Opinion: Harry Burton deserves a great deal of credit for all his passion and hard work to help create a greater awareness of the multitude of apples available to us.
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Today and tomorrow, Oct. 14 and 15, the annual Apple Festival at the University of B.C. will be taking place.
A Vancouver tradition for over 30 years, and the most important fundraiser for the UBC Botanical Garden, Apple Fest offers a wealth of things to do for the whole family.
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You’ll discover a great selection of unique varieties for purchase, along with apple products, apple tasting and a food fair. For the children there are informative sessions on bees, biodiversity in the environment and, of course, the giant leaf pile. It’s always a great community event.
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One of the concerns of the Friends of the Garden (FOGs) who drive this event is the growing challenge of finding enough different apple varieties to showcase.
My go-to guy for all things apple-related is Harry Burton, a passionate apple grower on Salt Spring Island. His farm, Apple Luscious Organic Orchard, has over 300 apple trees representing over 250 different varieties. Burton is the key supporter of the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival just held at the beginning of October. They welcomed over 1,600 visitors who had the chance to taste and purchase from over 400 varieties of apples.
I asked Burton about the issue of declining apple inventory, and he said this was a huge concern, not only for B.C. orchardists, but also across the country and the world.
To be successful in agriculture today you need to be very efficient with high density planting and have access to a strong and expanding market to move your product. You must produce the necessary scale in numbers, with huge volumes of fewer varieties, and the varieties you grow need to ripen at a similar time for efficiencies in harvesting.
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The larger grocery chains typically only want to carry varieties that are uniform, attractive, blemish-free and known by their customers. Red is the preferred colour, which, through apple marketing and imaging, consumers have been conditioned to look for from early childhood.
Folks have also become accustomed to looking for sweet apple varieties. You will usually see Ambrosia, Honeycrisp and Jonagold on display; all shiny and uniform, and individually stickered.
Tart apples are the ones full of nutrients and vitamins, with rich flavours and fragrance.
Burton credits the Chinese for distributing early apples from Kazakhstan by the ancient trade routes to Europe. He said England and France are two countries that have maintained the greatest diversity in apple varieties, but they, too, have declined in number because their larger grocery stores are now carrying fewer varieties with the greatest consumer appeal.
When asked if apple orchards with numerous varieties could be economically viable, Burton said he didn’t think so. They must sell their better-flavoured, but imperfect looking apples, at specialty markets, apple events or directly from their farms. With today’s cost of land and labour, you need to have a robust market to sell your product at a price that can give you a return on your investment.
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Burton has a passion not only for apples, but also for a broad spectrum of varieties. At age 75, he does an amazing job of not only growing and selling apples, but also of propagating older heritage types of trees as well and selling them internationally.
He’s a huge fan of red-fleshed apples and is currently growing 55 different types. A few years ago, I purchased some of these and was very impressed by both their fragrance and flavour.
Some of the apples Burton loves to recommend are older, less-known ones. Cox’s Orange Pippin was developed in England in the 1700s and he claims it’s still one of the best tasting apples today. Gravenstein, King and Bramley’s Seedling are among the list of wonderfully flavoured heirloom varieties.
He said there is still lots of apple breeding going on today, especially in countries like Turkey, where they’re focusing on the red and pink fleshed cultivars, however Burton believes that apple sales overall are in decline because fewer new varieties are actually being introduced to the public.
An increased demand must come from today’s younger consumers. Apple festivals like the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival in early October and the 32nd Annual event at UBC this weekend are incredibly popular, and organizers have seen huge appreciation for the many rare and peculiar types of apples showcased.
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Burton gets reinspired when he sees so many new folks come to these events and to see them blown away by the fragrance, uniqueness and flavours of hundreds of apples that are completely new to them.
Burton hopes these events will spark an increased interest and demand for new varieties, but he’s well aware of the many challenges orchardists face in making that happen.
Burton deserves a great deal of credit for all his passion and hard work to help create a greater awareness of the multitude of apples available to us.
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