November 18, 2025

Today in the orchard

For the second night in a row the pond in front of the house has partly frozen over. The nights have been consistently well below 32F. This fall has been cold. It’s also been windy, which has not been easy on the oldest apple trees, including the old Opalescent tree up on Turner Ridge about two miles from the farm. That tree has been producing delicious, beautiful, red, mid-fall fruit since long before cars, electricity and radio—and maybe even before trains—came to Palermo. 

On a recent windy day about 3/4 of the top broke off the ancient tree and, although not entirely detached, it does not have enough connection to the trunk to remain viable. So this afternoon I took a ladder and a chainsaw up to the ball field where the ancient tree resides and pruned off the broken top. It’s on town land. No one gave me permission but anyone who notices will be happy not to have to deal with it. They would likely just cut it to the ground. I wouldn’t.

My plan was to cut out anything that was burnable in our wood stove, one 16” piece at a time. I didn’t want to make any large gallant cuts that might tear off a big chunk of the remaining live bark or, even worse, cause the entire tree to break apart. So I picked away at it, and in a couple of hours I had it cleaned up. It looks pretty bare. Hopefully there’s enough live growth on it to keep it going for several more presidents. I’ll save some scionwood from what I cut and graft a bunch of trees, at least one of which will go in our orchard. Don’t want to lose this one.   

November 16-17, 2025

Today in the orchard

More rain and snow and sleet and hail and gray and dark and gloomy. It’s November! I ventured out into the orchard to pick our first crop of “Burnham Sweet,” grafted from an ancient tree introduced to us a few years ago by Peter del Tredici. Peter had been taking care of the tree for several decades out in Cornwall ,CT.

My provisional name for the apple was “Cornwall del Tredici,” but I now believe I've found Burnham Sweet, an apple introduced by a locally famous Cornwall resident and Revolutionary War officer, Oliver Burnham (1760-1846). The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada .(Bussey, vol I p 312 and 438) lists both Barnham (aka Barnham Sweet) and Burnham (aka Burnham Sweet) as originating in Cornwall and first recorded within a few years of one another (1869 and 1872.) Bussey’s descriptions of the two cultivars  are nearly identical. All that separates them is one vowel and that from a time when most documentation was in handwriting, not print. When does an “a” become a “u” or vice versa?  

We did a DNA profile (AMHO 311) and found no match in the Reference Panel. The DNA results did show that the famous ancestor of many American apples, Reinette Franche, is likely a grandparent or a more distant relative. The fruit is yellow and it definitely ripens late.

November 15, 2025

Today in the orchard

Todd Little-Siebold and I gave a presentation at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill this afternoon. Our focus was historic apple identification and how the use of DNA has helped to inform our understanding of apple history in New England. It was part of a well-attended, all-day seminar on apples. 

The day was topped off in fantastic style when one of the attendees came up to me and identified herself as a descendent of Nathaniel Haskell, the fellow who is thought to have found the original Black Oxford. Needless to say, she now has my full attention and contact information. She will be talking with relatives, and I hope to learn everything I can about the Haskell family and the past 240 years or so. I told her I’d send her some Black Oxfords this fall.

November 14, 2025

Today in the orchard

Cammy continued to prepare the nursery and the orchards for winter. This includes more weeding in the nursery and wrapping more treeguards onto the young trees. It’s a long, arduous task but always worth the effort. Always means Always. That’s Always with a capital A or you might say uppercase or in the olden days, “majuscule.” In any event, do it!  I’ve heard numerous stories of trees as old as ten years being lost to happy voles scampering down the network of I-95’s under the snow.  

November 13, 2025

Today in the orchard

Today I spent several hours reviewing the DNA results for the historic apple collection at the New England Botanic Gardens at Tower Hill. Tower Hill stewards what became one of the most important “heirloom” collections in North America since being assembled by Stearns Lothrop Davenport and his apple friends in the mid-twentieth century near Worcester, MA. It has had its challenges including phenotypic errors, pests, disease and aging out, but it persists and has been a source of thousands of sticks of scionwood as well as a huge inspiration to apple researchers, orchardists, historians and collectors across North America and beyond. Including me! 

At this point all 119 accessions in the collection have been DNA profiled. My goal today was to put together a document with all the results as well as suggested action items for those accessions that need further testing or research. I sent off a draft to the Historic Fruit Tree Working Group and received a number of corrections and additions from Cameron Peace to incorporate into the document. I will post a link to it in the coming days. 

On Saturday, November 15, Todd Little-Siebold and I will give a presentation at Tower Hill that will focus on the history of apples in New England, including Tower Hill. If you’re in the area, come join us.

November 12, 2025

Today in the orchard

It’s not often that I quote newspapers in the Orchard Report, but never say never. Here’s the latest from USA Today: “A strong geomagnetic storm means there is a chance to see the aurora borealis, not just one night this week, but three over New Hampshire and Maine. …NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a watch for a G4 geomagnetic storm on Nov. 11. They said the storm will be severe on Nov.12 strong on Nov. 13 and minor on Nov. 14.”The paper was correct. Late last night we did have northern lights which Skylar was able to photograph during a break in the clouds while on a late night drive. There were also northern lights in a bunch of other locations across the US. 

I guess you could say that winter is just around the corner. Last night it snowed about an inch. It eventually melted but it is a reminder of things to come. After a breakfast of oatmeal and Belle de Boskoop sauce, I worked  until midday on sorting identification priorities. In the afternoon we put on more tree-guards. By then the grass was snow-free and the temperature had warmed up enough to give us a few hours of perfect weather to be out in the orchard. 

November 11, 2025

Today in the orchard

Time to say goodbye to the Norton Greenings for 2025. They have officially reached their limit. It’s a great apple, but, alas, like many other early fall cultivars, it doesn’t keep. Before we bid farewell, however, I should share some new information I learned from Dorothy Rosenberg in Harpswell on Sunday about the apple’s history. 

Although I was correct that the seedling was planted (or first discovered) at the Norton “old farmhouse” in Harpswell, I had the wrong person for whom it was planted. I had thought that the seed (or seedling) was planted on the day of Helen Norton’s birth.  But that was incorrect. Helen Norton was not born a Norton, she was born Helen Appel. The seed (or seedling) actually dates from the birth day of Helen’s sister-in-law Hannah Dring (nee Norton).

I think I may have met Helen Norton with Roberto McIntyre some years ago, but I don’t believe I’ve met Hannah Dring. Both women are still living as far as I know, and both are well into their 90’s. I need to go say hello and tell them how much I love ”their” apple… and that I hope I now have the story straight.

One added note about the Norton Greening. The original tree died a few years ago. By then I had recognized its value and had grafted it up here on our farm. We subsequently grafted a few trees from our wood and reintroduced it to Harpswell.  What goes around, comes around!  

November 10, 2025

Today in the orchard

I made what will be the last batch of Charlamoff sauce of the year. I picked the crop on September 1st and made a very decent pie a few days later. The fruit I cooked today was in the cooler for a month or so at about 38F and then in the root cellar for another month at 50F. Amazingly they are still in decent shape. The sauce is still flavorful; the fruit is on the acidic side as all good sauce apples are; cooks quickly. 

Charlamoff is a Duchess-type, of Russian origin, medium-sized, roundish and rather distinctly red-striped. If you saw one, you might think “Duchess”; but if you see them side by side, you know they are distinct cultivars. I first came across Charlamoff in the northern Maine town of Bridgewater about ten years ago. There were two old trees on the farm. Unlike Duchess, the stripes and blush are more lavender than red. I was able to identify the Bridgewater trees and have since also obtained scionwood from the Geneva, NY collection. We now have trees grafted from both locations.  It’s beautiful, productive, cooks well and is delicious. 

November 9, 2025

Today in the orchard

This afternoon Laura, Skylar and I led an apple tasting for a small but enthusiastic group in a cozy, old, tool-lined carpentry shop in Harpswell. (You never know where the next talk may be.) The event was a tribute to Robert McIntyre who spent many years fruit-exploring down the peninsulas and islands off Brunswick. He was never afraid to knock on a door, and I think he knew every ancient tree in every dooryard on every old road south of Bowdoin College. He made numerous excellent discoveries including a spectacular Golden Ball and the bizarre Danziger Kantenapfel which he dubbed, “Lumpy Red”. We grow two of the seedlings he introduced me to: Norton Greening and Orr’s Island Cemetery (aka “Roberto”). He also found three beautiful ancient Baldwin specimens from which I took scions for our own Baldwin trees. He is someone we miss everyday, especially in the fall when the fruit begins to drop and the trees are begging to be visited once again. 

Skylar began the tasting by introducing the basic apple flavors: tart (sub-acid: Ashmead’s Kernel). sweet (low-acid: Tolman Sweet), bittersweet (low-acid and bitter: Damelot) and bittersharp (acidic and bitter: Kingston Black). From there we went directly to “pear-flavored” in the form of Hudson’s Golden Gem. Then, for the next two hours we tasted an assortment of Harpswell apples collected by Dorothy Rosenberg and Charles Strickland. Laura, Skylar and I tag-teamed the answers to numerous questions all along the way. By 4:30 it was getting dark and time to go home.   

November 8, 2025

Today in the orchard

In a brief respite from the gray and the cold, the sun and its heat returned to the farm today. Off came the sweaters and the sweatshirts. Alyssa, Kevin, Skylar and I spent the day in the Finley Lane Orchard. We began the annual task of putting on the “tree guards.” These are the spiral plastic sleeves that protect the trunks of the younger trees from being nibbled by voles and mice during the winter when there’s not a lot to eat and the tender bark is too tempting to pass up. In summer there’s lots of more palatable stuff in the orchard, and the small rodents rarely cause any damage. 

But winter is another thing, especially once it snows and the voles create networks of tunnels beneath the crust. A ten-year-old tree can become toast (literally) in a day. Once the trunk is “girdled” it may be too late to save it. So we put on the tree guards in the fall and take them all off in April. We remove them in the spring because the borers (Saperda candida) love to sneak in behind the sleeves in the summer. On off on off. It's that amazing endless circle. 

November 7, 2025

Today in the orchard

Not much warmer today with more rain by evening. Cammy and I packed up the truck with ladders, picking buckets and boxes and returned to The Apple Farm to pick Ashmead’s Kernel, Roxbury Russet, Kingston Black and Hudson’s Golden Gem. These are trees I grafted there almost twenty years ago. The trees are tucked away in a corner of the orchards where they often go unnoticed. Steve mentioned that they weren’t planning to pick the fruit so it seemed like it would be worth grabbing them before it’s too late. Steve even gave us a hand with the picking. The season there is nearly over.

From Fairfield we traveled south to Gardiner where we attended an apple and cider tasting at a tiny bar/restaurant called “Table Bar.” The place was packed. Zack Kaiser of Absolem Cider, Bill Mullen the NY apple photographer and I shared the stage (corner) where we traded stories about apples and cider. Zack brought three single-varietal ciders—Ashmead’s, Northern Spy, and Harrison—and I provided the fruit. We passed out plates of cut up apples and then followed each round with a pouring of the corresponding cider. In between we told stories and answered lots of questions. If you haven’t been to Table Bar, give it a visit. It was started by a group of friends who wanted a place to share conversation, food and drink with each other and the local community. An evening there feels like hanging out in your neighbors’ living room - familiar, comfortable, lively and you don’t have to clean up when everyone leaves.

November 6, 2025

Today in the orchard

The weather continued to be cold and raw as I drove to The Apple Farm in Fairfield, ME, home of the oldest Gray Pearmain trees in central Maine (or possibly, anywhere). I was in pursuit of a few good specimens of Ashmead’s Kernel and Northern Spy to use in a cider and apple tasting that I’ll be helping to lead at Table Bar in Gardiner, ME tomorrow. We have both of those varieties here, but The Apple Farm has many more trees and I was looking for a good excuse to go visit the owners, Steve and Marilyn Meyerhans. I also wanted to check out some trees I had topworked there years ago to see if they had any fruit left. I was not disappointed - Kingston Black, Roxbury Russet and Hudson’s Golden Gem hadn’t been picked. We’ll bring our ladders and boxes back tomorrow and pick them. The Apple Farm is located on a ridge with amazing views both east and west. They have a large collection of unusual cultivars along with the typical ones. It’s well worth making the trip.

In the afternoon we planted the garlic back on the farm. We grow two garlics: Phillips and German Extra Hardy. Both are excellent. At one point it began to snow - perfect weather for planting. We covered the bed with hay and made a bee-line for the heat. Another fall task complete.

November 5, 2025

Today in the orchard

More apple sauce for the flying saucers of the omniverse. I’ve been using up the early-season apples lately. It’s interesting to see how they do after a month or two in storage. The Red St. Lawrence are still in remarkably good shape. I made sauce with them today and was pleased with the result. Red St. Lawrence is a sport (mutation) of the classic “St. Lawrence,” which is a seedling of Fameuse (aka Snow for its glowing white flesh). Fameuse is one of the most important of all historic, northern cultivars. It’s one grandparent of McIntosh and is in the ancestry of many other cultivars. It’s a great dessert and cooking apple in its own right. We have a very old Fameuse tree at our place. Both Fameuse and St. Lawrence migrated to Maine from Canada back when the border was not much more than a formality. You can find old trees of both sprinkled around much of the state. We certainly scored when those two apples showed up. 

Red St. Lawrence apparently arose spontaneously from a St. Lawrence tree in Newburgh, a few miles south of Bangor sometime in the early twentieth century. The ground color (“background color”) of the apple is red unlike the original St. Lawrence which has a distinctly green ground color.  Mutations like this happen in all plants and are often coveted by collectors. For a reason I’ve never been able to determine, such a mutation is called a sport. Although sports can be maintained asexually through cuttings or grafting, they are—as far as we can tell—not genetically different from the original plant. I’ll talk again about sports in the orchard report, but for now I’ll just say Red St. Lawrence has a rusty red ground color. It’s a very good, early-mid-fall apple. 

November 4, 2025

Today in the orchard

The cold, raw November winds swept across the farm today, and even rubber boots, two sweaters and a sweatshirt were not enough to keep out the bite. But despite the cold and the wind, we harvested all the potatoes. The yield was good. We had planted them in the bed where we dug out a couple hundred nursery trees this past May. Now that the potatoes are dug, we’ll fertilize the bed and plant garlic by the end of the week. We’ll harvest the garlic on a warm, sunny day next August. That will be three different crops in that one bed. Rotation, rotation, rotation.

In the great apple sauce rotation, today it was Golden Ball, one of my favorites. It’s large, round, golden yellow and, to my eye, beautiful. Whoever named it did a good job. There’s no consensus on where it originated. Some sources say Connecticut while others suggest Maine. Either way, it was grown historically in the southern and central parts of the state. It ripens in early fall and keeps until about now. It was time to use them up. It’s on the acidic side and cooks well into an excellent, thick, creamy sauce. You can read more about Golden Ball in Chapter 5 of Apples and the Art of Detection. I’m pretty sure it was also Sun Ra’s favorite apple - or should have been.

November 3, 2025

Today in the orchard

Todd Little-Siebold and a magazine reporter came to the farm this morning for an apple ID session. We spread out the bags of apples and the books and went at it. One of our focuses was an apple we refer to as Mary Brown #4 from Prospect, ME that we’ve been attempting to identify for the past twelve years. One possible ID is Northern Belle, an apple submitted to the USDA by EH Dunbar from Damariscotta in October 1898 and painted a month later, though never historically described under that name. My guess is that “Northern Belle” is either a local synonym for another apple or possibly just a fabricated family name. Reviewing the literature, the one variety that is a possible match is “Litchfield” aka Litchfield Pippin. There is a pretty decent description of that cultivar in Bradford (Apple Varieties of Maine). Although the description is incomplete, it is a very decent match. 

It was a morning of detective work accompanied by a rolling explanatory monologue.  Becoming an apple detective is a life-long process. If you want to be a good one—or a really good one—prepare to put in many years tromping through orchards and squinting at apples.

November 2, 2025

Today in the orchard

Before starting the long car-ride from western MA back to Palermo, I stopped at an old farm in Gill, just a few miles from Greenfield. This past summer I had been contacted by the owner about an old tree in her yard. Becky Minor had been inspired to get in touch with me after reading an article about the rediscovery of the Drap d’Or de Bretagne. It’s another reason why putting yourself out there can be a really good thing to do. I asked her to send me a photo of the tree; when it comes to old trees, I want to see what the tree looks like first. She sent me a photo, and I knew this was a tree I had to visit.  I pulled into the driveway, parked the car, got out, and there was the tree. I was instantly glad I had come.

Becky had explained in the earlier email, “We have lived in our house for 15 years, and the previous owners told us that the house was moved here ca. 1850. Just outside our back door, literally 10 feet from the house is the apple tree.  It still blossoms every year and produces fruit.  The apples are yellow and generally begin to rot and fall off the tree well before traditional harvest time. I have honestly never tasted one, so I couldn't tell if you they are sweet or tart-but the bees sure love them! It is quite amazing to me that it is still alive as it is completely hollow, and more than half of the base of the tree doesn't even touch the ground anymore.”

I was not disappointed. Although the top of the tree had broken off long ago, the trunk is largely intact, huge, hollow and—as Becky had written to me—mostly not touching the ground. It is an apple tree lifting off to heaven. On one side is a horseshoe grown into the trunk. It looks as though someone had hung it on the tree in about 1880 for good luck. The tree is growing only a few feet from the house. This is odd. Did an apple sprout a few feet from the foundation shortly after the house was moved just prior to the Civil War? Was there a young 20 or 30 year old tree growing at the site when they moved the house? Maybe they planted the tree in anticipation of moving the house. It’s so close. There must be a story there. In any event, the tree is probably 200 years old. 

Becky did give me fruit that had been in her cooler for a couple of months. It is still in decent shape and is an apple I’ve never seen before. I’ll be able to phenotype it and see if it rings any bells. I took leaves and will submit a sample for DNA profiling. And then I was back on the road and heading for Maine. Thank you, Becky.

November 1, 2025

Today in the orchard

Today’s Orchard Report comes to you from Raven’s Used Bookstore at the old, repurposed, historic, river-side mill in the western MA town of Shelburne Falls where a crowd of apple enthusiasts gathered all day and into the evening for an assortment of apple and cider-related programs. It was all part of Franklin County Cider Days. I gave a talk in the afternoon on grafting, growing and trialing seedling apple selections in our orchard. It was a talk I’d never given before. It gave me an opportunity to think about—and question—the value of growing a wide assortment of some pretty weird apples on our farm over the years. Some of my thoughts are listed below. I did do some counting and categorizing beforehand. We currently grow about 125 seedling selections. Here’s a breakdown on the seedling apples we’re currently growing here:

• Other people's discoveries=62 (50%)

• Our discoveries=31 (25%)

• Our breeding/selections=26 (20%)

• Other people's breeding/selections=4 (5%)

Here are some reasons for growing seedlings in a cultivated setting:

• To save the tree: Many seedlings fall victim to road widening, chainsaws, etc

• You might never find it again: I’ve gone back and looked. Where was that wonderful tree?

• It’s far from home: Gas isn’t cheap and by the time I return, the fruit has all dropped.

• You’ve never seen the tree but it sounds good: Trust your friends.

• No longer have access to the tree: “Sorry, we use these apples.”

• Create a more suitable location: This tree could use more room and better soil.

• Your own breeding project: It’s really fun to start apples from seed.

• A friend would like to get your opinion of a breeding project: It’s an honor to grow someone else’s “creation.”

• Something you discover at the Seedling Exhibition: Every year there are new and potentially interesting submissions.

• Something you want to offer in your nursery: If you’re going to offer it for sale, you better know it well. 

• Something you really like and want more fruit: Yes!

• Curiosity: Can this seedling do well in an orchard setting.

• Something to expand the cider apple pomona for future growers: Seedlings are the future.

A highlight of the day was receiving a gift from fellow apple-explorer Sean Turley of a gigantic two-volume set of the annotated Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is one of my favorite literary mentors. 

October 31, 2025

Today in the orchard

Today I attended the annual seedling exhibition in Williamsburg, MA. It’s a day-long event held in one big room in a beautiful, old Grange Hall with high ceilings, squeaky wooden floors and a stage that should be used for singing apple songs. Spread out across the entire room are long tables covered with paper plates of seedling apples submitted from all across the country. Each submission has a name tag with the apple’s name (some are hilarious) and where it came from. The person who submitted the apple is not listed. (To protect the guilty?) Some of the names are familiar because they’ve been shown other years, but none of them are apples you’d find in nursery catalogs or U-pick orchards or grocery stores. These are wild apples found growing by the side of the road or along a hedge-row or out in an abandoned field. Think Thoreau. They come in every size, shape, color and—most of all—taste. Each plate has 3 or 4 apples on it and at least one is sliced up to taste. (Toothpicks are provided.) There is room on the ID sheets for taste comments. 

When I arrived, the room was packed with apple enthusiasts tasting, chatting, writing, taking photos and voting for their favorites in several categories: best quality eating, best quality cider, best crabapple, best in show. These newly discovered fruits are the apples of the future. Yes, some will fade into oblivion ,but others may even become household names, like “Lil’ Limey,” “Jarman’s Held Leaf,” “Thankful Sage,” “My Heart,” and “Guatay Pippin.” I may even graft some of them into Finley Lane. It was a great way to celebrate Halloween.

October 30, 2025

Today in the orchard

I think it’s fair to say that the picking season is now officially over. Today we picked the Dandeneau trees, Steve Gougeon’s productive bittersharp seedling discovery in western Mass that we love to press and ferment. We’ll do all that in a couple of weeks. We also picked the Baldwins, Yellow Bellflowers and Roxbury Russets. We’re leaving the Wicksons to freeze on the trees. We’ll pick them frozen and press them for cider. We did that several years ago, and we liked the result. I imagine we’ll collect a few other odds and ends, but essentially it’s all done. It’s been a good season. A lot of apples over the course of nearly three months.

It’s fitting that the last apples picked for the season were the Roxbury Russets. Roxbury is probably the first North American apple to be selected and named. It remains one of the last to ripen and one of the best in storage. It is also a great sauce apple. We’ll be eating these with our oatmeal long into spring. What a truly great apple.  

October 29, 2025

Today in the orchard

We continued picking the last of the late apples. Northern Spy, Lincolnville Russet and Stark are dropping fast and could have been picked a few days ago. The Benton Red (aka Salome?) are right at the perfect moment: a few drops but coming off with ease. The Reinette Simarenko are holding on tight and could stay on another week or more, but it’s time to go.

The apple I call Green Monster was just beginning to drop but we “caught” nearly all of them. It’s large, green, firm and crisp. It’s had me scratching my head for decades. It’s in a row in a fairly old orchard and should be a grafted tree, but I don’t think it is. (The abandoned orchard is in Waldo, not far from Belfast.) The tree is majorly twisted and very cool. When it was DNA profiled, it came back as a seedling of Tolman Sweet. It’s not a true sweet, however, and we have not been able to determine its second parent. I’ve read that Tolman Sweet seedlings were sometimes used as rootstock, so maybe it’s an old un-grafted rootstock: Green Monster.

In the late afternoon we went to South China to harvest a recent seedling discovery I’m calling South China Sweet. This one is a true low-acid, sweet apple. The fruit size is large. We collected 4 bushels of good quality drops and another bushel off the tree as the sun was going down.