The daily Astorian., September 14, 2019, WEEKEND EDITION, Page 9, Image 9

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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, SEpTEmbER 14, 2019
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Jonathan Williams
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Photos by Ed Hunt
Gala apples on Ed Hunt’s farm. He planted their first apple trees on the farm in 1993.
An apple tree’s gifts
Enjoying cider and sauce while recognizing generations of cultivation
soms help pollinate our better eating vari-
eties. Several years ago we purchased
trees from the Raintree nursery in Morton,
Washington, which allows you to choose
the best varieties based on your growing
region, harvest time and other factors with
particular attention to growing fruit on the
wet side of the state.
Our star tree is the Chehalis with it’s
fat, juicy green apples a variety discov-
ered near Oakville, Washington, in 1937
on the banks of the Chehalis River.
A chance seedling likely from a for-
gotten farmer’s Golden Delicious, it has
adapted its taste to be crisper and sweeter.
It thrives on the west side of the Cascades.
With last year’s dry winter, this year our
dwarf Liberty and Melrose trees are also
doing wonderfully.
They remind us that we don’t have
much, and yet we have more than we need.
By ED HUNT
I
keep an eye out for apple trees.
I look for them as we drive the
backroads that we favor, avoiding
highways. I scan the landscape of old pas-
tures for evidence of ambitions past.
A sharp cluster of trees in an open field
is often a living archaeological clue to
past settlement. Homesteaders were quick
to put apple trees around their houses
when they first set down in a place. Plant-
ing roots, while planting their roots both
tree and human industry an investment in
the future with hope of bearing fruit over
time’s horizon.
Generations later, the house and barns
have disappeared, yet the apple trees
remain, on good years bending branches
heavy with fruit for settlers long passed
into memory.
Reminders of hope
Making apple sauce, cider
Apple trees are reminders of a mark of
hope, a turning point in the habitation of
a place.
When the afternoon light changes, and
the morning mist arrives as the last days
of August turn to September, the suns of
summer show themselves only when the
marine layer burns off in the afternoon.
There is a metal to the afternoon light —
silver or golden knives slicing through the
clouds.
The branches are heavy then, arching
and aching with the weight of abundance.
They hay is in the barn, school has started
and we struggle to settle into our new and
old routines.
Yet the afternoons are still warm
enough for a walk, and red and green fruit
calls from the tree.
Lately, we have taken up making apple
sauce and cider out of our many apples to
preserve them since they are so abundant
now that we could never eat them all fresh.
First, we took our apples to the fair-
grounds in Skamokawa to borrow a
grinder and cider press available that day,
then last year we purchased our own. We
have bottled hard cider, made apple sauce,
frozen the apple cider as well.
It is a tradition that goes to the heart
of this fruit’s 8,500 year history of
cultivation.
The apple’s history in America
The apple originated in Kazakhstan and
has ventured around the world. It became
so widely distributed that in many early
languages the word for apple is the gen-
eral word for fruit.
From what is still today an iso-
lated corner of the world, the apple tree
has migrated to the far reaches of the
globe.
In the Americas the earliest apples
were for cider. When the first apple trees
were planted in Jamestown in 1607, their
produce was too bitter for eating fresh.
Instead, apple cider was the goal for each
cutting planted.
The cuttings did poorly, but in the seeds
held a few genetic adaptations that found
Trees on the farm
Apple time is the time that I like best.
We planted our first apple trees when
we moved out to the farm in 1993 mail
order trees from Stark Brothers picked out
of a brightly colored catalog. One of the
two trees still soldiers on despite decades
of neglect. We call it the horse-apple tree
because the small hard Gala apples it pro-
duced most years were used just as treats
for our horses.
It has actually been doing much bet-
ter the past season as I’ve become more
ambitious at winter pruning and its blos-
Making apple sauce.
See Apples, page b2