September 26, 2023 – Johnny Appleseed

Today is Johnny Appleseed Day, in honor of the prolific planter’s birthday! He was born John Chapman in Massachusetts in 1774. His father was a Minuteman during the Revolutionary War and when he returned home, in 1780, began teaching John the farming trade.
Chapman became an orchardist and nurseryman and was working on his own by the early 1800s. While legend paints him as a nomad roaming the countryside and planting apple trees along the way, he was actually much more entrepreneurial. At the time, frontier law allowed people to lay claim to land by developing a permanent homestead. All they had to do was plant 50 apple trees. Chapman realized a business opportunity, and during his travels would plant orchards and then sell the land to settlers once the trees had grown bountiful. He became quite a land baron in the Midwest – at the time of his death, he owned more than 1200 acres of land.
Chapman didn’t believe in grafting, so he planted all his orchards from seed. That means his apples were mostly unfit for eating. They were great, however, for making hard cider, which was a much more lucrative crop than edible apples. Hard cider was an important part of frontier life, providing a safe, stable drink during a time when water could be full of dangerous bacteria. When Chapman died in 1845, many of his orchards didn’t survive much longer. That’s because, during Prohibition, trees that produced apples for cider were chopped down by the FBI.
It was only after his death that the legend of Johnny Appleseed really took off. Over the years, as his story was told in children’s books and Disney movies, he was made to seem less entrepreneurial and the use of his apples for booze was played down. There is only one surviving tree planted by Johnny Appleseed. The 176 year old tree grows on a farm in Nova, Ohio and produced tart green apples that are used for apple sauce and baking in addition to cider making – just like Chapman would have wanted. Learn more here.