The Apple Club Newsletter
Summer 2002
And so summer is here again, and we have some fine weather to enjoy at
last. And what better way to celebrate the season than with
strawberries and raspberries, and perhaps a little apple juice too. We
look forward to seeing you out at our farm in the near future.
Johnny Appleseed
Johnny
Appleseed was in real life one John Chapman, born on September 26, 1774
near Leominster, Massachusetts. Little is known of his early life, but
by the time he was 25 years old, he had become a nursery-man and had
planted apple trees in the western portions of New York. When the rich
and fertile lands lying south of the Great Lakes and west of the Ohio
river were opened for settlement in the early 1800's, John Chapman was
among the very first to explore the new territory. For nearly half a
century he roamed this territory. When settlers arrived, they found
John Chapman's young apple trees ready for sale. In the years that
followed, he became known as the Apple Tree Man, or Johnny Appleseed.
His
manner of operation was simple. He went into the wilderness with a bag
of apple seeds on his back until he found a likely spot for planting.
There he would clear the land and plant his apple seeds in neat rows
and built a brush fence around the area to keep out straying animals.
His nurseries varied in size. Some were only an acre or so, others
covered many acres.
He did all of the work himself, living alone for
weeks at a time with only the Indians and wild animals for
companionship. He never carried a gun or weapon of any kind and it is
certainly true that Indians accepted him as a friend. He was a deeply
religious man who lived by the Golden Rule “to have no fear of man or
beast”. Once, it is reported, he was caught in a snow-storm and crept
into a hollow fallen tree for shelter. He found it occupied by a
hibernating bear and her cubs, but spent the night there nonetheless.
John
Chapman was a practical businessman as well as a sincere Christian.
Somewhere, somehow, he had caught a vision of the wilderness blossoming
with apple trees, orchard after orchard of carefully nurtured trees,
whose fragrant blossoms gave promise of a fruitful harvest for the
settlers. Willingly he endured the hardships of his wilderness life as
he worked to make his dream come true. His sturdy young trees lightened
the hearts and lifted the spirits of many settlers, for there is a
suggestion of a permanent and loving home when one plants fruit trees
around a cabin.
He sold his trees for a few pennies each, accepting
any of the coins current on the frontier. Like many of the settlers, he
went barefooted a great deal because shoes were hard to come by and
seldom fit his tough gnarled feet. As he ate no meat, he carried a
stew-pot or kettle with him. In this he could gather nuts or berries in
season, carry water, get milk from a settler's cow, boil potatoes, or
drop a handful of coarse-ground meal into the boiling water to make an
unpalatable but nourishing meal. He has been pictured wearing such a
pot on his head, but more likely he kept it tied to his pack rather
than let it bounce on his head.
He preferred to walk, carrying his
precious apple seeds and the simplest of camping gear on his back. He
also used a boat, canoe, or raft to transfer larger loads of seeds
along the many waterways.
There is no way to estimate how many
millions of seeds he planted in the hundreds of nurseries he created in
the territory lying south of the Great Lakes and between the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers. This was his service to mankind.
John Chapman
never married, but he loved people. As the settlers moved into the
wilderness, his lonely nights were fewer because he was a welcomed
guest at every cabin. Many a night after the simple meal, he would hold
them all enthralled with his stories or read to them from the Bible.
It
was with such friends that he spent his last night. He had been living
near Fort Wayne, Indiana, when word came one March day that cattle had
broken through the brush fence around one of his nurseries some twenty
miles away. Although it was a raw spring day, and he was now over
seventy years old, he set forth immediately to repair the damage. On
his return trip he was stricken with a disease known as the winter
plague. He found shelter with friendly settlers but failed to survive
the attack. A newspaper account gives the date as March 18, 1845.
Many
of his young seedlings may have crossed the plains in covered wagons to
produce their bountiful fruit in the western states. Certainly, his
fame did, for the name of Johnny Appleseed is known throughout all of
the United States and elsewhere in much of the world. People continue
to improve their environment in Johnny Appleseed's manner whenever they
plant a new apple tree.
Developments at The Apple Farm.
As
you know, we’re always proceeding with something on our farm. At the
moment, we’re making plans to install a solar panel on one of our
sheds. This will heat all the water that we use on the camping park,
and will have the effect of saving about 2 tons of fossil fuel every
year. And so it will be good for the environment and good for our
pockets.
An incinerator for South Tipperary
Whenever I
saw an incinerator planned for Dublin or Cork I have always been rather
casual about my response, and have thought that the people campaigning
against them were some type of extremists who might as well have been
trying to stop the tide. And so when I heard that one was planned for
South Tipperary, I was inclined to shrug and ignore it. However, as
anyone in the area will know, a furore has been caused by the current
proposition.
Following questions by a number of friends (who seem
to think that I have some green credentials), I decided to see what I
could find out. Because what was required was good impartial
information, the search began at the United States Environmental
Protection Agency website. And what a lot of information they have.
Thousands of pages of information, derived from over five thousand
reports written by scientists from all over the world. Such an
abundance of information was too much to digest. Then luckily I
stumbled upon a summary report that is currently being drafted. Only
two hundred pages long, and kept simple. And better still, there’s even
a summary of the summary.
And what was revealed? Well let’s start at the beginning: Dioxins.
Dioxins
are a group of chemicals that cause all sorts of things to happen to
living tissue. Among the effects documented are various types of
cancer, disruption of hormone levels (testosterone and oestrogen),
onset of diabetes, links with heart disease and hypertension and so on.
Even
more important are the tiny quantities of dioxin that cause problems.
In multiple studies on laboratory rats, a single dose of about a
billionth of a gram to the mother has been shown to cause abnormalities
in the sexual development of her young.
So there is no doubt that exposure to dioxins is dangerous. But how are we exposed?
Humans
take in dioxin in many ways, but by far the most important is via our
food intake. This is because dioxins are fat soluble, and not readily
excreted. Thus, livestock take in dioxin when they feed, and multiply
its concentration a hundred fold. Then when we eat meat, fish, eggs or
dairy produce, we multiply its concentration a hundred fold again. The
net effect is that a tiny amount of dioxin on the ground from which
animals feed, becomes significant by the time we have consumed it.
What’s even worse, a nursing mother will multiply the amount given to
her baby even further, with the result that breast-fed babies are
exposed to more dioxin than their bottle-fed counterparts.
So how much dioxin do we take in?
The
good news is that Ireland has the lowest dioxin levels in the EU, and
that our food is the safest available. Irish intake levels of dioxin
are presumably lower than those in the US and Europe.
The current
average intake of dioxin (for a person living in the US) is 80
picograms per day. This is considered to present “minimal risk” of
cancer. However, studies have shown that there is very little margin of
error, and that levels only slightly above this should be a cause for
concern. Some studies suggest that for a 20% rise in dioxin, an extra 1
in 100 people will die of cancer.
Also, the EPA states that levels
to which the general population is currently exposed (both in the US
and in Ireland) are likely to cause adverse health effects, though
probably not cancer.
And where does dioxin come from?
In the
United States in 1995, almost half of all dioxins originated from the
burning or incineration of waste. This was better than in 1987, when
total levels were twice as high. Notably, it does not matter what kind
of waste is burned, as it all gives off similar amounts of dioxin. I
have not been able to find any figures for sources in Ireland, but
given that our population density is almost ten times that in the US,
we could expect much higher levels than there if we were to incinerate
a similar proportion of our waste.
With regard to the South Tipp
incinerator, if it burns 1000 tons per day, and its operation
performance is similar to the US average, then we can expect an output
of 0.01 grams of dioxin per day. Not a lot, but still a million times
more than is known to affect us. It does seem strange that we are now
just considering incineration, at a time when the most developed
countries are trying to lower their dioxin emissions.
There are
alternatives: waste minimisation and recycling for conventional waste,
hydroxyl treatment for meat & bone meal, and though they may not be
simpler, they are much safer. And while they will not treat all the
waste, it’s clear that whatever we want to do with the remainder,
incineration should not be considered as an option.
For more information see the website noincinerationsouthtipp.com
Summer in the fruit garden
Raspberries
Your
raspberries should be well into flowering by now. With all the wet
weather, it is very likely that fruit will have been infected with grey
mould, although this will not be visible yet. As soon as fruit show
symptoms of rot, remove them, so that they do not infect their
neighbours.
There is probably an abundance of young cane appearing
now too. Some of this will need removing, so take out the weaker ones
to leave about eight new canes per metre of row.
If you have had trouble with birds eating your fruit in the past, now is the time to get some netting ready.
Strawberries
The
first of your strawberries should now be ripe. As with the raspberries,
rots are likely, so keep on top of them by removing any infected fruit
you see. Runners will begin to appear soon, so if you’re planning a new
plot, you may want to propagate using these. To stop disease spreading,
you could take runner tips in a few weeks, and treat them like
cuttings, placing them in a mist propagator in a peat/sand compost
until they root. This will give really strong runners which can be
planted out in Autumn, and will give fruit next year.
Apples and Plums
If
you have not had bad frost, and see plenty of fruit, now is the time to
do your thinning. If you leave too many fruits on the tree, none will
taste well, so remove the smaller ones by hand, leaving one plum on
every two inches (5cm) of branch, and one apple per four inches (10cm)
of branch.
Recipe for Strawberry smoothee:
1 punnet (300g) strawberries
Half a banana
200-400ml apple juice
Put
the strawberries and banana into a blender and operate until smooth.
Add 200 – 400 ml of apple juice (depending on desired thickness) and
mix briefly.
Serve cold.
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