Requiem for a Winesap

Long before I met the boss his father planted a Winesap apple tree for his mother. By the time I first visited here it was a stately beauty. In typical fashion for a heritage apple it produced heavily some years....plenty for cider and deer and yellow jackets with some to spare for spring robins after a winter on the ground. Other years it would send out only a few shriveled knobs of greenish not much.

We called it the fruit salad tree because a grape vine that the old gent also planted turned out to be too close to it, climbed right on up and flung its grapes willy-nilly across the top.

Last year its two trunks began to split. Before that we hadn't really noticed that there even were two trunks, but the split was ominous. The boss worried and fretted over it all the time.

This spring it began to look really bad and by the time Isaias threatened it was a serious threat itself, to the horse barn, potentially the cars, and Mack's dog run. He brought the big tractor down, climbed up on a tire, and chained the bad trunk to it so it had to fall north and south, where there was nothing in the way.

Good thing because it came down yesterday afternoon.

There is a sad and messy tangle of branch, grape, and log lying in the backyard. Looks as if the "good" trunk will have to go too, as it's leaning toward the driveway. Last time we tried to save a split trunk tree there was a near disaster as the remaining half nearly fell on the kids. Thankfully my late father-in-law made them move just before it crashed to the ground.

I can't begin to tell you how I will miss that tree. It was featured in many blog posts and newspaper columns. It hosted so many robin nests and waves of winter-bound warblers in the fall and Scarlet Tanagers in the spring that its loss will impact them too. 

The cider was sweet and tangy and so wonderfully plentiful the year my brother and family made it.

Jelly from the grapes on the years when they were low enough to reach them was outstanding.

I guess the bright side is that we may be able to save the grapevine at least, and if we put it on a new fence we will be able to reach the grapes.

Anyhow, it will warm our house this winter after all those decades of warming our hearts all year and helping fill the pantry too.

Goodbye old tree. Losing you is going to sting.