11.16.2007
Thoreau's Journal: 16-Nov-1850
The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man! there are many pleasures which he will be debarred from.
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The era of wild apples is still going strong here in the UP of Michigan. There are by far more wild apples than cultivated in our area. A favorite pastime for us is to sample the apples from the once-cultivated trees as well as the innumerable volunteer apple trees hereabout
Favored fall activities are gathering bushels of the choice hand picked fruit for apple sauce, cider and pies.
Early summer apples, spicy and some bitter like crab apples. Gnarled, twisted, contorted trees producing sweet fruit. Some hard and bitter fruit mellowing and becoming juicy and sweet given frost and aging. A whole world of heritage apples in the woods, hedgerows and lanes of the Upper Peninsula...
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