Today, we speak of apples by their varietal names; the ubiquitous grocery store Red Delicious, or McIntosh. Even heirloom orchard enthusiasts speak of Ashmead’s Kernal, or Bellflower. But I think a subtle aspect of old orcharding was that many old orchards were comprised of just seedling apple trees. These orchards not only provided the material for cider, they were also the source of the special varieties we love today. Every once-in-awhile, in these seedling orchards, a really special apple would show up and be noticed. We continue with Mr. French's advice:
The New England Farmer and Boston Rambler
Boston, Saturday, March 8, 1851
Some Facts about Orchards in New England.
By Henry P. French, of Exeter, N. H.
Now, there are scattered all over New England, orchards of natural fruit, which is either fed to swine, or made into cider. As food for swine, sour apples are little better than nothing. I have given hundreds of bushels to my swine, which seemed to find at least a rational amusement in eating them. Indeed, for store pigs, they do tolerably well, but for fattening animals, I should adopt the principle laid down in the good woman's recipe for making sawdust bread, "the less sawdust the better the bread.” Sweet apples are worth, perhaps, one-sixth as much per bushel, as food for animals, as Indian corn, and this will just about pay for gathering them.
As to cider, we estimate that eight bushels of apples will make one barrel of cider, worth one dollar and fifty cents, which will not pay a man who has anything else to do, for his labor in making it, if you give him the fruit on the trees. The natural fruit, then, is of no value, and the facts before stated show how readily the useless trees which produce it may be made valuable.
No portion of the world is better, and I think none so well adapted to this fruit as New England. Our Baldwin Apple is in perfection about the middle of January, and our Russets are in eating until June. Indeed, we often see the old year’s fruit of our orchards, side by side with that of the new year. So, after the apples of more Southern orchards have decayed, we have the market to ourselves. Steam navigation renders exportation to the whole world easy for us, and the home consumption, as well as foreign, must increase beyond the supply, for a generation to come, at least.
Clearly, Mr. French had the right idea. Grow a nice marketable apple, and get it to the market that doesn’t have apples. Then the orchardist gets the best price, right? I think it’s interesting that he uses the Baldwin as his example. Baldwin is a big, red, durable winter apple. The mid 1800’s was about the time when the “big red apple” was just becoming the signature of the industry.
