Stevie Appleseed
The untimely death of a grand old apple tree...and a Hail Mary longshot to help its legacy live on.
Over at the neighbors’ place, in a mostly unused paddock behind the backyard garden, have always stood two splendid oldschool heritage apple trees, each at least fifty years old.
The smaller of the two, a wonderful tree in its own right, is some form of recognizable Russet variety. Every year as summer gives way to the short days of autumn, its typical green/brown fruits slowly take on a rich golden hue; their already excellent crisp-sweet Russet flavor turns to pure honey. Magical. Bite into one and you’ll know: Nowhere in the world will you find a storebought apple that’s anything like this.
The other, a towering old tree of truly majestic presence, was (as far as I know) an unnamed variety. This massive tree had real character. If pressed to describe its vibe, I’d say ‘gracious, yet muscular steadfastness.’ Which are three characteristics I myself could use more of, actually.
(Do individual trees have individual vibes? They do to me.)
Spread wider than it was tall, its gnarled branches reached at least twenty feet up in the air, maybe more. A very large and commanding presence, in other words.
In season, it produced extraordinary wine-red apples with deep pink flesh. Neither sweet nor bitter, these were versatile heritage apples, good for a wide variety of uses.
The astringent early-season apples could be fermented into (hard) cider; yet by late autumn, the flavor of these apples mellowed considerably, concentrating their sugars so they became crisply semisweet eating apples. Perfect for munching out of hand, or for making beautiful pink applesauce or pies.
As is so often the case, the neighbors weren’t really interested in their own apples, much less their own apple trees. The fruits would fall unappreciated to the ground, befouling the paddock grass. And there they would slowly ferment and decompose, providing a month-long jamboree for tipsy wasps.
Periodically that paddock was employed as a change of scenery for the two horses who live here. The horses, of course, were deeply interested in those windfall apples, and ate far too many for their own good, digestively speaking. Which was a whole other kind of hassle and mess.
Late last season as Steve and I worked feverishly between rainstorms, attempting to prepare the garden for spring, we heard chainsaws going nearby for days on end. But we thought nothing of it; this is the countryside, after all. Those kinds of noises are not uncommon. It wasn’t until weeks later that we learned the grand old red apple tree had been cut down.
Why? Was it sick? No, they were just tired of it.
Oh, I see. Thanks.
(Sigh.) Y’know, I do get it.
I do. Really.
Nevertheless we grieved the loss of that magnificent old tree. Yet somehow it didn’t occur to us at the time, to ask if we could take cuttings from the huge pile of felled branches. I don’t know why. We have an entire tree nursery going at the moment, of elder and (our own) apple tree cuttings, as well as those taken from a flowering raspberry shrub.
Starting a new tree by taking a cutting from an existing one is a dicey business; the success rate can be pretty low. But we’ve been lucky this year. Roots are already forming on many of our cuttings, so it looks like most of them will take. (Where we’ll plant all those new trees and shrubs will be a different matter—we started far more cuttings than we have room for, on the assumption that most wouldn’t make it.)
Anyway. Had we thought of it back then, we could’ve at least tried to save some small part of that original tree, to give it a fresh start somewhere else. The tree that would potentially grow up from that cutting would’ve had the same characteristics as the original. But it didn’t occur to us to try, until long after the fact.
Meanwhile, rewind two or three years, back to one of those intermittent seasons of staggering harvest abundance that apple trees are known for. The neighbors had invited us (and everybody else) to take as many apples from those trees as we possibly could.
I filled our freezer with pie apples and applesauce. Steve chunked up many pounds of whole red apples, slinging bags of them in the same freezer, hoping to find the time at some future point, to make cider.
That time never arrived.
This year I needed that freezer space for the new shedload of apples arriving from other sources. Unable to bear the thought of throwing them out, he dumped all of those frozen red apples, peel, core and all, into a big brewing bucket. He then added water to cover them, put on the lid and forgot about it.
What can I say. He’s a busy guy with a lot on his plate.
Anyway, fast forward many months, and to everyone’s surprise, that neglected bucket was full of, not vinegar (as one might legitimately expect, considering), but a proper farmhouse scrumpy cider. Wildly alcoholic and a bit too dry and thin to enjoy on its own—but with a surprisingly decent flavor overall, and of course that beautiful blush color. A nice thing to splash into a glass of fruitier, sweeter (and lower alcohol) commercial cider, for added complexity and depth of flavor.
But Steve isn’t really a cider drinker, and I’m not really a drinker, full stop. So the vast majority of the cider, complete with submerged apples, languished in that brewing bucket for another six months or so. Until the other day, that is. We didn’t do a taste test, but I’m guessing those extra months of fermentation time probably did not increase the drinkability of the cider, like, at all. Call it a hunch.
We agreed: It was time to let it go. The bucket was drained, the (probably undrinkable but you never know) cider was poured into a demijohn, and the extremely well fermented apples were slung on the compost pile.
As the apples hit the pile, the Johnny Appleseed lightbulb went off. Steve dug around in the apple squish and collected some of their seeds.
Will years-frozen and long-fermented apple seeds actually germinate? And if so, might they turn into healthy normal trees? Who knows. It would be lovely to think they could.
If by some chance they do, we’re not expecting a similar apple tree to that splendid one that was chopped down, of course. Apple trees rarely roll that way. They like to keep you guessing as to which genetics will dominate in the new sapling. It’s a total crapshoot, in other words, what kind of apples—or even what kind of apple tree, for that matter—that you’ll end up with when you start from seed. (For more on that topic, check out this Johnny Appleseed post.)
But we don’t really care about any of that. We loved that grand old tree, for its own sake. For us, this is just a way to honor the life of a truly wonderful living thing, that is gone…but not forgotten.
You had me at the edge of my seat, I had all different scenarios going on in my head, :) of you finding a start of that apple tree or something….
It will amazing if those seeds can grow.
Keep us posted.
I hope your apple seeds do survive, Carrie. I love the idea of helping nature do what it does and perpetuating the genes of trees that have flourished in your neighbourhood for a long time. I hope you will keep us updated on the elders and apples that you have propagated under the plastic bottles!