Southern Heritage Apple Orchard Blossoms at Horne Creek Farm
Three years ago Home Creek Living Historical Farm planted the first trees in the South¬
ern Heritage Apple Orchard. Today they are bursting forth with spring blossoms, an indi¬
cation that the trees are thriving and that many old endangered varieties no longer face
extinction. As the 650 trees grow to maturity, they will produce some of the best tasting
apple varieties ever developed in the South.
Today only a handful of varieties of apples — all hybrids, chosen for their ability to last
long and travel well when packed, and many without much taste — are available in super¬
markets. Worse, the natural genetic pool of apples, as with other common hybrid crops, is
rapidly shrinking. Realizing that the old varieties were rapidly disappearing, concerned
individuals established a repository for preservation of the fruit.
The Southern Heritage Apple Orchard was created in 1997 by Horne Creek Farm
staff, the site’s support group, the North Carolina Living Historical Farm Committee
(NCLHFC), and apple
expert Lee Calhoun. A grant
of $50,000 from the Depart¬
ment of Cultural Resources
and additional funds pro¬
cured by NCLHFC allowed
the project to progress rap¬
idly. The eight-acre orchard
is protected by a deer-proof
fence crucial to the young
trees’ survival and has an effi¬
cient drip irrigation system.
The committee planted
the trees in stages over three
years, using grafted trees and
rootstock donated by
Calhoun, a volunteer orchardist at Horne Creek. Author of Old Southern Apples
(Blacksburg, Va., 1995), Calhoun is the nation’s leading expert on some 1,600 varieties of
apples (1,000 of them now extinct) once grown in the South. He personally grafted all of
the trees currently planted. When complete, the orchard will contain eight hundred
trees — two of each variety of heritage apples. Two different types of rootstock produce
either a semi-dwarf specimen tree, reaching 12 to 16 feet, or a space-efficient 6- to 8-foot
espalier tree on a trellis. If a semi-dwarf tree dies, a replacement from the espalier tree can
be grafted. Grafting (joining a cutting to a rootstock) is the only practical way to replicate
the exact characteristics of a parent apple tree. Planting seeds can produce offspring of
varying shapes, colors, and tastes.
Apples, while long a part of American heritage, are not native to America. Maryland
settlers in 1634 were told to carry “kernalls of pears and apples” with them. A settlement
on the Cape Fear River in 1666 reportedly grew “apples, pears and other English fruits”
from seeds. Grafting, known since Roman times, was not widespread in the South until
the mid-1700s. By 1806 Surry County, the location of Horne Creek Farm, had a nursery
where grafting was practiced. For more on North Carolina’s heirloom apples, see Smithso¬
nian (November 2002) or Our State (April 2003).
NCLHFC has prepared a sponsorship program by which citizens may adopt a tree for a
$500 tax-deductible gift and ensure its proper care over its expected fifty-year lifespan.
7 4
Logo of the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at Horne Creek
Living Historical Farm.
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