75 ~ Apples of my I
Welcome to fall! With this cold front right at the autumnal equinox, fall has plopped itself down squarely in the living room. And of course, it’s apple time in Wisconsin - although less so at my house…
My yard is graced, if that’s the word, by two barren apple trees. I planted them about eight years ago, in a spot then suitably sunny. But as they grew and reached toward the sky, a pair of maples to the southwest stretched heavenward faster and farther. The apples are now cloaked in maple shade for a large part of the day. Even at the height of summer, they get only about six hours of sun per day, and they have apparently decided this is insufficient photosynthetic opportunity to produce fruit. They rarely produce even blossoms now, and stand in my yard as a pair of beautiful, green virgins.
With the price of organic apples from orchards running near $1/apple (a price I just can’t bring myself to pay, at least not often), I’ve been keeping my eyes open for feral apples. I’ve always loved feral apple trees, and the welcome surprise they give when I’m bushwhacking on some trout fishing or deer scouting errand, and come upon apples, as if in the Garden of Eden (which the Driftless Area sometimes feels like, and maybe is). I also appreciate that they likely mark where a forgotten farm once stood. Edible archeology. One of the first things I do when I chance upon a feral apple is to look around and try to discern, or imagine, where the house, barn and fields once stood. And I wonder, where is the farm family now?
In 1862, Henry David Thoreau published a slim, charming volume titled Wild Apples. In it, he sings the praises of this unkempt bounty, writing:
“The time for wild apples is the last of October. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they are still, perhaps, as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth their while to gather, - wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer thinks he has better in his barrels; but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker’s appetite and imagination…”
And aren’t most of like feral apples? Not perfect, a few scars and rough spots, but still pretty damn good. Sour-sweet sometimes, but survivors, still feeding the world.
Here in southwestern Wisconsin, there is a wonderful initiative to save some historic feral apple trees - the Badger Apple Corps Project, of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance (www.saukprairievision.org). The Alliance was formed to advocate for collaborative land conservation and restoration on more than 7,000 acres of the decommissioned Badger Army Ammunition Plant, between Prairie du Sac and Baraboo, Wisconsin. Early in World War II, to make way for construction of the ammo plant, more than 70 farm families were forced to leave their lands and start over elsewhere. The plant continued to produce explosives through the Vietnam War period and beyond, until in 1997 the US government announced that the plant would be gradually closed.
During some ecological surveys of the site after it was finally decommissioned, members of the Alliance started finding apple trees – most of them elderly survivors, living memories of where the farms once stood. In response, in 2014 the Badger Apple Corps Project was born, and volunteers eventually located and mapped more than 150 apple trees at the site. It’s not yet clear yet how many varieties of apples this survivor pool includes, or how common – or rare – some are today.
A major initiative of the project is to preserve the trees and their genetics, by propagating them in a nursery with grafts from the elderly stalwarts. Some of these infant trees have now been gifted to descendants of the displaced farm families, in a wonderful gesture of reconciliation. Others have been planted in public spaces in the area. Here’s a short, inspirational video about the project, “Of Connection and Renewal: The Historic Apple Trees of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7oMcBhEmHY&t=35s.
The project also periodically offers a few trees for sale through a benefit auction, to raise funds for the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance’s excellent work. A couple of years ago, I successfully bid on one of these trees. The tree I adopted is a graft from one that was found where a family named Welch once had their farmstead.
This time, I planted the small tree in a sunnier spot, and it now holds my hopes for future apples in my yard. It’s my feral kin, and together we continue to reach toward the light.