  They don’t need a pandemic to get that.  Apple trees are the true conservatives.  They conserve everything. They put the so-called human conservatives to shame. Give them a dot of land, a scratch of soil, a few drops of water, a breath of air and they will thrive. In times of drought, they simply slow down their growth; in times of plenty, they put on new wood and produce great crops of fruit. They’ve been living that way for hundreds of thousands of years.  Not only that, surprisingly enough they don’t wreck the air and the water they use. They improve it and pass it along even cleaner than it was. 

4. Eat local. To the old apple, the local food system is the secure food system. They have no desire to obtain food from away. They prefer the fresh produce they can get right here at home. It’s always available, it’s good for you, and it has no carbon footprint. They are the ultimate local food geeks. They also compost everything: leaves, twigs, branches, bark, even old logs, uneaten fruit and the occasional squirrel or deer carcass. Nothing gets flushed down the drain or dumped into the river. It all gets grown right here and eaten right here.  They are the ultimate organic gardeners participating in the perfect secure food system.

5. Grace and flexibility. The old apple trees are the epitome of grace and flexibility. Give them a heavy, wet, spring snow storm or a massive crop of fruit and they just bend. There’s an old medieval saying, “The mo appelen the tree bereth the more she boweth to the folk.” We should all be practicing bowing these days. Bowing is far more graceful than shaking hands anyway. When the weight is too great, here and there the occasional branch gives way rather than taking down the whole tree. That’s just nature’s pruning. When a hungry bear or porcupine creates a mess up high, the tree sees it as a growth opportunity.  The fallen branches and debris become compost and by next year you’ll find all this fresh young growth up in the tree where it recently looked like destruction. A few years later that young growth will translate into strong young branches and lots of fruit.  When the weight is too great, the old trees simply lay down. Next summer one of the younger branches will rise to become a fresh new vertical trunk.  The old stump eventually rots away but the tree lives on.    

To the ancient apple tree, there’s nothing adverse about adversity. It’s just life. Would that we all could enjoy traveling less, enjoying our yards and our neighbors more, tending our gardens, eating local and expressing grace in everything we do. If you look closely, you might see the old apple trees smile as they watch us bicker endlessly about who’s right, who’s wrong and who’s to blame. To the old apple tree, all facts are neutral. Bickering only distracts us from healing life’s inevitable wounds with new wood. As we rebuild civilization after the pandemic tide goes out, perhaps we could all take a few hints from the old apple tree. 

(To be published in Malus, Issue #9. For more information on Malus, visit WWW.MALUSZINE.COM)

Apple Farming in Farmington

Deane - an all-purpose apple - as good as a Mac but without the scab.

Franklin County was once the epicenter of apples in Maine. If you live in the county, and are curious about its illustrious apple history, you can satisfy that curiosity by joining John Bunker on Thursday, February 20th at 6:30 PM at Twice Told Tales, 155 Main St. in Farmington. John will be reading from his new book, Apples and the Art of Detection, and spinning tales about the historic apples that originated in the area: Deane, Franklin Sweet, Boardman, Hoyt Sweet, Russell and the elusive and much sought-after Sarah. He is on the look out for all of these, so if you know of old grafted trees, bring along any maps, photos and lore that may help him track them down. Copies of his book will be for sale.

Please note the new date (Thursday, February 20 at 6:30) of this talk which was postponed due to snow.

Talking Apples in Newcastle, January 9, 2020

Even though the 2019 apple season is behind us and the trees are taking a rest for a few months, the fruit explorers in Maine are still hard at it identifying apples that they collected (or were sent to them) during the fall. If you are feeling a bit of cabin fever and need an excuse to get out of the house, come hear John Bunker talk about his adventures tracking down old apples in Maine on January 9 in Newcastle. John will read from his new book, Apples and the Art of Detection. He will also have copies of the book for sale. The talk which is sponsored by The Old Bristol Garden Club is a free event open to the public. It will take place at 1:30 at the 2nd Congregational Church which is the red brick building on Business Rte 1.  There is ample parking in the rear of the church. The talk will be in the downstairs meeting room that can be accessed by either door on the basement side facing south.

APPLES AND THE ART OF DETECTION

Searching for the perfect gift for that apple lover on your holiday list? How about a copy of John’s new book, Apples and the Art of Detection? In it John channels his inner Sherlock Holmes as he searches through Maine’s past and present tracking down historic, unusual and occasionally illusive apple varieties and their stories. Part travelogue, part mystery and part how-to manual, this book will take you for a ride across Maine and leave you excited to start searching for and identifying the old apple trees in your own neighborhood. It may even inspire you to reflect on how you live in the world and the notion of living your passion. One reviewer called it “a great read even for people who somehow have not been bitten by the heirloom apple bug”. Illustrated with hundreds of photos, as well as John’s signature cartoons and paintings of all the iconic Maine apples. 407 pages in full color.

You can purchase Apples and the Art of Detection directly from our on-line store or from the fantastic independent bookstores and retailers listed below You can’t buy the book on Amazon (or at least we hope not).

• Blue Hill Books: Blue Hill

• Compass Rose Books: Castine

• DDG Booksellers: Farmington

• Gulf of Maine Books: Brunswick

• Left Bank Books: Belfast

• Rabelais Books: Biddeford

• Sherman’s: Bar Harbor, Boothbay, Camden, Damariscotta, Freeport, Portland

• Perennial Cider Bar: Belfast

• Rosemont Market: Portland

• Golden Russet Cafe & Grocery: Rhinebeck, NY

John Bunker's Apple Pie

Back in September, Lincolnville filmmaker Josh Gerritson spent a morning on Super Chilly Farm talking to John about all things apple and filming him as he picked fruit and made it into a pie. Film maker and food write Aube Giroux whittled down the hours of footage into this sweet homage to the apple pie for the PBS series, Kitchen Vignettes. While John doesn’t divulge the specific quantities of apples or spices that he uses, it is clear that the key ingredient for a perfect apple pie is love.