North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

Production & use of alcohol is pre-historic.  A long time ago, humans 
figured out that water mixed with alcohol/fermented stuff led to over-all 
better health.  Because alcohol plus bacteria-tained water plus an hour or 
so equals safer drinking water.  Or to say, for a lot of our history, home 
brewing your own (or buying someone else's) was usually the only water 
treatment you had.  Of course, drinking too much of the undiluted alcohol 
product would cause a whole bunch of other problems, which we still see 
today.


----Original Message Follows----
From: Jwlehman
To: nafex@
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Legend, Myth Or Both?
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:12:31 EST

In a message dated 11/20/2004 1:22:10 AM US Eastern Standard Time,
wizard2468 writes:

>
>   I saw a program a few years ago that stated that Johnny Appleseed, who
> legend says spread apple seeds throughout a large area to supply food for
> people, was actually planting apple seeds so that hard cider could be
> produced.


Hello all,

A few years back at one of the annual NAFEX meetings we had a Johnny
Appleseed historian give a presentation. He said at that time one could get 
free land
from the US Gov. with the only stipulation was you had to do something with
it, not just hold it.  Also he went around the country helping people 
establish
orchards and did custom grafting.

Apparently in Chapman's travels he would get a patch of free land and plant
apple seeds for trees. That way when asked by the Gov. what he was doing 
with
this piece of ground or that he could honestly say planting apple trees. 
Yes,
that is being a smart business man.

Editorial: Even back then there were people who figured out how to take
advantage of Gov. programs, legally. Little doubt in my mind some of the 
settlers
made apple beer, but this presenter gave no hint of apple beer being a goal.
It was my opinion the main goal was building personal wealth by obtaining 
free
land and selling his hort. services.

Jerry