10/18/2025
Apple Season🍎A delicious little history for the present...
"Through the centuries, orchards and apple carts were symbols of the early American landscape, our agricultural marketplace, and sweet prosperity. Apples arrived in North America in the 17th century, brought as slips and seeds by the first immigrants. The first American apple was the Roxbury Russet, named in honor of the Massachusetts town where it grew.
Like many caught up in the same wave of immigration, my grandparents’ arrival in the early 20th century came at a time when new industries were consolidating resources that could undercut and drive out centuries of local production. But knowing the ups and downs of the markets (and having seen many an apple cart topple), my grandfather bought a humble triple-decker in Roxbury as soon as he could. Like so many before them, my grandparents knew that the surest way to have food that was lovingly raised and affordable was to grow your own, and their courtyard garden became an Eden in the middle of a decaying city; several of their fruit trees stood on the same ground where a 17th-century governor kept his orchard.
At the same time, in the early 1900s, the temperance movement harnessed a religious fervor for sobriety that ushered in Prohibition. Not so ironically, Prohibition strategically killed local brewing and distillation, and powerful robber barons (who were the only ones able to work around the laws) stepped in to fill the void. These wily investors had bootleggers smuggle in liquor for their own speakeasies and private parties—where they no doubt sat back and made plans for the consolidated breweries and distilleries that would take over nationally once Prohibition ended. Meanwhile (file under “collateral damage”), our hard cider–drinking nation cut down huge swaths of ancient orchards in the name of Prohibition (followed by housing developments with names like Orchard Circle and McIntosh Lane). All lessons that we can learn from—or be doomed to repeat.
Today I see the apple cart as emblematic of our new local market economy. The return of local breweries and distilleries, and the revitalization of a regional landscape, complete with orchards. Farmers markets brimming with heritage apples in wooden crates, hard cider, and cider doughnuts. A cart maneuvered by a farming family in order to create a seasonal income stream directly between grower and eater. An alternative to plastic crates filled with machine harvested, unripe apples gassed to turn red when they arrive at the distribution warehouse thousands of miles away. An apple cart without a half-dozen middlemen and fifteen added chemicals. Food justice on wheels . . . and a chance to know the farmer and the stories of the produce behind the farm stand.
I have had the good fortune to partner with preservationists and foundations across the nation, working to save forgotten fruits (including regional apple varieties) that were disappearing at an alarming rate in a world of Red Delicious apples meant to endure shipping, look perfect, and remain shelf stable—at the cost of flavor and regional diversity. Historically every state or county had a favorite apple adapted to the conditions and needs of the place: summer apples, storage apples, pie apples, sauce apples, and cider apples for every home and orchard. In my region, it was easier to grow apples than barley and more cost-effective to drink hard cider than beer; so now, with a return to local hard cider production, the apple cart even has a place out in front of our liquor stores.
I am grateful to see a younger generation tipping the apple cart and creating alternative systems. Red Delicious—thunk. High-spray orchards—dropped. Cargo ships laden with imported apples—sunk. Industrial juice—drained. In their place, pick-your-own heritage apples and pears, hard cider, and open spaces. Ka-ching: rebuilt local agricultural economies far more joyful and meaningful than data entry can collect. Systems which respect our shared cultural inheritance and invest in human industry.
The idiom to “upset the apple cart” has been with us, in some form, at least since Jeremy Belknap’s The History of New-Hampshire (1784), which noted that John Adams nearly “overset the apple cart” by slipping in his own amendment on the morning of the day the Constitution was to be ratified. Adams was a farmer-turned politician and ultimately president at a pivotal time in our nation’s history.
Today, we are at another pivotal time, a time for the tenacity that gardeners know so well. It is clear that many of our systems are broken, but like other farmer-statesmen and -women before us, we are agitating, planting seeds, and rebuilding systems. For those of us who love the land, there is a sense of urgency. It’s time for us to get our hands back in the soil. Time for us to overturn politics as usual and redefine issues we see as important. We seem to be at a tipping point. Boom or bust. The bigger the mainstream gets, the more room there is for an undercurrent, and this generation of farmer-activists knows that some apple carts were meant to be overturned and filled anew—this time with local, organic, sustainably and justly raised heritage harvests, rich with flavor, history, and diversity"
From an essay entitled "Apple-Cart" in my book "The Heirloom Gardener - Traditional Plants and Skills for the Modern World" Available at your local bookstore/library, or here: https://www.amazon.com/Heirloom-Gardener-Traditional-Plants-Skills/dp/1604699930
🍎🍏Woodcut by Mary Azarian
