The Carl Siemon Charitable Family Trust and Branch Hill Farm are excited to announce the establishment of a Regional Heritage Orchard to be started in the Spring of 2020. The orchard will be designed to be a repository for heritage apple varieties, local homestead apples in the Moose Mountains region, as well as locally-discovered experimental wild stock.
As biological diversity shrinks over time due to mass commercial farming, this orchard will be an oasis of apples of all colors, shapes, and sizes that once abounded throughout the New England landscape. The orchard will also be a learning center for annual BHF classes on grafting, holistic orcharding, and pruning. The new heritage orchard will adhere to a strict Holistic approach and utilize a combination of historical and experimental techniques to manage the orchard without the use of chemical sprays.
Do you have an old or interesting apple or pear tree on your property? If so, it may qualify for grafting into the orchard! An Heirloom apple tree can live up to 200 years in the right conditions, so you may have living history right in your yard. To learn more or share your tree, please contact Jared Kane at 603-502-1875 or Jared_Kane@branchhillfarm.org.
An ancient apple tree in Milton Mills, that still gives an abundance of fruit each year.
This is just one example of a tree that will be grafted and included in the orchard.
We live next house up from Cynthia on Branch Hill Rd at 126 and have an ancient apple tree in the area between her house and ours. Feel free to take grafting material from it. We think it was a cider type apple and several have been enjoyed by our horses. Let us know when you would like to see the tree. House phone 473-2065 or text at 833-7832. Jim and Dianne.
Our apple tree is at least as large as the one shown in your picture. It still bears fruit but is in its last years of life. It grows beside our cabin in Chocorua, NH and we have been nursing it along as its living tissue is found only around the outside perimeter of the tree. It is hollow in the middle. In the last year it has really declined in vigor. So if you would like a cutting, we should probably arrange to meet this summer. Sure would love to have a rooted sampling to replace the tree when it goes.
There are other very old apples on the property that might be of interest.