Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
SALT SPRING WAS B.C.'S MAJOR SOURCE of apples prior to 1900, a history Harry Burton capitalizes on with the island's annual apple fest — backed by the "Pie Ladies" (pages 28, 29). (clockwise from top) Poet, author and raconteur Brian Brett of Trauma Farm fame; lunch and tasting apples at his hilltop acreage; Fulford Hall's apple spread. (opposite) Ganges market; farmgate bounty. fact, it's a $3 slice of apple/salal berry pie or a plumbing service, pickles or Pilates, the money stays on Salt Spring. It's called Slow Money. As the hippies once said: What goes around, comes around. Neighbours help neighbours. Work and consumption are linked. That was – and may again be – the nature of community. To get a glimpse of this future, one could follow a series of ever-narrowing dirt roads near Salt Spring's Ruckle Provincial Park, push open the farm gate that reads "Apple Heaven," pass the stacked collection of rusty farm implements labelled "Shovels I Have Known," and be greeted by grinning, rubberbooted, 62-year-old ecologist Harry Burton, who probably knows as much about apples as anyone in Canada. He is organizer of the island's Apple Festival, orchardist to 200 varieties of strangely named apples – from Hubbardston Nonesuch to Blue Pearmain (Henry David Thoreau's favourite) – and a man who admits unashamedly, "I'm an appleholic." Burton got his start early, he says, fleeing the pepper gun of an Ontario neighbour, Mrs. Roscoe, who found him up a tree swiping her apples 55 years ago. When he settled on Salt Spring in 1998, it was, in part, because the place was dotted with myriad, often overlooked, apple trees that had been planted in the 19th century by Ruckle and his neighbours when Salt Spring was the main source of fruit for the province. It disturbed him that tens of thousands of apples were being left each fall to rot on the ground, and he started surveying the island's apple crop, identifying the extraordinary range of varieties, taking cuttings and chatting with residents about the benefits of working cooperatively to reinvigorate Salt Spring's agricultural traditions. He knew Safeway wouldn't be interested in the island's weird, pink-fleshed Grenadines or the oddly named Mother apples, though. So his one-hectare Apple Luscious Organic Farm became the focus of islanders' scheming over ways – from apple-juicing to organic fruit marketing – to put money into pockets of local farmers. p28-31_SaltSpring.indd 30 8/17/11 12:18:54 PM