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CLF VENTURES

Conservation Matters ~ Summer 2000

The Enduring Orchard

The hand of nature and the hand of man join together in raising food. The continued survival of a New England orchard through three centuries of war and peace affirms that unique bond and enriches our history.

Sometimes in September, when the air is still, and the apples are heavy on the branches, and the evening air has that redolent odor of old fruit, I go down to the orchard above Nagog Pond and sit on a wall above the pond to think. By general agreement, this is as fine a prospect as any in this section of eastern Massachusetts. Sojourners, cyclists, apple pickers, and accidental tourists (the tract is not marked on any maps of the region) happen upon this place and halt in spite of themselves. There is a play of geography in this 123-acre plot of trees that has worked its way into the Western psyche, a sensation that says in so many words, this is New England - old orchards, still waters, deep woods, and a deeper history.

What most of these sojourners do not know is that this grove of apples, peaches, and pears is one of the oldest continuously operated orchards in the region. Furthermore, it is the site of one of 16 Christian Indian villages that were established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the l650s by John Eliot, the so-called apostle to the Indians. In mid-century, Eliot arranged to have the General Court grant outright certain tracts of land to those native people who agreed to accept the Christian God. The village that Eliot set up at Nagog Pond was called Nashobah Plantation and was located in what is now the town of Littleton. It consisted of a tract of land of some 16 square miles, the heart of which and probable village center was the hill above the pond where the Nagog Hill Orchards are now located.

One of the first products that the Indians at Nashobah planted would have been apples - an important crop in the early New England settlements, which the agriculturally minded Indians took to immediately. The English colonists, who settled in the Nashobah Valley region in the 17th century, were mostly from Kent, which is still the fruit-growing region of southern England. They probably brought local varieties, such as Pearmains, Russets, or Winesaps over with them, either as slips or as seeds, and no doubt these were among the first trees to be planted at the Indian orchard at Nashobah. But even as early as 1650, when the village was established, local New England orchardists had been breeding varieties such as Roxbury russets and Rhode Island greenings, which Eliot (who was from Roxbury) may have made available to his converts.

These trees, like most of the other crops at Nashobah (and in all traditional Native American settlements as well), were under the charge of the women of the village. They would have planted the seeds, or the slips if they had them, and once they sprouted, would have weeded and watered them and perhaps also prayed for them until the saplings were of sufficient strength to fend for themselves. It is likely that the Indians raised what are known as pippin apples, which were poor table apples and were used primarily for making cider. We know this in part from a complaint, lodged by one of Eliot’s associates, Daniel Gookin. In his narrative of the Indians of New England, published in the late 1600s, Gookin complains that the people of Nashobah, although pious, had problems with drunkenness. The English had taught them how to press cider, which in the 17th century, as it is today in England, was an alcoholic beverage. The Indians may have even distilled the cider into calvados, the more powerful apple brandy.

The days of this first orchard at Nagog Hill came to an abrupt end in the autumn of 1675, just about the time of the harvest. During King Philip’s War, a ragtag band of indentured servants, transported criminals, and convicted pirates under the command of a soldier of fortune named Samuel Mosely made a raid on the village. The compact between Eliot, the Christian Indians, and the general court was broken, and the people of Nashobah were rounded up and marched off to Deer Island, where they spent the winter, scouring the flats for shellfish and surviving on what little supplies the English (at Eliot’s insistence) gave them. Many died, and after the war, only a few came back to the orchard. One of them was a woman named Sarah Doublet, who lived on at the tract of land until 1736. At the end of her life, in return for care, she deeded the last 500 acres of Nashobah Plantation over to two cousins from Concord named Jones who were more interested in the land as a watershed for their mill than in the fine crop of apples the Indians had tended over the last 25 years.

The trees the Indians had planted probably endured over the few decades after Sarah Doublet’s time, and they were probably replanted in the mid-1800s, when much of the tract was owned by a family named Tenant. In the 19th and even into the mid-20th century, the whole Nashobah Valley, from Littleton, west to Groton and Harvard, was apple country and the Nagog Hill tract was a prime location. By the 1940s, at least part of the land where the Christian Indians had lived was used as a dairy farm. It was still a dairy farm in l953 when Nagog Hill orchards experienced a major restoration undertaken by a retired contractor named John Morrison, who bought the property from the dairy farmer.

The restoring touch

For a few years, Morrison continued the dairy business and persuaded two local women, Edith Jenkins and Fanny Knapp, to tend the cows. But in the late 1950s, orchard land in the immediate area came up for sale when another local orchardist decided to get out of the business. Morrison was a horse man, a retired country squire who was supposed to be resting on his considerable laurels after a successful career in construction. But with his main career behind him, plus one marriage, plus his interest in cows and horses waning, he decided, at age 70, to restore the orchard.

Whatever Morrison did, he did with passion. He had contacts at the agricultural school at the University of Massachusetts and knew several orchardists in the region who taught at the University of Vermont. With characteristic tenacity, he began to research his subject. He read for a year and researched the tree nurseries to find good root stock. Then, starting with the original old orchard, he hired a local farmer to help him refurbish and plant new trees.

Morrison began with common varieties such as Gravenstein, MacIntosh, Red Delicious, Black Twig, and Baldwin. A few years later, he planted Spartans, Empires, Cortlands, and a few peaches and pears. But he was well read and was an experimental sort (this was essentially a hobby for him) and so he began planting Macouns, one of the vanguards of new varieties at the time, and now a very popular variety at local farmstands. For a while, Nagog Hill was the only orchard that could supply them to wholesalers.

Morrison also laid out an experimental block of numbered roots that had been recommended to him by his associates at the University of Massachusetts. He put in Romes, which are generally the last apples to ripen and hold their bright red fruit late into October when other trees are long since bare. Nowadays, these offer a sad sort of flavor to the landscape on chill November days when the cloud rack hangs low over the wild hills to the west and all color is slowly draining from the land.

By the l960s, Morrison opened a "pick your own" operation and started retail stand sales. He hired the former cowherd, Edith Jenkins, and began selling at the crossroads of Nagog Hill and Nashobah roads, using a scale hung by a chain from the branch of a tree. Crop volume increased, and by the l970s, he strung up a tent and display counters at the crossroads. People began flocking to the area, local people at first, then school groups, mothers with children, whole families on the weekend, city-bound people starved for the country life, and leaf viewers who just happened upon the place.

Soon Morrison was so successful he decided to start a wholesale operation. That, too, began to grow, as the quality of Morrison apples became known around the region. Thousands of bushels of fruit rolled in from the orchard at peak season in September. And as with many large operations, Morrison had to rent beehives annually at blossom time to make certain all the various trees were successfully pollinated. He began building bushel boxes at the farm and was one of the first orchardists to use the system known as integrated pest management in which insect pest populations are carefully monitored before any spraying program is started. The method reduces the amount of pesticides used in an operation and is less harmful to beneficial insects.

Morrison did his best to defend his newly created orchard kingdom. He fought (and lost) a battle to halt construction of a nearby tennis court dome. He fought (and lost) a battle to buy more land north of his property to save it from development, and he also lost (fortuitously in this case) a strategy to acquire a 90-acre tract of wooded land on the hills just west of his orchard. The Littleton Conservation Trust got the land instead.

For all his bluster and his tendency to remake the world, either for horses or for apples, Morrison was at heart a conservationist, and when he died, in 1995, he made it clear to his heirs that the land should remain in agriculture. Shortly thereafter, the orchard was put up for sale.

There followed upon this news a great deal of quiet negotiations between the town, the heirs, various land preservation organizations, and - of course, always in the wings - hungry developers. When the negotiations were complete, the town announced plans to buy the orchard as open space, subject, of course, to approval by town meeting. The price was high, almost $3 million for 129 acres. Just two years earlier, the town had agreed to spend $700,000 to buy another large tract just west of the orchard. But plans proceeded and a special town meeting was called for in the autumn of l999.

As described in the local press, the meeting turned out to be more of a pep rally than a political discussion or financial debate. The vote reflected the sentiment - more than 500 in favor of purchase, only seven opposed

If, as seems likely, farmers continued to maintain apple trees at Nagog in the late 18th century, this little patch of earth may be perhaps the oldest continuously cultivated orchard in the eastern U.S., and except for certain Apache peach orchards in the Southwest, possibly the oldest in the nation. Most of the Apache peach orchards are gone now, as far as I know. But as a result of the town meeting vote, Nagog Hill Orchards will endure.

John Mitchell is the editor of Sanctuary magazine.


 
         
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