SANDPOINT, Idaho — Harvest is later than ever at the University of Idaho’s 8-acre heritage apple orchard. Superintendent and operations manager Kyle Nagy and assistant operations manager Kent Youngdahl are racing against a hard frost.

They’re about two to three weeks behind.

“We thought it was going to be a real bumper crop year, but it was so cool, there weren’t a lot of pollinators active,” Nagy said. “We had some torrential rains in the middle of our bloom, so I’m wondering if a lot of our pollen ended up on the ground.”

On a sunny morning Oct. 3, they estimated they had harvested 21 of the 68 apple varieties growing on 640 trees.

Nagy hopes later-developing varieties get a chance to ripen. He expects to pick 7,000 to 8,000 pounds this year.

“Mostly, we’re watching the weather,” he said. “If it’s going to dip below 28 (degrees Fahrenheit), we’ll be out here picking as much as we can.”

Center at a glance

The orchard is the heart of UI’s Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center.

In 2018, Dennis Pence donated 48 acres, the former Sandpoint Orchard, to the university. Pence had previously gifted 18 adjacent acres in 2007, for a total of 66 acres.

It’s a USDA-certified organic production facility.

The university’s goals include “advocating for the wonder and beauty of heirloom apple varieties,” said Michael Parrella, dean of UI’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

In the orchard

Nagy has worked for the orchard since 2011, remaining as it moved into UI’s ownership.

Most of the orchard’s varieties date back to colonial times, as early as 1598.

“In some cases, if a few orchards experienced a severe winter, we could lose some of these varieties,” Nagy said. “We try to preserve those so we can let other people experience those apples.”

More than 15,000 different varieties of apples have been named in North America since the 16th century, according to the center’s website. Of those, only 3,000 remain in production today and 11 varieties comprise 90% of commercially grown apples.

Most of UI’s heritage apple trees have been in the ground for more than 10 years. Some younger trees are in their sixth year.

Most originated on the East Coast. A few hail from Oregon and California, but not Idaho.

“A lot of the heritage varieties that were grown historically on Idaho homesteads and farms weren’t varieties that originated in Idaho,” Nagy said.

He works with the Idaho chapter of the Lost Apple Project, a nonprofit organization through the Whitman County Historical Society in Washington. Members search abandoned farms and orchards in the region to locate old varieties thought to be lost or extinct. The project has discovered 29 lost varieties so far.

Project founder David Benscoter said UI’s orchard is “wonderful” for education.

“It’s a very impressive roster of apples that they carry up there,” he said.

Nagy hopes to collect more heritage varieties not currently found in the area. That requires tree cuttings of “unusual varieties” for grafting purposes — cuttings where the apple’s identity is certain.

“We don’t want to have somebody send us (a cutting) and say, ‘I think this is a Ribston pippin,’ just because it may not be a Ribston pippin,” he said.

Remembering history

Older fruits are key to the region’s history, Benscoter said.

“Apples in particular and fruit trees in general were the most important thing a person could plant out here,” he said.

Settlers had to raise or grow what they ate for the entire year.

The first nurseryman set up shop on the Oregon Trail roughly three years after it was started, he said. They told homesteaders which fruit trees would perform best.

“Some of the apples were good as early as July, and some of the varieties lasted in your cellar up to April or May,” Benscoter said. “When you got to April or May and there’s still frost on the ground, and you could go to your cellar and get a fresh piece of fruit, that was pretty important.”

A matter of taste

Nagy has eaten every variety that grows in the orchard.

“For better or worse — some of them aren’t great eaters,” he said.

He considers taste and baking characteristics to determine where they might fit in the apple world today.

The orchard responds to requests for specific varieties. Other orchards pay a fee, but “if it’s just an individual looking for a few pieces of scion wood, I’m usually happy to supply those just for the cost of shipping,” Nagy said.

Most people want cider-specific apples.

Martha Pundsack is “at the very beginning” of establishing a hard cider, mead and fruit wine beverage business, Arcadian, produced in Victor, Mont.

In her quest for “apples that were grown organically and thoughtfully-integrated,” Pundsack connected with Nagy, purchasing apples traditionally used in cidermaking to experiment.

“In addition to providing really great fruit to work with for my first attempt, Kyle is incredibly knowledgeable,” she said.

She’s interning with friends who have a cidery and winery in Washington state’s San Juan Islands, and propagating some of the varieties in Montana.

“A lot of these older, more sturdy apples have different levels of acidity or tannins or other components that really do well when you’re trying to ferment something,” she said.

Unique traits

The orchard sells half of its apples and presses the other half into cider. The orchard sells cider and apples in season in several Sandpoint markets, usually selling out by the end of the calendar year.

Nagy will offer a tasting at the Moscow Farmers Market Oct. 29, in Moscow, Idaho.

But the heritage varieties won’t show up in grocery stores worldwide.

“They fell out of commercial production for one reason or another,” Nagy said.

Some are early-season apples that don’t store well, or thin-skinned apples that don’t ship well.

“You send it across the country in boxes and it’s going to be a box of applesauce by the time it gets there,” Nagy said.

They’re more likely to be niche varieties destined for farmers markets or home orchards and homesteads.

Their unique traits can contribute to modern research, however.

“With all of these great heritage varieties, there’s no reason we couldn’t be working on a breeding program that could be the next Cosmic Crisp,” Nagy said.

Organic research

The center is the site of several research projects on livestock grazing, soil health in organic production systems, biochar in the educational vegetable garden and pest control in huckleberries.

The goal is to get more faculty and graduate students conducting research in Sandpoint, Nagy said. He wants to work with researchers on variety-specific and organic-specific trials.

Organic research in particular is needed, Nagy said.

“We deal with different pests, different pressures” compared to conventional production, he said.

The orchard’s fences ward off bears, deer, moose and elk.

“We’ve definitely seen plenty of them walking along the fence, looking hungry,” Nagy said.

But small rodents such as gophers and voles are one of the “biggest headaches,” especially when establishing an orchard, Nagy said. They can do a lot of damage to young trees in a short amount of time.

“There’s really not a whole lot we’re able to do to control those populations,” he said. “We try to encourage natural predation, but we can’t do the bait stations and poisoning that large, commercial, conventionally-managed orchards are able to do.”

The future

Long-term goals for the orchard will pick up speed after UI hires a faculty member focused on organic and sustainable transitions, Parrella, the agricultural dean, said.

He hopes to move forward with a UI Extension specialist position at Sandpoint in 2023.

“We’re at about four years now, and I just feel like four years is still so new for a research station,” Nagy said.

Now working his 11th harvest, he still loves going to work every day.

“I’ve been working with these apples so long, I just feel like, ‘Oh, everybody’s tasted a bunch of apples,’ and then I’m like, ‘Oh, not everybody gets to taste 60-some different apples,’” he said. “That’s definitely one of the special things about this place.”

https://www.uidaho.edu/cals/sandpoint-organic-agriculture-center/apples

https://www.uidaho.edu/cals/sandpoint-organic-agriculture-center/conference

https://www.uidaho.edu/cals/sandpoint-organic-agriculture-center