David Benscoter, apple detective: "It might be … Here, let's stop right here! Stop right here. OK, can you take the GPS coordinates right here?"
Dave Benscoter and E.J. Brandt are on the hunt. Their target? Old apple trees.
David Benscoter, apple detective: "What we're trying to do is recover apples that in the last hundred or so years have been lost -- or thought to be extinct. Back in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, there were approximately 250 apple varieties growing in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Today at least 25 of those varieties are believed to be extinct."
There were once at least 17,000 named apple varieties in North America, trees planted by homesteaders who relied on them to survive.
Now, less than one-quarter of those varieties remain.
Experts call the missing ones "lost apples."
But some of these lost apples are still growing.
Finding them is the challenge.
David Benscoter, apple detective: "We obtained a ledger book from a relative of a nurseryman who was in Whitman County in the late 1800s. And in that ledger book were a number of receipts."
By pairing names on receipts with old property maps, E.J. Brandt tracked down a lost variety called the 'Regmalard' at the edge of a wheat field in Troy, Idaho.
E.J. Brandt, apple detective: "The last known instance of this apple was in 1901."
With old-fashioned detective work, and a lot of shoe leather, the retired FBI agent and the avid historian have found 13 "lost" varieties.
But it's a race against time as aging trees are dying
Or being cut down before they can be preserved.
That preservation work takes place here, nearly 400 miles away in Molalla, Oregon.
That's where botanists at the temperate orchard conservancy analyze apples shipped to them from across the west.
Joanie Cooper, Temperate Orchard Conservancy: "You never know what this variety is going to offer. The climate is changing. We are warmer here in Oregon than we were 10-15 years ago, even. And so you have to have varieties that can last, that can grow, produce fruit, survive the heat.”
When a lost variety is found, the apple detectives return to the field and take wood cuttings from the aging tree to graft to a host tree, and maintain the variety for another generation.
E.J. Brandt, apple detective: "I don't want it lost in time. I want to give back to the people so that they can enjoy what our forefathers did."
For these apple detectives, each tree is a piece of living history, holding stories from the past, and a promise for the future.
For Market to Market, I’m Peter Tubbs.
2 янв 2020
