Man’s detective work has identified more than 800 heirloom apples

Laura Giovanelli
Media General News Service

Published: October 23, 2008

STUART, Va. - Eight young trees, two coolers and the long arm of an extendable fruit picker fill the backseat of Tom Brown’s Subaru station wagon. The leaves rustle as he weaves up the twists of N.C. 8, through Germanton, past Hanging Rock State Park, by Danbury and over the state line into the small town of Stuart, Va.

On the Net:
Apple Search

There’s a bathroom break and a coffee stop at the town’s Hardee’s, where Brown asks for directions from a silver-haired woman in front of him in line. He takes a wrong turn going through town and has to ask two more times, stopping a sheriff’s deputy headed the other way and a woman on the sidewalk.

Finally, he arrives at the Hopkins’ farm. In a nearby pasture stands a little tree. The ground around it is beaten bare by cattle, and the branches are loaded with tiny, tart, red fruit.

It’s a clear fall morning, as crisp as the first bite of an apple, and Brown is on the hunt.

Brown searches for old varieties of apples, heirloom kinds that you won’t find at Harris Teeter. Some are lopsided; others are tinged with russeting, a kind of apple skin, slightly rough, and greenish-brown or greenish-yellow.

Heritage apples don’t look like they come from the same planet as the super-size, shiny Granny Smiths and Galas sitting on store shelves, their skins as blemish-free as a beauty queen’s. Those are what Brown calls “apples bred for focus groups.“

“They want to find apples that color up beautifully before they’re ripe,“ he said. “That way they can ship and store them.“

The thrill of the hunt.

His apple ardor started with Harper’s Seedling, an old variety from the Clemmons area. Brown met Maurice Marshall, another heritage-apple lover who has since died, at the farmers market at the Dixie Classic fairgrounds, where Marshall sold apples.

Marshall was trying to find Harper’s Seedling, and Brown got involved. Today, Brown is still looking. He’s found seven places where the tree used to be.

In the meantime, he’s found more than 800 other varieties by driving winding country roads and picking the brains of older generations. He would like to reach 1,000. The list is growing long - Allison Stripe and Aspirin; Ben Davis, Ben Hur and Benfield; Juicy Fruit, Juicy Queen and Juicy Sweet; Green Mountain, Green Pearman, Green Pippin, Green Witch and simply, Green Skin. Apples with skins so light they look white. Apples so dark they border on black. Brown has been tracking down old varieties of apples for 11 years. “I’ll stop when I die,“ he said.

Brown grew up on a farm in Iredell County. His family made pies and cider with apples from their orchard. And as an adult, he loves to visit farmers markets. He and his wife, Merrikay, have planned vacations around stops at local markets - on Saturday in Fairbanks, Alaska; and Wednesday in Las Cruces, N.M.

He’s not tired of eating apples - every Sunday, he and his wife have stewed apples, usually with pancakes.

One of his favorite apples is the Pumpkin Sweet, an apple with a pointy shape and russeted all over. “It ripens in August and has a delicious, slightly sweet taste,“ Brown said. “There’s one tree of that in Wilkes County, and there’s another tree in Ashe County…and that’s all I know about.“

Two apples he’s most proud of finding are the Junaluska, the favorite apple of a Cherokee chief, and the Hall apple, which took three years to find.

Brown also sells apple trees and grafts old varieties at his home in Clemmons. He donates trees and cuttings for grafting to such organizations as the N.C. Wildlife Federation and Horne Creek Living Historical Farm in Pinnacle.

He plans to donate some trees to Avery County to establish a heritage orchard, and he would like to establish orchards of heritage apples in other Western North Carolina counties.

“It’s something of our past agricultural history. You’re not just finding something modern; you’re finding something that was important to people 100 years ago and a vital part of their life.

“And the fact that they’re difficult to find makes it like a fun detective effort, to trace down all these scarce leads and find these apples where there’s only one tree remaining or one or two people who even remember the apple and can identify and direct you in the right way.“

Apple descriptions.

A retired engineer who once worked at R.J. Reynolds, Brown, 66, goes on hunts armed with careful notes and his bright yellow apple picker, extendable to 12 feet. The picker is wrapped in places with worn silver duct tape, frayed like bandages where he has taped a 10-foot long metal extension to reach into taller trees.

“Apple Descriptions O to Z,“ reads the cover of one blue folder. Inside, apples stats are chronicled in Brown’s looping handwriting, sometimes followed by names and phone numbers of people who own particular trees or have given him leads.

“One-Sided - red with dark streaks, yellow on one side, one side smaller than the other, 5-inch diameter, good apple butter.

“Patrick Red - 3-inches, solid red, slightly odd sweet taste, Sept., Patrick family lived in area.“

Apple-hunting can be a time-consuming, gas-guzzling hobby and somewhat imperfect science.

Brown is often relying on the stories and memories of people well past 70, backing up their childhood recollections of apples with his notes, vintage nursery catalogs, an out-of-print book, Old Southern Apples, by Lee Calhoun and a U.S. Department of Agriculture booklet from 1905 that lists 7,000 varieties. Discovering one apple can mean more leads on other apples.

There’s an urgency to his search, too - people who remember old varieties of apples are growing old and dying.

“If you ask people what an apple is, they don’t say, ‘I don’t know,‘ or give you the correct name,“ Brown said. “They toss out all these names. Someone needs to go through them.

“I’ll start mentioning that name in that area. It’s amazing how fast that it’ll show up and I’ll find it when you just start mentioning it. A lot of times some of these old apples are somewhere in the cobwebs of somebody’s memory. And you start mentioning the name, all of a sudden bells will light up, and they’ll remember the apple or someone has a tree.“

A race against time.

As he started hunting, the hobby turned into a personal responsibility - if he didn’t find these apples, no one would.

Brown has traveled as far as western Kentucky on the apple hunt. It rained the whole weekend. He got descriptions of a few apples, but didn’t find any trees. The price of gas has changed his tactics a bit. He tries to plan better so he makes the most of a drive, like the recent trip he took to Macon County, in the far western toe of the state. He left at 4:45 a.m. and returned that night at 11:30, another 500 or so miles on his car.

He estimates that he drove 25,000 miles one year. Wilkes County, in particular, has been a fruitful location. Families there seem to take pride in having apple trees different from their neighbors, Brown said. “I’ve really thoroughly hunted anything within an hour of me,“ Brown said. “It’s a whole lot of little successes.“

When he’s not hunting apples, he’s often thinking of them. People send him requests asking him to identify apples. And he will send apples in the mail to people he thinks might have some memory of that type. He spends many weekends taking displays of heirloom apples to area festivals. Festivals are good places to get leads, he said. So are country stores.

In a pasture at the Hopkins farm, Brown climbs out of his car and reaches for his picker. Jimmy and Virginia Hopkins call the fruit from this little tree Finn apples, perhaps after a local family. A man named David Sheley had written to Brown about the Finn, pointing him in the Hopkins’ direction. Jimmy Hopkins, 79, remembers his mother cooking apples from this tree.

Apples were used on farms to feed livestock as well as people. They were pressed into cider or made into vinegar. They were baked. They were canned and dried and used all winter. They were sold to neighbors.

“That’s how they made their money,“ Virginia Hopkins said.

Jimmy Hopkins cracks a smile. “Also made a little brandy.“

Brown circles around the tree looking for the prettiest, unblemished apples. He pulls one down and bites into the hard flesh. “These are nice looking apples. It must be grafted onto some of dwarf root stock. It’s a very late apple,“ he said, peering up at the tree’s branches. Brown’s references don’t include the Finn, but it was still a new apple to him. He’ll add it to his list.

Brown puts his apples into plastic grocery bags and packs some apples into his coolers. Then, he turns back to the Hopkinses. “You know anybody else around here who has old apples?“