Enjoying the fruits of ages past
“I've really got them now for my own pleasure,” says Borry Gartrell, looking out over his apple orchard at Borrodell, perched above the scenic Towac Valley.
The trees carry fruit of varying shades of greens, oranges, yellows, browns and reds, and tags at the base reveal names you won’t find in your local supermarket produce section: Winter Transparent Early Codlin, Geeveston Red Fanny, Maiden’s Blush, Lady of the Snow, Peasgood’s Nonsuch, Red Stayman Winesap, Nickajack, or Hollow crown.
And these are just a handful of the more that 170 apple varieties Borry has cultivated in his orchard over the past 30 years.
“The delicious apple is not quite as good as a Cox's Orange Pippin,” Borry tells me. “My family used to have an old orchard planted just after the First World War and then after the Second World War they grafted the old varieties to an ordinary Delicious or Granny Smith.
“But the grafts were done pretty high and around the bottom of the trees there was always half a dozen of the old apples and as kids we knew they were the real treat! So, we’d eat Cox's Orange Pippins and all these old apples that had tenure in another era.”
But it’s not the most attractive apple to look at and many people today, exposed only to the waxed and polished selection in supermarkets, would walk right past it not knowing what they were missing, says Borry.
“But the people who want them, they'll pay anything,” he says, recalling one English-born businessman who sent an employee in a company car from Sydney to personally pick up a case of the prized apples.
“But you have to find that person,” says Borry, who long ago gave up on the idea of trying make money from his collection of obscure apples.
“There is just not enough money there to make it anything else other than an obsessive hobby,” he says.
“It would be nice if people were given a variety of flavours and if there was an apple season, but I can't imagine how it would ever happen… it is not going to swing back to people seeking out fruit — a tiny percentage of the people maybe.”
It’s not only the fruit itself that Borry enjoys, but the stories behind each variety.
“Some have an amazing history; like one that is ripe now is a Keswicks Early Codlin and it was reputed to be the first named apple in the English-speaking world… Shakespeare refers to a Codlin tree,” he says.
“Then there is an apple called a 20 Ounce, and it is so named because it would grow to 20 ounces. Queen Victoria is reputed to have been shown this giant apple and remarked, ‘What a remarkable fruit!’
“And there's an apple called a Poorhouse, an American apple that sprung up alongside a poorhouse. Or the lady's Finger which is sort of long and pink… I suppose I just like growing things so much I just want to know more about them.”
All these old varieties are casualties of our modern world. The demands of supermarkets for fruit that transports and stores well, means many varieties are simply not suitable, regardless of whether they taste better, says Borry.
“Lady of the Snows is an apple that’s got to be eaten within seven days of it being picked, but it is just superb,” he says.
“And if you spoke to any apple grower in this district and asked, ‘What's your favourite apple?’ They'd say a Granny Smith that's been left behind and got a couple of frosts on it. It is just a magic piece of fruit, but it just wouldn't fit anywhere into that supermarket model.
“As with the plums; many of them don't suit the supermarket model either as when they are ripe they are soft and you have to handle them with kid gloves.”
As well as apples, Borry’s orchard is also home to more than 200 varieties of plum.
“There is one of those called Coe's Golden Drop, it’s a little yellow plum and if you put it in the supermarket people would just walk past it, but when you eat it, there’s a burst of nectar and your senses just go wow! ”he says.
“Fruit that requires any thought, it will all be lost. It'll just be a casualty of the market, but I'll still keep fiddling around with these until I fall off my perch.”
