Today was another clear blue March day—second in a row. Although it wasn’t much above freezing, all day, Finley Lane is mostly snow-free. There’s still a lot of snow in the shade and in the woods, but another week or two like this, and that will all disappear.
I wanted to be pruning but decided to drive north to Wilton to collect scionwood from what may be the last “Sarah” apple tree on the planet. I made several stops along the way including a favorite old tree in an abandoned field next to a body shop in Norridgewock which I think might be an old, local cultivar called ‘Muskmelon Sweet.’ The tree is beginning to do battle with some prickly multi-flora rose (Rosa multiflora) so I took a bit of time to snip off twenty or thirty beefy rose stems coming out of the snow. (Spring haircut!) I also stopped at Murph’s (Lane Road Orchard) in New Sharon to collect some Hidden Rose (aka Arlie’s Redflesh) scionwood. It was fun to see the Murphs who look as though they’ve both survived the winter well. Murph has been out in the orchard pruning, and the alleys were a jumble of branches awaiting the chipper.
Denis and David and the “maybe” Sarah tree, March 25, 2026
I continued on deep into Franklin County where I met up with Denis Brown in East Wilton. Denis grew up in Wilton and spent much of his youth working at one or another of the eight big wholesale orchards that once lined the ridge along Orchard Drive. You can see the remnants of those orchards in the woods and in the backyards of the new homes that now pepper the area since the orchard industry abruptly collapsed decades ago. We got in his truck and drove a few miles to the home of David Fournier. The Fourniers have an old tree in their front yard that could be the Sarah apple I’ve been looking for since Clinton was president. David met us in the driveway as I was cutting sticks with my pole pruner. “There might be two different apples on the tree.” Oh. Well, better to know that now than later. Years ago an old-timer had told David that there were two cultivars grafted onto the tree. David thought that one side was solid-red; the other side, striped. Unfortunately he wasn’t sure which of the four large limbs was which. So I made a hopeful guess and cut from two of the four: Roadside and Houseside. Ill graft and DNA profile both. The search for Sarah continues.