Growing apples in the Hudson Valley may be as old as the earliest Dutch and English settlements. A popular staple in Europe from the Middle Ages onward, more for cider and vinegar than for food, actually, apple seeds were brought to the New World on the earliest ships. But apple seeds do not grow true to their parentage, creating new varieties from seed that can be sweet and crunchy and wonderful as a Jonathan picked fresh from the bough - or sour or spicy or even taste of leather, with a texture ranging from mushy to hard as a rock. Basically, it's one big genetic crapshoot when you plant an orchard of seeds.

That very ability (or maybe inability) to reproduce reliably has made the apple a wonderful fruit for entrepreneurs - any tree could be a winner, bringing its owner not just sudden wealth - but a certain celebrity. These prized trees of Pippins or Macs or Jonathans or Delicious varieties could be reproduced by grafting and sold for serious prices, both in this country and abroad.

By 1821, for example, the total U.S. GNP in apples topped in at 68,443 exported barrels, valued at $39,966 - significant money in the early 19th century. And that was before the trade in cider, apple jack (distilled cider), dried apples and vinegar was factored in.

From the 1800s onward, farmers in the valley were experimenting wildly with their orchards, planting at least half of them with spitters (or seed apples) to see what they produced. A single star apple could - literally - make them rich, as the big nurseries (like that run by the Stark Brothers in Central New York) paid serious money for the best of the best. Stark Brothers, by the way, both named and marketed the Red Delicious and Golden Delicious varieties first - buying the Red Delicious from a Quaker farmer in Pennsylvania who found it growing as a "volunteer" between his rows of planted orchard. The MacIntosh, named for its discoverer someplace near Oneonta, was also a big pay-off for the farmer whose name it bore.

The business of growing apples in this region became a major staple of our economic base pretty early on. By 1820, town records from Middlehope show that a W.D. Barns was already in the commercial apple business and Robert Pell of Esopus was actively exporting Newtown Pippins (one of the greatest of old varieties, known for both their flavor and their "keeping" value) from his orchard stretching over 20 acres.

The Hudson Valley, in fact, had a perfect climate for the fruit and the river was a perfect highway for bringing them to an international market. They were contracted wholesale from buyers in New York City, who would have them shipped down in strawhead barrels at the rate of $1 to $1.50 per barrel. Other times, they would be specked out by the farmer or steamboat captain, taken to the city and sold directly from the docks.

The varieties grown were exceptional by today's stunted standards. In 1830, for example, a Mr. P.C. Reynolds is recorded as planting his two orchards in northeastern Dutchess County with: Yellow Harvest, Bough Sweet, Fall Pippin, Westfield Seek-No-Further, Black Gilliflower, Rhode Island Greening and the Esopus Spitzenburg. The goal for all farmers was to produce a crop that would basically run from early spring to early winter. Apples were that important. What wasn't consumed as fruit, was made into cider and other foodstuffs and what didn't go through the cidermill was fed to the livestock.

As America developed, the concept of producing as much fruit as possible in a shortened harvest season, combined with producing varieties that would travel well and keep for long periods became the prized qualities to seek in a cash crop. Over time, the old, abundant varieties died, as the trees died and were no grafted onto fresh stock...and we all lost out on possibility of ever actually tasting an Esopus Spitzenburgh or a Summer Pippin...which were said to be incredible fruits.