Перейти к содержимому
Hub Nexus

Sleeping Bear Dunes National LakeshoreСтраница 25 из 35

New Life for Old Orchards in Port Oneida

A man holds an apple among the leafy branches of an apple tree hung with fruit

Jim Kelderhouse collecting apples at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. NPS photo by Andy Byerly.

The orchards of the Port Oneida Historic District at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore are kept alive by yearly workshops run by Park Service staff, partners and local people. The workshops began as lessons in pruning and now include planting grafted trees raised in a nursery set up for the purpose.

The work began more than 20 years ago, when Neal Bullington, then the park's chief of interpretation, started mapping and identifying the heirloom apple varieties in the park. Seventy-five varieties have been identified so far, more trees keep turning up, some of them varieties no one can identify, and Bullington still takes part as a volunteer. Kimberly Mann, the park's historical architect, and Matt Mohrman, its volunteer coordinator, lead the Park Service's part in the effort. Tom Adams, an orchardist with the Leelanau Conservation District, and Jim Kelderhouse, a Port Oneida descendant, have been central to its success.

A farm landscape that survived

Port Oneida, on the Lake Michigan shore in northwest Michigan, grew up in the early 1860s as European immigrants arrived, drawn by the economic promise of its busy port. After logging stripped much of the land of trees, residents turned to farming. From about 1900 to about 1945 it was a subsistence farming community. Because farming there largely stopped just after World War II, much of what dates from its period of significance, 1870 to 1945, is still in place.

Farms from the 1870s still dot the landscape, with tree-lined properties, remnants of fields, small sheds and chicken coops, and orchards. Port Oneida is now a historic vernacular landscape and one of the most complete early 20th-century farm landscapes in the Upper Midwest.

A farmhouse, outbuildings and a tall apple tree under a glowing cloudy sky

An apple tree blooms beside the main house of the Martin Basch Farmstead in May 2022 as a storm moves in over Lake Michigan. Martin Basch was one of Port Oneida's master builders. NPS photo by Andy Byerly.

At least thirteen remnant orchards survive. They help define the district's character and tell its farming story. Some trees show their age and years of little care, but many still bear fruit, and the geometric layout of old orchards can sometimes still be traced. The Park Service has documented most of the varieties. They are valuable genetic material, since some historic varieties have vanished from the commercial market and are increasingly rare worldwide.

Pruning, then grafting

The park held its first pruning workshop in 2006 with the Leelanau Conservation District, Michigan State University's Northwest Michigan Horticultural Station and the county Extension Master Gardener Program.

Two people reach up with loppers to cut a branch from a fruit tree

A pruning workshop at the Peter Burfiend Farm in Port Oneida, 2009. National Park Service.

Grafting began in 2014. On a snowy March day, volunteers took maps showing each orchard's varieties and how rare they were, and set out on snowshoes to collect dormant cuttings, called scion wood. The labeled bags, each tied to a GPS location, went into plant refrigerators at the horticultural station. A few weeks later, about 20 staff and community members learned there to join the cut end of a scion to a suitable rootstock, producing a clone of the heirloom variety.

None of that first year's young trees survived. They had been planted on Leelanau Land Conservancy land and given little care. In the second year, Jim Kelderhouse, a local farmer descended from the family of Port Oneida's Kelderhouse Farm, brought his experience to the project. A nursery was set up at the farm in 2015, with closer attention to watering, mowing, pruning and tending, and the survival rate of the grafted trees rose to 90 percent.

A row of young trees in short green grass

Young trees at the Kelderhouse Farm in 2022. NPS photo by Andy Byerly.

From nursery to orchard

Using the 2011 Port Oneida Historic Landscape Management Plan, aerial photographs and Kelderhouse's memory of the farm's orchard, the park laid out the orchard on paper. After archeologists from the Midwest Archeological Center surveyed the ground to be dug, the first 34 grafted trees from the nursery were planted in the Kelderhouse Orchard in 2019.

Pink and white apple blossoms grow on a slender tree branch.

Apple blossoms in the Kelderhouse Orchard at the Port Oneida Historic District NPS / Andy Byerly.

One person shovels soil while another lowers a young tree into a hole

Jim Kelderhouse plants the first tree from the nursery in the family's farm orchard in 2019. National Park Service.

A second orchard, at the Dechow Farm, was replanted a few years later. In early May 2022, after a cold start to spring and a late bloom, workshop participants planted 32 apple trees about ten years old, grown from varieties collected on the park's historic farms and grafted onto suitable rootstock in the nursery.

Apples grow on the thick, gnarled branches of an old tree in a grassy field

Apple tree at Dechow Farm, part of the Port Oneida Historic District. NPS.

Still growing

Before planning more plantings, the park is looking into agricultural wells and drip irrigation for the replanted orchards. Grafting continues every May at the annual pruning workshop, where participants redo grafts that failed in earlier years, with instruction from the conservation district, the horticultural station and the Master Gardener program. The workshop has been held every year since 2006 on the first Friday afternoon in May. It is free and open to all, and draws 30 to 60 people depending on the weather. Many are descendants of Port Oneida families, some still living nearby and some traveling back each May, carrying the orchards on for the next generation.

Sources