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["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Market Farming] Help save an old apple farm
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 17:55:01 -0700
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
Organization: http://market-farming.com  --  Venaura Farm
To: marketfarming@lists.ibiblio.org

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Market Farming] Help save an old apple farm
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 15:37:54 -0500
From: Matt Green <seedpage@iowatelecom.net>
Reply-To: marketfarming@lists.ibiblio.org
To: marketfarming@lists.ibiblio.org

  There is an elderly gentleman named Harold Linder who lives in my area
that owns an apple farm that he has ran for 50+ years.  There was a
writeup about him in the paper a few years ago in local paper (which I
have attached) that tells about him.

Anyway, Mr. Linder is approaching 90, and has remarked to a friend of
mine over the years that he is worried about the farm because he doesn't
want to see all the old apple varieties lost. We contacted him a couple
of years ago about it, because I had posted on a forum about the farm
and had gotten many replies about taking it over, but he said at the
time that he was trying to make arrangements with his family. This same
person told me awhile back that evidently those had not panned out, and
he was back in the same boat.

Mr. Linder lives in Sperry, Iowa, which is a bit north of Burlington on
the SE corner of the state. This is a very rural area along the
Mississippi, and very typical of the small town rural life you'd expect
from this part of the country. The property itself has a has, several
barns, equipment, and a fair amount of acreage.

If anyone is interested in moving here and  taking over such a farm,
please contact him at 319-985-2415. Please only tell him that someone
posted this on the internet, and do not give my name, as this will be
unsolicitied and he does not know people are calling him, and be ready
to give him some explanation of why you are calling. However, the nature
of the situation is such that it would be a disaster if those varieties
were lost.

Contact me if you have more questions. Thanks for your time.

Matt


--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
PermacultureWiki
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php


--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
PermacultureWiki
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php

Title: FullView

apple

Publication Date: Tuesday, October 20, 1998
Category: Lifestyle     By: News Desk

---

By Bob Hansen

The Hawk Eye

SPERRY -- Harold Linder wears his 84 years lightly. There is an ease in his step as he moves confidently through his orchard near Sperry and pauses before a favorite apple tree.

He runs his hand along the tree's damaged trunk, reaches to the hail-damaged fruit, and reluctantly tells a visitor that the tree must be removed.

"I hate to cut a tree down," Linder says as he pulls at his battered blue cap. "It has been such a hard summer and this one is not looking good. You really get to know each tree and they almost seem like old friends but, I don't think this one can be saved."

Linder's reluctance to remove a tree is understandable, for this is not a commercial orchard producing bushels of uniformly rounded and colored fruit. Rather, it is a history book of the slightly bedraggled old species of apples that once fed pioneer families or graced a Depression Era table, but have now fallen out of favor in the modern marketplace.

The 100 trees stirring in the warm autumn wind each represents a unique variety, and while their ripening fruit may be small or misshapen and off-colored, they are historically and botanically significant. The apples Linder picks from his trees are little changed from those enjoyed by our great-grandparents and each imparts a bite and taste that differs from the mass-produced fruit on today's supermarket shelves.

There is the Wolf River apple, the Summer Champion, the Williams Early Red and the Sheriff apple. There is a direct descendent of a pioneer tree planted by Johnny Appleseed in Indiana and an apple that was popular in the Illinois of Lincoln's time.

Linder is caught up in the history and romance of the apple tree. He reports that apple seeds were part of the Mayflower's cargo and that westward migrating pioneers cherished the apple trees they carried as a link to their eastern homes.

Linder's own history with apples began when he was a 15-year-old farm boy working at the Big Hollow Cider Mill. At that time, there were more than a dozen working orchards in the immediate area and Iowa was one of the nation's top apple producers.

"Today, we just don't eat apples like we used to. We are too quick to pick up a package of Twinkies or cookies and we forget what a good and healthy snack we have here.

"I remember when families would put bushels of apples in their basement to carry them through the winter and how each parlor or kitchen would have a big bowl of apples sitting out to enjoy," Linder said.

Linder takes his visitor to a quiet corner of the orchard and points to a struggling young tree, explaining his is from the original Delicious apple tree that is now a mainstay of the commercial orchard industry.

"The Delicious apple came from Iowa --near the Winterset area. As I have heard the story," the retired farmer and horticulturist reports, " A man named Jessie Hyatt had an orchard and one day he noticed this strange tree forcing its way up in a fence line.

"He figured it had grown from a seed dropped by a squirrel, but it seemed to be a mutation on his regular fruit trees, so he let it grow to see what might develop. At that time, the Stark Brother's Nursery in Missouri was the largest seller of apple trees, and each year they had a show for orchard owners to bring in new varieties.

"Well," Linder continued, "Hyatt took four apples off his tree to the show and placed them on a table for review. But he returned home before Clarence Stark got to the apple and all the information was lost from the tray holding the samples.

"Stark thought the apple was 'delicious', but was disappointed to find out all information about it was unavailable. He had to wait to the following year when Hyatt returned with four more apples before Stark Brothers could purchase the propagation rights. And what I have here is a graft descendent from that original tree."

Linder also tells the story of the Burlington Apple that once grew in the yard of Burlington's Frederic Leopold. Linder had heard through the horticulture grapevine that Leopold, the brother of the noted conservationist Aldo Leopold, had an unusual apple tree and he was anxious to see it.

In 1974, Linder stopped by the Leopold home to discover Fred high in an oak tree cleaning wood duck boxes. Fred's wife quickly enlisted Linder to hold the basket while Fred dropped box refuse and an occasional snake from the tree.

As Linder helped Fred that afternoon, they discovered they had a mutual interest in apples. Fred showed his visitor the unique tree and gave him a cutting. Linder then grafted a cutting onto his root stock and was able to reproduce this unique tree.

The tree in the Leopold yard was later lost, but Linder has sent plantings to the Seed Savers, an organization based in Dubuque that is preserving disappearing plants and trees, and through this effort, the Burlington apple has been preserved for future generations.

Linder estimates there are more than 7,000 varieties of apple trees that could grow in Iowa and explains that while science has learned much about apple propagation, mutant variations still unexpectedly occur. This produces a dizzying array of apples and often a pleasant surprise.

Near a cluttered work shed Linder reveals a number of small trees growing in pots. These, he explains, are his "heritage trees" - cuttings from friends and neighbors that he carefully grafts onto semi-dwarf root stock to reproduce the original tree.

"A lot of these come from people who have a tree that meant something special to their family and that tree is now in danger of being lost. They bring a cutting to me and I do the grafting and get them going. Then they take the young tree and plant it and, in a sense, that tree is saved."

Linder confesses that his apple orchard is not all that he wishes it to be. He says this was one of the worst seasons for apples he has ever seen since he planted his first trees in 1943. A wet spring delayed pollination, there is a problem with blight, and he has been unable to do as much mowing of the rich orchard grass as he would like.

He uses only a minimum of "soft" sprays in his trees and bemoans the fact he no longer operates his wood apple cider press because government regulations demand stainless steel equipment and "it got to be too much work."

But, when he passes an especially interesting tree, his eyes still light up and he speculates on what great apple sauce or pies his historical trees will produce.