Are you having trouble finding interesting apples in your local grocery store or farm stand? Now you can plant your favorite heritage varieties in your backyard, community garden, neighborhood green space or local schoolyard and help preserve Maine's agricultural heritage at the same time. The Maine Heritage Orchard Stewardship Program disperses “back-ups” of all the rare varieties in the Heritage Orchard to "stewards" across the state who want to restore local varieties to their community. Not only will the trees provide tasty fruit for you, your community and future generations, but they will also serve as grafting wood for propagating more trees if something happens to the specimen in the Maine Heritage Orchard.

Become a steward and help put Maine's heirloom apples back into Maine's communities! You can join the program and purchase these apple trees through the Fedco Trees catalog. Sixty percent of the purchase price of each tree helps fund the Mane Heritage Orchard. For more information on the stewardship program, see page 19 of the 2015 Fedco Trees catalog or visit http://www.fedcoseeds.com/trees/.