On Apples
“Maybe there was some magic in it all.”
My grandfather planted apple trees on his farm in Hiltons, VA, in the 1940 and 1950s. My dad learned to graft trees when he was a boy. I can still feel the russet of the old Stayman apples from the farm, just picked from the only tree I ever cared to climb. Will work for food, you see.
Decades later, that Stayman tree that my dad grafted is still alive, but it’s laid down now, resting itself after a life’s long work, settling in to find a comfortable space to breathe its last breath.
Last year, I climbed that tree again, but instead of taking its fruit, I took its youngest wood. I gathered up a bundle of scions just a year old, wrapped them in wet paper towels and plastic bags, and tucked them into the crisper drawer of the fridge. Two weeks later, I grafted that old tree’s baby wood onto fresh rootstock, and prayed that those little clones live.
Field & Flour is a cut flower farm, but we started planning for other plants even as we were ordering our first flower seeds. Josh and I both wanted a fruit orchard; we started dreaming about fresh cider and pies made from our backyard plot.
This isn’t a dramatic story. It’s the story of a dozen little things that added up to magic.
My dad’s family converges at the farm the day after Thanksgiving. We eat leftovers, finger foods, soups, and desserts, and there’s target practice (BYOG), and we make apple butter. Years ago, we’d use the apples from right there on the farm, coring and peeling them before cooking them down. Then, as the generations and the orchard aged, we started using apple sauce, cooking it all day in that same big copper pot. Now, with the apples fewer and schedules busier, there are years when no one makes the apple butter.
Two Thanksgivings ago, while no one was making apple butter, I thumbed through my Aunt Ann’s Southern Living Garden book. We have an updated copy, but hers is a bit older, with an appendix of nursery sources. I took a picture of the fruit tree nurseries, with one in mind to contact specifically for apples: Calhoun Nursery.
I couldn’t find a website, but I did find a New York Times article about Lee Calhoun’s work: a lifelong pursuit of saving old southern apples. After reading that article and another, I was hooked.
The Saturday morning after Christmas, I called the number listed for Calhoun Nursery. Lee answered casually. He said he’d closed the nursery after his wife, Edith, passed away a few years before. Edith was his co-adventurer in his hunt for lost apples. She rode with him to hunt for apples. She helped him go through thousands of seed catalogs at libraries. She typed out his book from his longhand. That book is, of course, dedicated to her.
Mr. Calhoun was nice enough to chat with me for a few minutes that morning, listening to me describe our plans and our land. He suggested a newer and superior rootstock than the one we’d been considering. He referred us to Century Farm Orchards, a recipient of Calhoun’s stock of heirloom apple trees. He gave me David’s number from memory and suggested that I request his book from my library, which I did.
We took Mr. Calhoun’s advice. We changed rootstocks. We ordered from Century Farm Orchards, and David Vernon was a gem to work with. I took the library’s copy of Mr. Calhoun’s Old Southern Apples with us to Wisconsin in early February and read quite a bit of it aloud to Josh as he drove, describing the varieties we’d ordered from David, or reading Lee’s notes on apple butter. I teared up a few times reading the book: 1,800 Southern apple varieties listed and described, including varieties thought to be extinct. Some of those presumed extinct in an earlier printing were discovered and saved, thanks to a plea (and his phone number) in the book from Mr. Calhoun to call him if you even thought you had a tree thought to be extinct. Many varieties have been saved because of Lee Calhoun’s life—a life full of work and rich with legacy. I returned the book to the library on Monday night and put it on hold again the next day.
Wednesday, hours after we’d received our shipment of 35 trees (23 for us, some for my parents, and a few for forward-looking friends) and hours before forecasted snow, Josh and I planted 18 heirloom apple trees in the old hayfield hill behind our house. And after the snow and freeze, we finished the other five Friday afternoon. Friday night, I read that Mr. Calhoun had passed away that same day, hours before we finished planting our trees. I cried that night.
The next morning, Josh loaded up the trees bound for Hiltons—new ones from Century Orchards, along with the babies we’d grafted from the old trees on that same farm. As we drove, he said, “The timing of all of this makes me think that maybe there was some magic in it all.” It certainly felt like magic.
This winter, we added more trees. We grafted some more. To protect them, we built a fence, and to help them, we planted daffodils.
It’ll be a few more years before our trees produce fruit. I hope that by Thanksgiving 2025, we can sit and peel apples together, and take turns—all day—stirring my grandmother’s copper kettle with the stirrer my grandfather made. By that time, I imagine that the old Stayman tree on the ground will be a ghost, watching us all together, making a little more magic for us all.
