HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1986-04-16, Page 24PAGE 24. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1986.
Old apple varieties mean a new business
Shelley Pauloclk shows one of the first of her apple trees to reach a
saleable size. After long research and several years of work she has
brought old varieties of trees back into the gardens of area landowners.
Like the line from ti e song that
says ''everything old is new
again", a Bluevale-are2 nursery
owner is hoping that old apple
varieties will be a new taste
discovery for home orchard own-
ers.
After years of research, hard
work, planning and disappoint-
ments, Shelly Paulocik this year
will be putting the first "fruits" of
her labour on the market: 15
varieties of apple trees originally
wide -spread in this area but long
since gone from most orchards.
There was a time when nearly
every farm in Huron county had an
apple orchard. In the days when
self-sufficiency was a more impor-
tant concept in farming than
specialization, farmers depended
on the few dollars to be made from
apple sales each fall in the same
way they looked at the sale of butter
and beef as significant factors in
family income.
Butover the years specialization
and centralization gradually took
over and a few orchards got larger
while most were let go wild and
finally bulldozed out to make room
for more profitable crops.
With them went many of the
apple varieties that still bring
smiles tothefaces of oldtimers:
names like Gravenstein, Tomp-
kins King, Westfield and Yellow
Transparent.
Reviving some of these rare
breeds has been taken on, not by
someone who harks back to a
childhood in the old apple orchard
but by a "city girl" who grew up in
Oshawa but found out the life she
longed for was in the country
instead. From high school in the
motor city she went to Sheridan
College where she studied craft
and design but eventually decided
that field wasn't for her. After
spending some time travelling she
went back to school at the
University of Guelph to study
horticulture. Herinterestinold
varieties of fruit trees neatly
combines her interest in museum
work and her interest in horticul-
ture.
That interest was spurred on
when she and husband Gord
Chiddicks moved to a Bluevale-
area farm and while plowing at the
back of the farm discovered an old
orchard with varieties she'd never
experienced before.
She had also had an introduction
to the taste of old varieties at the
Apple Museum, an orchard plant-
ed at the Vineland research station
as a centennial project to keep the
old tree varieties alive. At one time
there were 125-140 varieties at the
museum and tasting them, she had
a chance to discover a taste that
was missing in modern apples.
When people talk about pro-
gress they generally think of the
vast variety of things we enjoy in
modern life but Shelley wonders if
the term is misused when it comes
to apples. At one time our area
would have had 100 varieties of
apples but today has probably
about five, she says.
She undertook more investiga-
tion of the old apple varieties as
part of an independent studies
course at Guelph. The variety of
apples available to the consumer
has declined to the point that 80 per
cent of the apples in the world
today are varieties of Red Deli-
cious.
Instead of growing varieties for
table eating versus cooking, apples
for storage against varieties for
immediate use and so on, the Red
Delicious became popular because
it could be used for either cooking
oreating, travelled well and stored
well. By contrast, yellow varieties
of apples virtually disappeared
from large scale commercial pro-
P.O.Box 40, Blyth, Ontario NOM 1H0
TELEPHONE 519/523-4581
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duction because they showed their
bruises badly. Other varieties
weren't appealing enough to the
eye and so were abandoned.
Shelley finally put her years of
Continued on page 25
Farmers....
Need some help
to get the crop in?
Maybe We Can
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See the Credit Union
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374 Main St.,
EXETER
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170 Ontario St.,
CLINTON
482-3467
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CALL
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RR 1, Ethel
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OR
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