"The Bluebird carries the sky on his back" -- Henry David Thoreau

As I sat down to compose this post and confronted the unenviable, but necessary, business of coming up with a suitable opening sentence, the first idea that popped into my head was: "Who doesn't love Bluebirds?" Then, as is my wont, I consulted the writing of Edward Howe Forbush to see how he handled the task. I was gratified, and not altogether surprised, to see that he begins his entry on the Bluebird in Birds of Massachusetts (vol. 3, 1929) with the sentence: "Who does not welcome the beloved Bluebird and all that his coming implies?" I was even more pleased to read his lede for the entry on Bluebirds in his earlier work, Useful Birds and Their Protection (1907): "The Bluebird is perhaps the first of all birds in the affections of the rural population of New England." Most welcome affirmation of my own thoughts!

Confirmation that Forbush was on target in these assessments of widespread fondness for Sialia sialis can easily be seen in the writings of other ornithologists, as well as in the work of poets, songwriters, painters, and photographers. Their affection is manifest in the loving, often exuberant words, images, and music that Bluebirds inspire.

John James Audubon wrote of the Bluebird: Full of innocent vivacity, warbling its ever pleasing notes, and familiar as any bird can be in its natural freedom, it is one of the most agreeable of our feathered favourites. The pure azure of its mantle, and the beautiful glow of its breast, render it conspicuous, as it flits through the orchards and gardens, crosses the fields or meadows, or hops along by the road-side. 

Later in the 19th century, naturalist John Burroughs was equally fulsome: When Nature made the bluebird, she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end. (p. 61)

Thoreau conveyed much the same sentiment in fewer words in the line that serves as the title of this post: the Bluebird carries the sky on his back.

In addition to their prose writings about Bluebirds, both Thoreau and Burroughs were inspired to turn their hands to poetry in praise of the lovely creatures. Poets Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost are also among those who put their reflections about Bluebirds into verse. Bluebirds feature strongly in a couple of my long-time favorite country songs: "I Heard the Bluebirds Sing," and "The Bluebirds are Singing for Me."  Pre-WWII blues artist Sonny Boy Williamson had a good record in 1937 with "Bluebird Blues"--issued on Bluebird records, no less. Buffalo Springfield, the influential 1960s rock group that was the launching pad for the careers of numerous performers, had a bit of a hit with the largely allegorical song, "Bluebird," written by band member Stephen Stills. There are more.

So, to answer my own question--in a grammatically torturous way--it seems that nobody doesn't love Bluebirds. 

For one reason or another I have not been fortunate enough to have had bluebirds as a regular part of the avifauna in most of the places where I've lived. My recollection from growing up in western Massachusetts is that Bluebirds were fairly common around the farm when I was quite young (i.e. in the late 1950s), and then they weren't; they became very rare visitors. My bird-loving father attributed the decline of Bluebirds to the increasing population of European Starlings, a species introduced to this country in the late 19th century, and the ensuing competition for cavity nesting sites. Contemporary ornithologists confirm his belief that Starlings were the bad guys in the scenario, though the problem arose before I was born. Fortunately, programs that began in the 1960s to distribute Bluebird-friendly nesting boxes have been quite successful in reversing the population decline. (Alas, my father was always frustrated in his own efforts to attract Bluebirds to the farm, because Tree Swallows invariably took over any nesting boxes that he put out. Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself.)

In any case, I am pleased to report that here in southern Maine in the 21st century, people are now enjoying the benefits of these recovery efforts. I was utterly delighted when a pair of Bluebirds showed up at my suet feeders one cold, snowy day in February, 2019. An unprecedented occurrence! Bluebirds like a lot of open space and, although we have a sizable front yard, I'd always assumed that it was not quite large enough to appeal to them. Apparently not. They hung around throughout that winter, and when Spring came they set up housekeeping in the one nesting box that I had put out in the yard. They have been a more-or-less permanent, year-round presence around the place ever since. 

The new visitors hatched out one brood that year, but then got caught up in some turf battles with a pair of pugnacious House Wrens--Starlings and Tree Swallows aren't the only other birds that compete with Bluebirds for good nesting spots. At some point the wrens wrested control of the house from the Bluebirds and proceeded to fill it with sticks, as is their wont. They also produced one brood of their own. Once I was satisfied that all the young wrens had fledged, I cleaned out the jumble of sticks that passes for a nest in Wrenworld, and the Bluebirds soon re-asserted their rights to the house. They even re-built their own nest (see photo below) and raised a second brood that summer.

Squabbles between House Wrens and Bluebirds have been going on since before European Starlings entered the picture. Audubon said of the House Wren: "it makes war on the Martin, the Blue Bird, and the House Swallow, the nest of any of which it does not scruple to appropriate to itself, whenever the occasion offers." Forbush reported: "There is always a feud between Bluebirds and House Wrens, especially when they wish to occupy the same nesting boxes or are domiciled near each other." (1929, p. 420) My father's experience with Tree Swallows taking over houses he'd intended for Bluebirds was certainly not unique. John Burroughs observed: “The bluebirds, when they build about the farm buildings, sometimes come in conflict with the swallows.” (p. 68)

We can add English Sparrows, another introduced species, to the list of those who can make it tough for Bluebirds to find suitable nesting spots. Pictured above are two editions of the Bluebird trading card issued by Church & Dwight, makers of Arm & Hammer baking soda. The text on the card on the left includes a comment that English Sparrows are the "enemy" of the Bluebird, and the surprising recommendation that killing Sparrows was "the best encouragement to the permanent settlement of Bluebirds." This seems an unduly harsh solution, especially given that the purpose of the cards was to discourage such things--"For the good of all, do not destroy the birds." The text was amended for the later card on the right.

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Not only are Bluebirds more numerous than they were a few decades ago, but they are among the species whose migratory patterns have changed during my lifetime. A recurring theme with many of the writers whose work I've consulted is that Bluebirds, along with Robins, have been seen as traditional harbingers of Spring in New England and elsewhere in the north. Turning again to John Burroughs (probably writing from his home in the Hudson Valley of NY, north of Poughkeepsie): “In New York and in New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith.” (p. 62)  And again--in one of his most lyrical passages: “It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear his note: and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a hope tinged with regret.” (p. 61)

Well, sorry John, but things have changed a bit since you penned those lines. As I write in early March, 2022, Bluebirds have been in my yard here in southern Maine throughout the winter, and the sugaring season has only just gotten underway. In fairness, very few species have begun their seasonal singing and, as far as I'm aware, Bluebirds are not among them; it may yet be a "bright March morning" when we first hear one. Even if he is not newly-arrived in the neighborhood. 

As far as I'm concerned, losing whatever buzz might be generated by seeing "the first Bluebird of Spring" with "all that his coming implies" in exchange for having some around all through the snows of January and February, is a trade-off I'm more than happy to make. Let's face it--as much as we love our Chickadees, Titmice, Juncos, small woodpeckers, and Nuthatches, they don't exactly brighten up the landscape. But seeing flashes of blue through falling snow on a gray, dreary, January day can do wonders for one's spirits. Because Bluebirds molt in Autumn, the males' plumage is at its best during the winter months. With all due respect to Mr. Thoreau, their hue in winter is not a sky-blue azure, but, rather a deep, almost metallic, cobalt blue. And, in the right light, their rusty-orange breasts seem almost to glow. From our breakfast table we have a view into the yard on the side of the house where we have our bird feeders. Many's the time I've looked up from the morning crossword and been rewarded with the sight of a handsome male Bluebird or two, perched in the branches of one of our oaks; a welcome splash of color in an otherwise drab vista. It invariably puts a smile on my face. 

It is not for their beauty alone that we humans hold Bluebirds in high regard. Their penchant for eating worms and insects that damage crops or are otherwise considered to be pests, earns them high marks with farmers. Bluebirds' predisposition for consuming large quantities of noxious small critters has long been recognized and celebrated. Alexander Wilson, in his magnum opus, American Ornithology (1808-1814) noted: "His society is courted by the inhabitants of the country; and few farmers neglect to provide for him, in some suitable place, a snug little summer-house, ready-fitted and rent-free. For this he more than sufficiently repays them by the cheerfulness of his song, and the multitude of injurious insects which he daily destroys."

Wilson also provided a charming account of parental tutelage in the art of bug-hunting: "The Bluebird, in summer and fall, is fond of frequenting open pasture-fields; and there, perching on the stalks of the great mullein, to look out for passing insects. A whole family of them are often seen thus situated, as if receiving lessons in dexterity from their more expert parents, who can espy a beetle crawling among the grass at a considerable distance; and after feeding on it, instantly resume their former position."

Modern Bluebird fanciers--like me--who want to encourage them to stay around have taken to buying dried mealworms (the larval form of darkling beetles) to appeal to their insectivorous nature; the worms serve to supplement the food that the birds can forage on their own. In my case this has been a great success. Every morning the Bluebirds hang around our feeder area, waiting for me to come out and give them their daily ration (about 1/2 cup) of worms. Not surprisingly, Bluebirds aren't the only ones who take advantage of my largesse; they often have to contend with Juncos, Robins, Blue Jays, and sometimes even Crows, for space at the breakfast counter. If you had told me 20 years ago that I would some day be buying bugs for birds...! The damn things aren't exactly cheap--a big bag like the one in the photo runs about 40 bucks at my local feed store. As much as my father loved Bluebirds, I really have to wonder what he, old Yankee farmer that he was, would think about me spending good money on dead bugs! Well, it matters not; I consider it money well spent. And, at half a cup per day, that bag will last a good, long while.

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A few months back I queried my cousins who now own the family farm about the current presence of Bluebirds there. "Oh! Do we have Bluebirds!" was the immediate, enthusiastic response. My father would be thrilled! I only wish he were still alive to be able to enjoy them.

Both beautiful and beneficial, there are few more desirable birds to have around yard or farm than the Bluebird. I remain as delighted as I was when some first showed up that they have chosen to stick around and grace my little corner of the world.

After all, who doesn't love Bluebirds? Well, maybe not House Wrens and Starlings...

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Bluebird lovers might want to familiarize themselves with the work of the North American Bluebird Society, an organization dedicated to Bluebird conservation. On the state level there is also the Ohio Bluebird Society. No doubt there are similar organizations in other states. The quotes from John Burroughs come from his piece, "The Bluebird," published in The Birds of John Burroughs: Keeping a Sharp Lookout, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976, pp. 61-73. The full text of a different piece about Bluebirds by Burroughs is available online. Audubon's description of the Blue-bird was published in his Ornithological Biography. The excerpt containing the bit that I quote that can be found online, as can Alexander Wilson's entry on the Bluebird from his magnum opus, American Ornithology. See also Wilson's poem,"The Blue-Bird." The quote from Thoreau that serves as the title of this post is from his journal entry of April 3, 1852. It can be found in Thoreau on Birds, ed. Francis H. Allen, Boston: Beacon Press, 1910; reprint edition 1993, p. 449. The Forbush quotes come from his 1907 work, Useful Birds and Their Protection, and Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States, 3 volumes, 1925-1929.

Good, helpful article about maintaining Bluebird nesting boxes: "To Clean or Not to Clean Your Nest Box."

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Sugaring

There comes a time every year in late February or early March when the sun has climbed to a certain point in the sky, the temperature has risen enough to soften some of the snow and ice--and perhaps even create a bit of runoff alongside the road where the ground slopes downhill--and the smell of mud is in the air. When I step outside on a morning like that I immediately say to myself: "It feels like sugaring weather."

As I write, the maple sugaring season in New England is well underway. I grew up on a farm in western Massachusetts where making maple syrup was a regular and important part of the year's work. It was a time that we all looked forward to for various reasons, even though it meant a lot of hard work. Ours was a small, family operation (about 1,200 taps) that remained largely low-tech throughout the ±125 years that five generations of my family made syrup there. My father, Francis (seen here stoking the fire in the evaporator), was highly-respected among his peers. He was an honorary Lifetime Member of the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association. In addition to passing along love and knowledge of the craft to his children and grandchildren, he served as a mentor to numerous aspiring sugarmakers who came to him for advice and guidance. He was one of the sugarmakers chosen to represent Mass Maple at the 1988 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife when Massachusetts was a featured state. 

I spent much of my early adulthood living in California so was not able to take part in sugaring for many years. In the early 1980s my first wife, young son, and I moved back to the farm. During the two years we lived there I took a much more active role in the sugaring operation than I had as a kid. During this period I was also trying to establish myself as a freelance writer, an endeavor that had more than its share of frustrations. I wrote the following short piece at a time when the frustrations were winning the day and my confidence was at a low ebb. I submitted it to the Berkshire Sampler, the weekly magazine associated with the Berkshire Eagle newspaper in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for consideration for their "Dropping In" feature of reader submissions. The fact that it was accepted, and generated some good feedback among readers--one person who read it said that it made his hands hurt!--was worth far more to me than the twenty bucks I got paid for it. I've always been kind of proud of it as a piece of descriptive writing so I thought I'd send it out into the world again.

§§§§§

One night in late March, 1985

It's pushing 11:00 p.m. and I'm in the sugarhouse waiting to finish off one final batch of syrup before calling it quits for the night. Outside, the temperature feels as though it has dropped back below freezing, and the wind has come up.

Inside the sugarhouse, though, the heat of the fire in the evaporator has long since forced me to abandon my heavy wool shirt and I work with just a vest over a long underwear top. The intensity of the heat when I stoke the fire has melted the polypropylene fabric on the wrists of my shirt in spite of the long gauntlets on the heavy leather gloves I wear. Sticky patches of dried-on syrup cover my pants and shoes. The syrup forms an outer crust on top of the mud on my feet.

My hands suffer from a multitude of ills: slivers from the rough slabs used for firewood, steam burns from reaching over the boiling sap, cuts and bruises from sources too numerous to recall, dirt ground in so completely that no amount of scrubbing will get it out, and extreme chapping from being in and out of cold sap, warm water, and freezing snow all day.

The day in this case began some fifteen hours ago and is not over yet. Not every work day during sugaring season is this long, but neither is this an extraordinarily long one. The strain of doing five or six tasks simultaneously, while dealing with tourists, and staying one step ahead of the volunteer help offered by various folks whose eagerness to take part outstrips their familiarity with the process, has made me extremely weary. There is a particular type of exhaustion brought on by spending long periods of time in front of a raging fire. You feel parched, light-headed, thoroughly drained of energy. A night's sleep does not necessarily take the feeling away. 

The sugaring season is in the home stretch. Some of the less optimistic of the local maple sages are already proclaiming it to be over. My reactions to such pronouncements are decidedly mixed; we've reached only 75% of our production goal, but my enthusiasm is shrinking along with the woodpile. 

The weekend has, in any event, been a good one. Probably every other sugarhouse in the Hilltowns is in operation tonight, and all my friends are no doubt feeling pretty much the same way I am. And, just as I'm certain that the syrup I'm boiling is sweet, I know that the first sugarmaker I talk with about the weekend will have worked a longer day, boiled more sap, made more syrup, burned more wood, and talked with more tourists than me. Guaranteed.

Make no mistake, sugaring is a lot of hard work, though it has its romantic aspects and everyone who sugars does so because they love it. There are few other sensations on earth as pleasant as walking into a sugarhouse where the sap is at a full, roiling boil, the room is filled with steam, and the sweet aroma of syrup-in-the-making fills your senses. 

The near-universal replacement of buckets with plastic tubing (which I am in the process of setting out in the photo, complete with a spout in my mouth) as a means of sap collection has eliminated the worst of sugaring's manual labor--you haven't lived until you've broken through the snow crust while carrying a 5-gallon pail of cold sap in each hand and have half of it go down inside your boots--but sugarmakers earn every penny of the $20 they get for a gallon of syrup. [n.b. 1985 price!]

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As the final batch of syrup nears completion I quit stoking the fire in preparation for shutting things down for the night. Once the fire simmers down, the temperature inside the sugarhouse begins to reach equilibrium with that outside. I put back on a couple of the layers of clothing I'd peeled off hours earlier. 

When the syrup is ready, I draw it out of the evaporator into a pail, then pour it into the filter that sits on top of the canner. While trying to adjust the heavy felt filter to make use of a clean area, I lose my grip on the material. A gallon and a half of unfiltered syrup spills into the bottom of the canner, mixing with that which had already passed through. I have to draw off the entire contents from the canner, set up a clean filter, and run the whole batch through again.

That accomplished, I check the fire one last time, gather up the dirty filters to take to the house for washing, turn out the lights, and step outside. The night is clear and cold. The moon is only two days old so the stars shine brightly, with little competition. The distant "Who cooks for you?" call of a Barred Owl accompanies me on my short walk to the house.

In the kitchen I grab a beer from the refrigerator--stoking the fire is dehydrating work--and head to bed, trying not to wake anyone. I chug about half the beer which further numbs my already dulled senses. I take a quick shower--an absolute must--and crawl into bed. I unwind with the rest of my beer and a page or two of a mystery novel.

It's well after midnight when I turn out the light. I drift off, wondering if the sap will run again tomorrow. I'm asleep in less than a minute.

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In sugar-camps, when south and warm the winds of March are blowing,

And sweetly from its thawing veins, the maple's blood is flowing.

                                                                --John Greenleaf Whittier, "Among the Hills" (1868)

Currier & Ives, "American Forest Scene - Maple Sugaring"

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I've always thought there should be fiddle tunes about maple sugaring so I finally wrote one. I composed this during a period when I was spending a lot of time looking at 19th century tunebooks from New England--Ryan's Mammoth Collection, Howe's School for the Violin, and the like--and I thought I'd try to write a tune that was stylistically similar to the ones in them. "Leather Apron" is an old-time term for the result of a simple test sugarmakers sometimes use to determine if syrup is ready to be drawn off. You scoop a dipper full of syrup out of the evaporator as it is boiling, then tilt the dipper so the liquid drips slowly off the edge, back into the pan. If it comes off in a sheet--i.e., a "leather apron"--rather than in droplets, it is nearly ready. (Click on the tune for a larger image.)

Apples in Winter

Orchard at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, New Gloucester, Maine, December 1, 2018

I grew up on a New England farm that, like so many others in the region, had an abundance of old apple trees. In addition to trees along all the stone walls that border the fields and pastures, there was, in times past, a decent-sized orchard on the property. This plentitude was matched by the diversity of varieties present. A map of the orchard (reproduced below), drawn by either my grandfather, Darwin, or great-grandfather, Alexius, indicates approximately 200 trees, of nearly 50 varieties. I shall return to the subject of the family orchard in a bit.

This strong presence of apples in my early life has given me a deep, sentimental fascination with apples and old apple trees. At times it seems as though the trees have a living spirit or personality of their own. They stand, silent and unmoving, as they have for perhaps a century or more, voiceless witnesses to decades of change in the social and economic worlds around them. Their character is especially revealed in winter when the leaves are gone and we see the venerable old things in all their crooked, twisty splendor. The fruit of some varieties clings to the branches well into early winter, as is the case with those pictured here that stand in the orchard at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. This gives one the sense that the trees are refusing to yield to the change of seasons but want to retain the past summer's bounty for as long as possible. I take this as a lesson in persistence. How very Shaker-like.

I am far from alone in my fascination with old apples. In the past generation, as the number of varieties of apples readily available in American supermarkets has shrunk to a predictable half-dozen or so--and many of these either newish types (Honeycrisp) or imports (Braeburn and Gala from New Zealand, and Fuji from Japan)--interest in older, "heirloom" varieties has grown. One of the champions of heirloom apples is John Bunker, from Palermo, Maine. Bunker has established an orchard on his property and runs a CSA devoted to heritage apples. Bunker also founded Fedco Trees which has become a major source of trees for those--like me!--who want to try their hand at raising heirloom apples. The Fedco website is an important source of information about older apple varieties, one that I turn to frequently.

It's impossible to know just how many different types of apples were once grown in this country--I have seen estimates as high as 16,000--but the ±50 varieties in the family orchard is probably a fairly typical number for many older New England farms. A big reason for the bewildering diversity is the nature of apples themselves; if left to their own devices apple seeds don't reproduce replicas of the trees they came from. Apples are "extreme heterozygotes," meaning that they reproduce with unpredictable characteristics. If you have a type of apple that you like and want to be able to keep growing more with the same traits, you have to do so via grafting (i.e., cloning). But their heterozygosity(!) makes it possible to cultivate many different varieties, each with its own attributes. By the same token, if orchardists and nursery owners stop cultivating particular types they will become extinct. Hence the importance of the work of Bunker and Fedco.

While some Biblical scholars suggest that it would be more appropriate for the tree in the tale of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Judeo-Christian mythology to be identified as a fig rather than an apple, the cultivation of apples is, in fact, thousands of years old. Apples may well have been the first fruit tree to be cultivated, beginning in what is today Kazakhstan. It is said that apples were introduced to England during the reign of Julius Caesar. Colonists from Britain brought them to the New World early in the 17th century. 

Orchard at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, New Gloucester, Maine, May 16, 2019

New England has, and has not, been a good home for apples. Apples' versatility made them a welcome and valued commodity to self-sufficient Yankees. They're great for baking, for making juice, cider, or vinegar, and--perhaps best of all--for fresh eating right off the tree. In addition to their value for human consumption, apples can be fed to livestock; cows, horses, and pigs are all fond of them. But with the rise of industrialization in the 19th century, and the concomitant migration of New England farmers westward in search of more fertile and less rocky farmland, hundreds of farms in the region were abandoned. Acres and acres of once-cleared land reverted to scrub and forest, effectively swallowing up the old stone walls that had formed the boundaries of hayfields and pastures. And, with the walls, the untended apple trees that grow alongside them. 

"Cider Making," William Sidney Mount, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henry David Thoreau wrote eloquently about the apples of New England. He termed the apple "the noblest of all fruits," and felt that "the flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and delicious to both sight and scent." However, old Henry was not a fan of the cultivation of apples; he much preferred those that grew wild:

Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bearing qualities--not so much for their beauty as for their fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their 'Favorites' and 'Non-suches' and 'Seek-no-farthers,' when I have found them, commonly turn out very tame and forgettable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and have no real tang or smack to them. 

He would not have been impressed by today's movement to save carefully cultivated heirloom varieties! Thoreau also had a fondness for apples that went unharvested:

Apples in overgrown orchard at Laudholm Farm, Wells, Me

The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of November. Then they get to be palatable, for they ripen late and they are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the while to gather--wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is mistaken[.] 

But cultivate apples Yankee farmers certainly did. The orchard on my family's farm was probably fairly typical in terms of size and of the diversity of varieties grown in it. A treasure found among the stash of family documents that came to me when my father passed away and we dispersed the contents of the farm house, is a map of the orchard with a key to the types, location, and quantity of the trees it contained (a typescript of the list is included at the end of this post):

The map raises a few questions. The layout of the trees does not really conform to the configuration of the terrain. The back side of the orchard (the left side of the diagram) was defined by the stone wall that marks the boundary between our place and that of the neighbor's so it was, in fact, straight, as shown on the map. But the front (the right side of the chart) more or less followed the contours of a brook and pond; no straight edges there. A real mystery is the indication of a spring--barely visible on the image here--on the far left side of the map, between the 4th and 5th rows down from the top. There has not been a spring anywhere near that location in my lifetime. Did one perhaps dry up? Is that even a possibility?  One should perhaps view this not as a precise, literal map of the orchard but as a stylized representation of it, of the nature of a schematic drawing. 

I wish I knew more about when the orchard was created, and how much my ancestors might have worked it as a commercial enterprise, or about what other use(s) they might have made of its bounty. Did they make and sell cider? Was there a local market where they sold apples? Did they use any of them for feed for livestock? One thing I do know is that my grandfather exhibited apples at the local fair; I wrote about his produce exhibits in an earlier post. Late in his life my father, Francis, wrote a series of short reminiscences about growing up on the farm in the early 20th century. He included a bit about his own father's apple exhibits:

As our farm then had many apple trees and many varieties, my father spent much time getting ready to exhibit them. He would take many plates of them and also a group of 49 which were in a diamond shape. Some of the varieties were Baldwins, Russetts, Northern Spy, Sweet Russetts, Golden Sweets, Orange Sweets, Sops of Wine, Winesaps, Pippins (a very large apple), Seek-No-Furthers, Sheeps Noses, and a variety which we always called “Good Kind” for want of a better name.

I can remember only one year in which my father harvested and sold apples from the orchard, though my older brothers recall him doing so in earlier times. I was quite young the year I'm thinking of...maybe not even in school. One of my father's older brothers, my Uncle Carl, and his wife, Lucille, were on hand to help. The adults climbed up into the trees on special ladders to pick the ripe apples, or to shake the branches so the fruit would fall on the ground. The apples were going to be sold to make cider so a few bumps and bruises were not fatal to their marketability. It was the job of us younger ones to fill baskets with the fallen fruit, then carry the baskets to the truck where an adult would transfer them to a crate. Picking up apples was the first job on the farm that I ever got paid for--a whopping 10¢ an hour! 

When we had enough crates to make a truck load my father hauled them to a railroad yard in Shelburne Falls, about 20 miles away, where they were loaded into boxcars. It was a big treat for my older sister and me to get to ride along--quite the adventure! I really enjoyed watching the trains coming and going in the yard, and counting the cars on the ones that rolled on through. My memories of this are quite dim, but wonderfully pleasant.

A few years later, probably around the time that I was in 5th or 6th grade, my father had all the trees in the orchard bulldozed to make more open land for pasture and cultivation. This was a big disappointment to me as the orchard had always been a favorite part of the wonderful extended playground that was the farm. There was a bit of a trade-off however--the piles of trees pushed up by the 'dozer made a terrific fort/castle/jungle gym for crawling around in! They eventually rotted away, of course, but lasted just about long enough for me to outgrow the fun of playing in them.

Although the orchard at the farm is long gone, there are still quite a few apple trees standing alongside the stone walls. Age has claimed some, and those that remain have seen better days. But they persist. One venerable Gravenstein tree at the lower end of the field we call the Square Lot holds particular memories for me. Gravensteins are prized as one of the very best pie apples, and as such were held in high esteem by my father. (He was famous for saying "the only thing better than a piece of apple pie is two pieces.") Every fall he would come to me and say, "Paul, I have a little job I need your help with." He'd hand me a basket or pail and together we'd make the short trek across the pasture to the site of the Gravenstein tree; it was something of the nature of a pilgrimage. Pop would climb up into the tree, carefully pick the ripe apples, and toss them down to me to put in the basket. There was no shaking these precious fruits onto the ground!

One often-overlooked benefit of having lots of apple trees around is the recreational opportunities they provide for young farm kids. Climbing them is an obvious possibility. The low branches on most apple trees are not so high up that a kid can't grab onto one and pull himself up into it. Once up in the tree there are plenty more branches to sit on, swing from, or use as ladders to climb even higher.  

Then there were apple fights, the late summer counterpart to winter snowball fights! I can't begin to tell you how many pitched battles we had with friends, cousins, and siblings. We'd just gather up a handful or two of partially-ripe apples and peg them at each other. Yes, they stung when they hit--yeeeowwch!--especially when thrown by bigger and stronger older brothers. But nobody ever got seriously hurt. I don't think.

A more benign activity, and one that required a certain amount of skill, was Apple Throwing; i.e., using a supple stick as a quasi-catapult to hurl apples for distance. This is best done with apples that are about half mature. We'd go into the woods, pocket knives in hand, cut two or three small saplings, maybe 3'-4' long, and sharpen one end of each in order to impale an apple on it. Selecting a stick that was just the right thickness, with just the right degree of flexibility, and then trimming it to just the right length, was a bit of an art. Additional skill was needed to push the apple onto the sharpened tip just far enough so it would not come off prematurely, but not so far that it wouldn't come off at all. Then, using either an overhand or sidearm technique, you'd reach waaaay back, whip the stick rapidly forward, and, with a well-timed flick of the wrist, send the apple flying across the field. If all the variables of suppleness, stick length, apple weight, throwing power, and technical prowess, were in perfect balance, your apple would go whistling through the air at a great rate--far enough, one hoped, that it would clear the stone wall on the opposite side of the field. Or at least travel as far as your older brother's did. 

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Apples. You can eat them. You can grind them up and drink them. You can bake them in pies and other goodies. You can market them. You can revel in the beauty of their blossoms, with your nose as well as your eyes. You can burn apple wood to make other things taste and smell great. You can feed them to your livestock. You can play games with them. You can climb the trees. As Thoreau said:

"It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man."

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The title of this post, and the photographs of the trees in the orchard at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village that grace the top of the page, were both inspired by the traditional Irish jig, "Apples in Winter." This is actually a "floating" title--i.e., one that in oral tradition has been linked with several different melodies. I offer here notation for the one that in my experience is most often associated with the title. You can hear it played beautifully by my friend Fergal Scahill, of the group, We Banjo 3.

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List of apple varieties formerly in the orchard at the family farm. Numbers after the names presumably indicate the number of trees of each variety. Some of the handwriting is very difficult to decipher. I do not know who drew the map and compiled the list. The list is not in my father's handwriting so it probably was done by either my grandfather, Darwin Wells (1869-1948), or his father, Alexius Wells (1828-1909). Note that there are also two pear trees indicated (nos. 43 and 44). These were likely the source of the pears that Darwin is known to have exhibited at the local fair; see my earlier post about the Cummington Fair. I have added a few small annotations.

1. Greening -- 29 2. Roxbury Russett – 19* 3. Seeknofurther -- 5 4. Sweet Russett -- 6 5. Family Apple – 9 6. Vandiver – 3 7. Nursery – 3 8. Spitsenburg [sic] – 11 9. Sops of Wine – 2 10. Fall Pippin – 7 11. Lady Finger Pairmain [Pearmain] – 4 12. Juneating – 3 13. Baldwin – 23 14. Gravenstein – 2 3  15. Spur Sweet – 3 16. Lady Apple – 2 17. Esq. Packard Apple – 8 18. Fall or Winter Sheep – 2 19. Porter Apple – 2 20. Norman W Apple – 2 21. Orange Sweet – 5 22. Little Core – 5 23. Name unknown – 2 24. Reed cheack [sic] Russett – 1 *Said to be the oldest known variety in America

25. Robbins sweet Russett – 1 26. Early Bough – 5 27. Orange Sour – 3 28. N.Y. Pippin – 3 29. D Towers sweat [sic] Russett – 3 30. Monstrous Pippin – 3 31. Green Seeknofurther – 2 32. Bullock Pippin – 2 33. Loomis Sweet – 2 34. Summer Golden sweet – 3 35. Summer Pearmain – 2 36. Winter Sweet – 2 37. Barr – 2 3 38. Winter Pearmain – 4 3 39. Orange Winter – 1 ** 41. Richardson – 1 42. Jewits [Jewett's] fine Red – 1 43. Grandfather Cobb – 1 (Pear) 44. Howard -- 1 (Pear) 45. Winter Summer Pearmain – 2 46. Mother Apple – 2 47. Danvers Sweet – 7 48. Esopus Spitzenburg – [ ] 49. Northern Spy – 3 ** there is no entry #40

For my own small endeavor in growing heirloom apples I've planted one each: Golden Russet, Red Gravenstein, Westfield Seek-No-Further, Esopus Spitzenburg, and Duchess of Oldenburg. 

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References

The following were very helpful in writing this post:

     Sue Hubbell. "Of Apples in Heaven's  Mountains and in Cow Pastures." Chapter in Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering before We Knew About Genes. Houghton, Mifflin Co., 2001.

     Howard Means. Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

     Russell Steven Powell. Apples of New England: A User's Guide. Countryman Press, 2014.

     Henry David Thoreau. "Wild Apples," essay originally published November, 1862, in The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1862. Reprinted in Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays. Univ. of Georgia Press, 2002.      

     Roger Yepsen. Apples. Countryman Press,  rev. ed 2017, p. 13.

In addition to the website for Fedco linked above, more information about heirloom apples can be found at: 

Apple Search: The Search for "Lost" Heritage Apples

New England Apples

Epic Gardening

A bit of judicious Googling will no doubt turn up others.

The Tune in the Christmas Cracker

This post is something I put up as a "Note" on Facebook back in 2013. It generated a considerable and gratifying amount of discussion among my friends who are into Irish music. Because it's been several years since I posted it, and because Facebook recently made some changes that have rendered "notes" extremely difficult for people to find, I've decided to re-post the story here. I take this opportunity to add some illustrations. Comments are again very much welcome!    -- December, 2020

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Some years ago I bought a copy of Capt. Francis O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland off eBay from a seller somewhere in the UK. This was not a first edition of the 1001 Gems, but is a relatively old one. It's identified on the cover as the "11th Edition." This edition was "Edited and arranged by" Selena O'Neill (a protege of, but no relation to, the good Captain), and published by her in 1940. It carries a hand-written ownership statement identifying it as having once been the property of one J. McTernan, of Oscott College, Sutton, Coldfield. Google maps tells me that this is just northeast of Birmingham, England.

While this is cool in and of itself, the book carried a hidden treasure--a single sheet of music manuscript paper on which are two meticulously hand-written tunes. The toy inside the Christmas cracker, as it were. Because one of the tunes is the reel that Irish musicians all know as "Christmas Eve"--identified on the sheet by the name of its composer, Tommy Cohen (sic: Coen)--we offer it here as a small seasonal gift for all our friends, musicians and non-musicians alike. (See below for a reproduction of the entire manuscript page.)

On the back of the sheet is a note: "With all the Compliments of Liam Donnelly," and was given to Hugh McTernan, presumably a relative of the person who originally owned the O'Neill book. At the time I acquired this, we queried fiddler Seamus Connolly to see if he knew either Donnelly or McTernan. My memory of his response is a bit dim, but I believe that he did know, or at least knew of, Mr. Donnelly. We have since learned that Liam Donnelly was a fairly well-known figure in Irish music circles and did the musical orthography for a large book of tunes compiled by fiddler Martin Mulvihill.

Seamus also told us that the tune acquired the title "Christmas Eve" because it was debuted on that night on Ciaran MacMathuna's radio program sometime in the 1950s. The "W. Brown" named on the ms. sheet was a Billy Brown who played accordion on the broadcast. Seamus related that Tommy Coen himself never liked the title "Christmas Eve" for the tune, though whether or not he had a preferred alternative we don't know.

In any event, we hope that our friends will enjoy this greeting from us. Peace and joy to all!

--Paul and Sally Wells

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[Click on any image to get a larger copy]

Image of entire ms. page; "Mulhair's No. 5" is commonly known as "Limestone Rock":

Front cover of O'Neill book:

Ownership statement from title page:

Selena O'Neill, editor and publisher of this edition of 1001 Gems:

August: The Golden Month

August is the Golden Month. It is the month when Goldenrod fills open fields, turning them into oceans of amber. It's the month when Black-eyed Susans grow wild in meadows and along roadsides, and bring a big splash of cheer to our home gardens.

It's the month when Monarch butterflies begin to cruise through and light on Dahlias, Phlox, Cornflowers, and whatever else happens to be blooming, before laying their eggs on milkweed, setting in motion the process of perpetuating the species.

It's the month when marsh grasses mature and impart a lovely, multi-hued aura to lands near the coast, with greens and browns mixed in with the golds.

 

August is the month when sunflowers, towering above everything else in the garden, reach their maturity. Young Goldfinches, among the last songbirds to be fledged for the summer, come with their parents to pluck the ripe seeds out of the centers of the blossoms. 

But not all the August flora is golden. Queen Anne's Lace, with its complex, delicate, seemingly otherworldly beauty, blooms alongside the Goldenrod and Black-eyed Susans. 

It is the month when Argiope aurantia makes her welcome return to our flower beds. She nightly spins her beautiful webs, luring unsuspecting flies and beetles to their doom. At the same time, ripe, juicy blackberries lure me into their thorny midst, to endure scratched arms and legs for the sake of gathering a few tasty treats!

Numerous other seasonal events also define August. It is the month when the Perseid meteor showers tempt us to venture out late at night, in the hope of witnessing a celestial light show. It is the month for marveling at the acrobatic maneuvers of flocks of Nighthawks, as they hunt insects at dusk; their long, pointy wings with transverse white stripes make them unmistakable even to casual observers. It is the time for mowing rowen, and the chance to enjoy another display of avian acrobatics, from swallows this time, before they make their early exit from New England and head south for the winter. It's the month of agricultural fairs, of corn on the cob, of ripening apples, of wearing t-shirts and shorts during the hot days and bundling up in sweaters and sweatshirts during the chilly nights.

For so many years, when the cycle of my life was tied to the academic calendar, August was a time of, if not exactly dread, of less-than-eager anticipation of the changes that September would inevitably bring. As a kid, the prospect of exchanging the carefree, unstructured time of Summer for the regimen of the school day was unwelcome, to say the least. As an adult, working in a university, August meant that the relative quiet of a thinly-populated summer campus would soon be transformed into a time of chaos and commotion, as hordes of students returned, and faculty and staff were plunged into a seemingly endless series of meetings and receptions. 

One of the great joys of retirement has been that I can now enjoy August--in all its golden splendor--as never before. Yet it remains a time that brings out uncertain and ambiguous emotions. Can summer really be over already? But I never quite got around to doing X, Y, and Z as I had planned. I'm tired of mowing the lawn and weeding & watering the gardens...but I'm not ready to think about raking leaves, and certainly not about shoveling snow. Is it time to put away the air conditioners and fans? But what if we get a very warm "Indian summer"? (Now there's a term that needs to go away!*) The Fall foliage should be beautiful...but it's been so dry. Will we get much of a display?

I find Sylvia Plath's characterization of August to be quite cogent: 

The best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd, uneven time.

And so it goes.

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*For an exploration of the term "Indian Summer" and some of its cultural and historical meanings, see Beneath the Second Sun, by Adam Sweeting.