When I went to the Forgotten Fruits workshop up in Madison earlier this year, one thing seemed sort of off. All the trees looked like this one. March = not exactly peak apple season. Next week, tho, RAFT brings its apple program to Chicago just as the Pippins are starting to fall from the trees. … Continued
Fact One: The first edition of The Nomenclature of the Apple, published by USDA pomologist W.H. Ragan in 1905, lists 6,554 uniquely named apple varieties then grown in the United States. One hundred years later Wisconsin orchard-keeper Dan Bussey, whose exhaustive history of American apples is due out in 2010, estimates the true number at … Continued
I left the UW-Madison arboretum last night with a head so full of apple facts and figures that it’ll take a few days here to sort it all out. I now know how to do a graft and why you might want to seal it with paraffin; the difference between native crab apples and imports; … Continued
I’m heading to Madison this weekend to learn everything there is to know about heirloom apple preservation. Or at least that’s what it seems like. The occasion is a loose collection of apple-related activities put together under the auspices of RAFT, a Slow Food USA program/cabal of heirloom food freaks. The acronym stands for Restoring America’s Food … Continued