[TSS] Interlude: Johnny Appleseed

October is by far my favorite month of the year, and one of the major reasons for that is apples.  Gosh, they are so delicious.  I love going to apple orchards, I love the cider mills attached to those orchards, and I love the doughnuts those mills make.  I was astonished when I visited New Zealand a few years ago to find extremely subpar apples.  Perhaps I was there at the wrong time of year, but there were very few varieties, they were all small and pockmarked, they were soft and mushy, and they were clearly not popular with the locals.  Understandably.

But apples in season are uh-mazing.  They are crispy.  They are juicy.  They are tart or sweet.  They are red or green or red AND green, or yellow.  You bite into one and it tastes like autumn because the apple itself mirrors the colors of the leaves on the trees.  They are absolutely amazing.

Apples came to America with the pilgrims, but nearly every American schoolkid learns about the real hero in American apple history, Johnny Appleseed.  This man did so much to give us the myriad variety of apples that grow all over the United States today.  He seems so much larger-than-life, so Paul Bunyan-esque, that it's hard to believe that he really existed.  But he did.  And he really did take apples everywhere.

But that's not the whole story.

Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in 1774 in Massachusetts.  His father was a poor farmer who apprenticed him out to an orchard owner and the rest, as they say, is history.  Chapman went to the frontier once he reached adulthood and started orchards in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, spanning an estimated area of over 100,000 square miles.  He didn't randomly strew those seeds, either, as legend has it.  He just had a very unusual business plan.  He would go into the wilderness and try to figure out where people were likely to settle and move in the future.  There, he found an attractive spot, planted nurseries, and fenced them in.  In a few years, he'd have a fruit-bearing orchard available, which he'd then sell off to the settlers at a profit.  So he wasn't just a folkloric apple planter, bringing the fruit of the gods to the frontier.  He was a real estate developer.  Almost, since he kept moving to the next great frontier, a real estate speculator.

The thing about planting a lot of apple seeds is that you can't actually eat the apples.  For example, say you eat a delicious Gala apple tomorrow morning and save the seeds.  In the spring, you plant them.  You wait five years, dreaming every night of the glorious Gala apples you will soon enjoy.  And then the apples grow, and you stare at them in dismay because they are not Gala apples.  The apples that you plant from a seed do not resemble the apple from which it sprouted.  They will be totally different and probably inedible.  This is because the only truly delicious (and I don't mean Red Delicious, which in my opinion is the lamest and least delicious of all apples) apples are produced through grafting.

Johnny Appleseed was very against grafting, so he planted a bunch of apple seeds that then grew into trees that burst into fruit that could not be eaten.  All people could do with the trees was make cider.  And so really, the kind, ascetic, very religious Johnny Appleseed did not bring the greatest, crispiest, yummiest fruit to the settlers.  He brought cider.  According to Michael Pollan, "Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. That’s why he was so popular. That’s why he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio. He was the American Dionysus. He was the guy bringing the booze."

Cider was very, very important to Americans in Appleseed's time.  It was easier to make and tastier to drink than liquor from corn.  It could range in alcoholic content from very mild to pretty strong.  It was the drink of choice, often replacing more expensive coffee, tea and juice, and sometimes even water.  In fact, we only started eating apples in America because of Prohibition.  The orchard owners were worried about decreases in sales, so they shifted the marketing to make it a fruit to eat, not a fruit to drink.

If there's a dark side to Johnny Appleseed, I don't know what it is (though there are a few unsubstantiated stories about his wanting to marry no woman over the age of 10 because he wanted a wife that was "pure of heart."  He never married anyone, though).  He was just a nice guy, and probably extremely eccentric for his day.  He was religious, practicing the Gospel of New Jerusalem, and would often engage in theological debates.  Because of his religious beliefs, he lived a very ascetic lifestyle, denying himself comforts in life so that he could enjoy contentment in the after-life.  He walked barefoot and usually just wore other people's discarded clothing.  He was kind to all animals, large and small, and was probably one of the only vegetarians in America during the 18th and 19th centuries, and he never even rode a horse because he thought it was cruel to the animal.  He not only carried apple seeds with him, but also medicinal herbs, and was always willing to help with chores.  He was well-liked wherever he went and remembered fondly, probably because of his story-telling ability.  He would trade stories for a meal or a place to sleep, entertaining children and adults alike.  He was extremely tolerant and never spoke a bad word against Native Americans, though obviously by planting orchards and moving through the Northwest Territory, he was contributing to the American government's efforts to take their land away from them.  He was an eccentric in his own age who became a living legend.  And if there's ever a month to thank him for all the work he did, it's October.  I hope everyone that is able to has a cup of cider and toasts to him.  And maybe kick a few leaves on the ground and try taking a bite of a wild apple.