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Reminiscing
about apple growing in
Brighton
by ELIZABETH
CHATTEN
This building made
out of apples was part of an exhibition showcasing
the many different varieties produced by area
orchards. Click for a panoramic
view of the apple-growers'
display,
thought to be from the Royal Winter Fair in the
early part of the 20th century.
(Image
is 259k).
Image courtesy of Elizabeth Chatten
One hundred years ago many farmers had a few apple trees
near the house and barn. Apples were the only fruit
available during the long winter. Preserving and storing
them was almost as important as the gathered harvest.
My great grandfather James Solomon lived on Oliphant St.
in 1873. He operated a commercial nursery, selling standard
and dwarf apple trees to growers in this area. In the early
1900's his son George (my grandfather) had an orchard just
east King Edward Park on land now owned by Ron and Jen
Kinney. He grew many different varieties. Some of these
would be Ben Davis, Snow, St. Lawrence, and Baldwin; which
are hard to find in any orchard today.
In the late 1800's, when a lucrative market developed
overseas for fresh apples, a new industry took shape.
Hundreds of acres of orchard were planted. Apples were
placed tightly in wooden barrels, right in the orchards, for
their long trip on merchant ships to Liverpool, England, and
Glasgow, Scotland. A barrel held the equivalent of three
bushel hampers, and would weigh about one hundred twenty
pounds. A number of cooperage (barrel making) shops were in
Brighton. Fred Jaques was reported to be an excellent
cooper. Frank Edwards was a master cooper who could make an
impressive 125 barrels a day.
My grandfather George Solomon made brass stencils for his
own use, and for other apple growers in this area. Each
wooden barrel had to be identified with the name of the
grower and the variety. There were hundreds of these brass
stencils made. Today it's hard to find any of them because
they are owned by collectors.
Drying apples in the home was a common practice. They
were peeled, cored, and sliced, then placed on a wire rack
above the kitchen stove or placed outside in the sun. Dried
apples became a commercial enterprise with a number of
processing evaporators operating in Brighton. One was the
West End Evaporator, built in the late 1800's. This building
later became a canning factory, then an auction hall. It was
torn down in 1991 and Creekside Banquet Hall was built.
In 1930 my parents Gladys and Norman Raney bought a farm
at the west end of town. One hundred acres with 25 acres of
apple trees. They named it Pine Springs. There was a
greenhouse for growing tomato plants, a number of milking
cows, a team of horses, and forty acres of woodland. From a
1932 diary that my mother kept, a cheque was received for
$14.68 for shipping 17 cans of milk. Most of the winter was
spent pruning apple trees and cutting trees in the woods,
for firewood.
In January of 1932 my mother tells of getting up at 3:30
AM to load a rented truck with 50 bushels of apples. She and
my father left for Toronto at 5:30 AM. They sold all their
apples at $1.50 a bushel, finally arriving back in Brighton
to their nice warm house at 7:00 PM. There was no such thing
as Highway #401 in those days.
In the winter of 1933 it was extremely cold. A great many
apple trees in the area died because of it. My parents had
to remove trees in the spring that year and when they could
afford it, plant new varieties. At Christmas that year
family members gave my parents money to buy new apple trees.
Some orchards in the area were never replanted. To help
supplement their income that year they raised chickens for
meat, and canned them. Selling canned chicken was not what
they had intended when they bought an apple farm. This
practice continued for a number of years.
My father was a shareholder in Brighton Cold Storage. At
harvest time, our barrels of apples had to be taken there
for winter storage. The manager was Fax Strong. The storage
was a popular place for farmers to gather to talk business
as well as socialize.
In 1954 our family built a cold storage for storing
apples. Learning how to operate refrigeration equipment was
a challenge for my husband Earle Chatten, even with his
mechanical background. Our orchard was producing 3000
bushels of apples by then. At the end of a long day picking
apples it was much easier to put them in storage on our own
farm. Bushel hampers replaced barrels, which in turn were
replaced by wooden bushel boxes. Years later, as the orchard
grew in size, the cold storage was expanded to hold ten
thousand bushels of apples and a packing room.
The Ontario Food Terminal was opened in Toronto the same
year, 1954. Many of the apples we grew were sold to buyers
there. In the fall at harvest time the buyers would call at
many of the orchards in the area. They usually drove a nice
big car, and had a cheque book in hand for a down payment.
If the price was right a grower might sell his whole apple
crop to one buyer.
Only once do I remember it snowing at harvest time. On
October 22, 1969 there were 4 inches of snow on the ground.
With four different kinds of apples still to be picked it
was an anxious time. Our three children took advantage of
the snow and all went for a skidoo ride before going to
school. The temperature was 28 degrees Farenheit and the
apples did not thaw out all day. Picking resumed at noon the
next day when our farm was a beehive of activity as extra
hands were found to help. Everyone knew how important it was
to get the fruit off the trees. A whole year's worth of work
and our only income would hang on those precious trees every
fall, and nature generally allowed us just 6 weeks to bring
in the harvest.
Growers have always had to control disease and pests in
the orchard. Sixty years ago a lime sulfur mixture was
applied to the trees. An orchard sprayer would be motor
driven on a horse drawn wagon. It took two people for the
operation, one to direct the spray, the other to draw the
wagon. As a teenager I would help my father with this
chores. Our farm had a beautiful team of dapple gray horses
to pull the sprayer. This team of horses was very dear to
me, but not my husband, so during the 1950's we bought a
shiny new green orchard model Oliver tractor. With a push of
a button, my husband could go to work. The harness for the
team of horses hung in the barn, and the horses staying in
the pasture field. A meeting of
growers at J.E. Solomon's orchard, about 1908.
(Click
image for larger view -- 194k)
Photo courtesy of
Elizabeth Chatten
The local growers valued these chances to converse about
their operations and the changes in their industry. As an
early warning system they would often take walks through
each others' orchards to see what sort of pest problems
might be in someone else's back yard, and doing their own
quick assessment of how well it was being controlled.
Several growers that my father, Norman, and/or my husband,
Earle often enjoyed discussing equipment and production with
in the 1950's were Ted Mound, Rollie Goddard, Ronald Hopper,
K.D. Macklam and Arthur Dunnett, all of them gone from us
many years now.
The local Ontario Ministry of Agriculture office had a
fruit and vegetable specialist to advise growers of the area
on new spray materials, timing and other production ideas.
The growers were more than happy to call, for many years,
Morley Webster, and later John Warner at any hour of the day
or night, and especially very early Easter mornings, to find
out if the year's first apple scab spray was necessary after
the last rain-- it depended on the length of time the leaves
were wet and at what temperature. Of course they had already
decided what they were going to do before they called.
Back at Pine Springs, people started coming to the farm
to buy apples soon after our first cold storage was built.
As our house was not near the storage we installed an
intercom system for customers to summon us to the storage
from the house. For some reason we never understood this
always was at mealtime! Years later my husband Earle made a
large cider press. We built our first roadside market in the
late sixties and sold apples and sweet apple cider for four
months in the fall. Over the next several years this
roadside market expanded in all directions. We enjoyed our
customers, making friends of many who returned every year to
get their winter supply of apples. In October each year my
husband had a passion for making "pumpkin people". After
constructing them out of pumpkins and squashes, and painting
faces on them, they stood by our market attracting
photographers from near and far. It was a happy time!
Again in 1980 and 1981 this area experienced frigid
winters with little snow cover and rapid temperature drops,
similar to the freeze of 33. Many large blocks of dead trees
had to be removed throughout the area and many were not
replaced. It was estimated that fourteen thousand trees in
Northumberland County died. Our orchard, even though we
always payed close attention to the details of its care,
lost some trees too.
Even so, there are apples being grown in the Brighton
area today, and people all along the north shore of Lake
Ontario associate our town with apples and Applefest. I
recall being on that first Applefest committee and although
we had high hopes, this homecoming festival has grown far
beyond the expectations we had then. And the industry
itself? Well, apples are now stored in 20 bushel bins, and
are being shipped all over the world. Orchard spraying is
done with sophisticated equipment complete with computer
monitoring. The team of horses has been replaced by tractors
that have air conditioning and stereo equipment. But it is
the people, and even the characters, that we met over the
years that continue to give us bushels full of fond
memories.
The first apple orchard in Brighton was east of town and
planted by John Sherman in 1845. Over the last one hundred
and fifty years methods of growing this wonderful fruit have
changed greatly. One thing remains the same -- the apple is
above all king. It is a key component of a nutritious diet
and nothing says "home" like Mom's apple pie.
Around 1913 a group of men formed the Northumberland and
Durham Apple Growers' Association. This covered an area
between Trenton and Bowmanville. They met to exchange ideas
and new growing practices. Apple-growing, like other types
of farming, changed rapidly with technological advances.
After the establishment of the Smithfield Experimental Farm,
the growers' associations' meetings regularly included
presentations by Blair Heeney, or Sherwood Miller, or other
staff on the various apple research projects that
Agriculture Canada conducted at the Smithfield station. The
amazing thing is that the Northumberland and Durham Apple
Growers' Association is still active now. Today's members
will be meeting this summer as usual, although the ideas and
methods will be very different than eighty years ago.
