Note: “telpehawkin” is currently unknown; “belleflower” is now known as “bellflower”.
The use to which the other out-buildings were put is indicated by their names. Each was located so as to be easily approached from the house or barn. The dryhouse, bakeoven, woodhouse, smokehouse, carriagehouse, and springhouse stood in a row at regular distances from each other, east of the residence and the front yard. The other buildings, being more particularly associated with stock and field work, were placed nearer the barn.
A large apple orchard was planted just north of our house. Father purchased the trees from one John Boswell in the year 1823, as is evidenced by his book account of the transaction. There were 100 seedling trees in all, and the price for the lot was $5.87. Being seedlings the fruit produced was just what each tree happened to bear, but much of it was good. There were many varieties, large and small – some sweet, some sour; some neither sweet nor sour. In later years grafting was resorted to as a means of improving the quality of the fruit and increasing the variety.
Grafting was done by cutting a scion from a tree bearing the fruit of the variety desired and inserting it in a branch of a limb of the seedling tree. (The process of grafting is fully explained in Webster’s unabridged dictionary). When a boy at home I did a great amount of this work. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the scions grow from year to year until they became branches large enough to blossom and produce fruit. By means of grafting a tree could be made to produce several varieties of fruit. I especially remember one tree in our old orchard which bore Siberian crabs, belleflower and a worthless seedling without name, the latter always in evidence to show its primitive right of possession. Some grafting was done in the spring of each year so that in my time the original stock of one-hundred hit and miss seedling trees were made to produce some of the best varieties of fruit on the market, namely, fall pippin, telpehawkin, belleflower, smith cider, winesap, &c.
In later years root-grafted trees were purchased from regular nurserymen, thus insuring trees that would reproduce the variety of fruit desired without regrafting. Now the youngster gets the benefit of the early harvest variety, an apple much appreciated when he has a craving for the forbidden green fruit. The early harvest apple was ready for the average boy’s chompers just as soon as a little shade of yellow on one side indicated approaching ripeness. In fact, the tasting process began much earlier – soon after the apple was out of the blossom, and was kept up at regular intervals until the “yaller” test gave full proof that it was surely ripe and ready to be eaten with impunity.
Of the seedling fruit of our old orchard I recall three varieties that no modern apple can duplicate in richness or delicacy of flavor. One was a small, sweet russet, which, when fully ripe, had a most delicious honey-like taste altogether different from the modern sweet russet. Another was a medium sized apple, pale red and green – the green starting from the stem as though it would form a stripe, but it soon merged into a moderately radish color on the body {this apple we called the wine apple (not the winesap, which is altogether different). Surely it was rightly named, for no wine, however sweet, could surpass it in delicacy of flavor. The third variety I have in mind we named “Neither sweet nor sour”, – these qualities being so harmoniously blended in juicy composition as to form a delightful compromise between the two extremes.
