I got nothin' today, so would like to share with you this linked
interview
with Dan Bussey from gardening writer Margaret Roach.
Bussey is producing an encyclopedia of some 16,000 apple varieties.
He hasn't tasted them all, but he is one of those folks like John Bunker and Lee Calhoun who rescues old obscure varieties by driving around and knocking on doors and asking questions.
Bussey relates how he ID'd one antique variety:
We found a tree not actually very far from where I work, a huge thing, and the amazing thing on it that made it so easy: It still had a metal tag with the name....
Over 100 years old, and it still had the tag, half-embedded in the trunk, but you could see the tag, and knew it had writing on it. We carefully removed the tag from the trunk, and it was clear as a bell: pencil-written on metal, and it lasted all this time.
Roach's
interview
includes some wonderful and strange images of heritage apples.
They certainly lifted my spirits on this overcast day of this weary winter.
Bussey also curates a 1200-variety heirloom orchard for the nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange. (Here of course the medium is not seeds but budwood.)
About those 16,000 apples: At an apple a day that would take nearly 44 years to taste them all.
But many are lost; Bussey's catalog relies on historical information.
There are some very old [Revolutionary] apples trees on my Western Massachusetts property. I would be glad to have anyone who is knowledgeable and interested look at them. alexander@musicwoodsfarm.com
ReplyDelete@alexander, I wish I were in the same league as these guys. I'd come out myself.
DeleteWhat you should do is bring your apples to Franklin County Cider Days next month, along with whatever other documentation you may have. John Bunker is usually there in some capacity, and others with a good eye for apples.