Trees of Antiquity

The apple trees by the office aren’t pretty anymore. They are bent as if by arthritis, with dead branches way out of the reach of pruning saws.  But I know their names and remember when my mom and dad bought these two Ozark Gold trees for us after we moved to this farm. We planted these, a dozen or so Golden Delicious, an Empire, an Earliblaze, a couple of Galas and one Blushing Golden.  These were varieties my folks were familiar and successful with at their mid Missouri orchard. 

 And so, in August when we begin to hear the thud of apples falling outside the office window, we know it’s time to pick one of those yellow green fruits and take a bite to see if it's ripe.  An Ozark Gold is not a super sweet fruit like the popular Honeycrisp or Gala or Pink Lady. But it’s not sour either like the old time Lodis, good for sauce and nothing else. We used to get a box of those green mammoths from my folks’ tree and believe me, measure for measure, it took as much sugar as apple! An Ozark Gold is tangy, and juicy, and pretty darn crisp for an August apple. It makes a dandy pie but still cooks up into a lovely golden sauce with just the right amount of texture to savor.  As we grow them, they aren’t lovely; many have some cosmetic spots that peel off easily, but there is enough clean fruit to keep a bowl in the fridge for munching. This week we froze a half dozen pies or so, ate a big apple crisp with ice cream, peeled and chopped enough for a round of apple breads for everyone and still have four loaves stashed in the freezer for harvest lunches. 

Millie came up one afternoon to “help apple”.  When she suggested we pull out the apple peeler, an ingenious tool for sure, I told her our apple were more dimpled darlings than carbon copies, thanks to some early season hail.  They needed the hands on treatment. I needn’t have worried. Millie’s been peeling fruits and veggies for longer than...well, let’s just leave it at “longer than. Armed with a couple of knives and one of many peelers, the bucket of odd shaped Ozark Golds were soon tucked into pies while Gma Millie took a tasty streusel topped dessert home for Grandpa’s supper…Years ago, Millie was the one hidden by a cloud of flour while she rolled out crusts for freezer pies, while I, a disciple of comparative advantage, stood at the sink up to my elbows in apple peels.  Days spent canning or freezing produce are good days and fondly recollected even after the jars are empty.

Speaking of jars…we grab our canner full of empties from the basement shelves, hoping to avoid the ones with dead spiders and crickets inside.  They are scrubbed and then examined for chips or rough edges. It’s kind of a treasure hunt and history lesson rolled up in one to guess the vintage and origin of each jar.  The Kerr jars are the easiest since I know the date is stamped on the screw top. I handle them tenderly, picturing my grandmother carrying these jars from 1964 down to her basement full of peaches or applesauce from my grandfather’s orchard.

One of these jars is from 1976.  It doesn’t have the Liberty Bell on it like some Bicentennial jars, but it could have come over from my mom’s cache, a jar of pickles or beans from Millie’s canner, or even a hand-me-down from my mom’s long time friend Carol Findling.  

And finally, I wash out a jar dated 1986.  That one has some age on it too, but I know it’s mine and has been up and down the basement stairs who knows how many times.  Canning is a tribute to our past, a ritual handed down like these jars, a trip down memory lane captured in something as ephemeral and as lasting as glass.  

It’s ironic that some of these canning jars are going to outlast those two Ozark Gold trees out back. I looked up the variety online, but it seems Stark Bros. no longer grows it for sale.  I seem to recall my dad saying something about the root stock, but perhaps its decline has more to do with the customers' desire for super sweet apples. And even though it has fantastic keeping qualities for an ‘early’ apple, it is not an apple for storage.  Still, an Ozark Gold can be used in so many ways….and carries with it so many memories, that I am determined to find some baby Ozark Golds to replace our oldsters.  

And I have.  A nursery called ‘Trees of Antiquity’ is still growing Ozark Golds for sale.  And while I don’t think a tree introduced in 1970 quite qualifies as ‘antique’,  I guess I could be wrong! In the tradition of the people who gave us the first trees, and the ones who passed down the canning jars, I’m going to order a couple more Ozark Golds to ensure our grandkids will continue to pick russeted yellow apples for eating, for pies, and for the first fresh loaves of their grandmother’s apple bread…..