226: Northern Spy and the Underground Railroad

Northern Spy is a short story that weaves the tale of the early grafting of the apple known as the Northern Spy, Quaker values, and the Underground Railroad. Read and written by Ryan Monkman, for the new Cider Chat segment titled "Stories in Ciderville".

For additional reading and inspiration look to the children's book An Apple for Harriet Tubman.

Northern Spy

by Ryan Monkman

About 200 years ago, somewhere in Upstate New York, a boy ran through the woods. He hid in a bush under a tree. Then, when no one found him, he stood up and grabbed an apple above him. He bit the apple then spat it out. It was horribly acidic.

The boy ran back to town and convinced a friend to take a bite of the "wonderful" apple. Soon it was a game: try the apple, spit it out.

But the boy's father liked the acid. The two of them walked back to the forest and picked the tree clean. They put the apples in bins then put those bins in their root cellar. Everyday the father would have an apple with breakfast. Everyday the son would try to sucker a new friend.

After a few weeks in storage, the apples grew sweet. The father didn't like them anymore and the son's game grew boring. So the crates sat, untouched and unloved, next to the potatoes.

The boy's mother found the apples in mid Spring. Somehow they still looked and tasted like apples after months underground. She took them to a church picnic.

There's a tradition in Quaker communities; speak boldly when the Spirit calls you to. A neighbor spoke and the town listened. That summer they propagated the wild apple.

If you plant an apple seed, you'll get an apple tree but the fruit will be different. With each generation the seeds morph and mutate. The apple changes. If you want to preserve the beauty of a varietal, you have to take a cutting of the original tree and plant the cutting. That's what the town did.

They sent a team into the woods to collect small clippings of the wild tree. Each cut was only two inches long. Those cuttings were then slipped into a piece of root from another tree then the two were planted together. The bottom half rooted in the ground, the top half bearing identical fruit to the wild tree.

The grafted trees were divided throughout the town. Each family grew a handful of trees and the church planted an orchard. Eight years past. Then one day in May the town awoke to a bursting of pink flowers.

That Summer they saw their first fruit. That Fall they picked their first apples. The boy, now a man, loaded up a wagon and headed South. Then another wagon followed. And another. That Winter the town was empty.

The wagons would pull into a new town. The driver asked for the Station Master, dropped off a whack of apples, then left without another word. In each town the pattern repeated. When the wagon was empty the driver returned home, refilled, then hit the road again. By February the town was out of apples.

Traffic on the Underground Railroad surged that Spring. One of the first tastes of freedom was a piece of fruit that never seemed to rot.

Cloaked in secrecy, the apple earned a nickname; the Northern Spy.

by Ryan Monkman

Ryan lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario making and selling cider with his family and cider team at FieldBird Cider.

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Have a story to tell for the "Stories in Ciderville" segment?

• Must be 3000 words or less or under 4 audio minutes
• Apples and pommes must be integrated into the story line
• Send your essay and a recording of yourself reading your essay to ria@ciderchat.com