Apples from trees that are over a century old, are certainly a community’s treasure, in green, red and gold!
On Saturday, Oct. 7, from 10 am to Noon at Bowen Island Community School, at the last Farmers Market of the 2023 season, BIHPA (the Bowen Island Heritage Preservation Association) will feature the annual apple pie sale, with pies made from local heritage apples including Wolf River, Winter Banana and what we have been calling ‘the Snug Cove Russet’.
Some of the apple trees that BIHPA harvests have been growing in Davies Orchard since 1887. It is amazing that these over century-old trees are still producing fruit; as are the next generations of trees which were created by grafting - as that is one of the only ways to truly keep an apple variety alive.
(If you grow an apple tree from a seed, it will have the genetics of the original and the pollinating apple trees, so it will produce a different variety each time. To preserve apple trees, you need to graft them, or inspire a cutting to produce roots… both of these are challenges for the old branches from old fruit trees!)
Keeping local heritage apple varieties alive is part of what the Bowen Island Heritage Preservation Association works towards, as well as all aspects of preserving and celebrating and educating about the Davies Orchard site.
Unfortunately, due to the renovations in Davies Orchard, the beloved Applefest in the Cove cannot happen in the Cove again this year, but the spirit of Applefest lives on in many ways, especially with the annual pie sale on the Thanksgiving weekend at the Farmers Market, (please bring cash or cheques).
BIHPA keeps going thanks to the enthusiasm of the core group of volunteers who support local heritage in many important and fun ways including Annabelle Coon’s creative orchard character: https://youtu.be/W4evfnrEQK8
If you’d like to learn more about what BIHPA is planning in the future and to help keep our past alive in the present, please join us at our Annual General Meeting (AGM) from 11 am to 12:30 pm on Saturday, Nov. 4, at Collins Hall. Light refreshments will be served.
