Funds from a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant will be used in part to genetically identify historic apples grown in Montezuma County.
In recent years, Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project officials have located about 200 historic apple orchards in Montezuma County. While some have only a few trees remaining, other orchards have several hundred trees.
“We have found and continue to identify what are now rare apple trees,” said orchardist Jude Schuenemeyer.
Schuenemeyer said that Montezuma County was once a top apple producer for the region, with some orchards containing dozens of apple varieties. (One area orchard was even a winner at the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis).
The local market, however, began to collapse in the 1920s, and many of the area’s historic apple orchards ceased operations. The rarest varieties all but disappeared.
Nearly a century later, restoration project officials are working to restore the area’s apple prominence, and a new $52,630 grant will be used to collect leaf tissue to genetically identify those lost varieties.
“It’s part of a USDA research project to do DNA testing to identify our apple trees,” said director Nina Williams.
With an aim to revitalize Montezuma County as a top apple producer in Colorado, the 18-month grant will also be used to propagate up to 3,000 rootstocks of heirloom apples, conduct educational grafting workshops and produce a heritage orchard handbook.
“Our ultimate goal is to protect and restore our heritage orchards,” Williams said.
Restoration project officials attributed the resurgence of heirloom apple varieties to the Internet. Not only have older generations been reintroduced to the apples they ate as children, but a new generation of consumers now also demands them.
“People are intrigued with the history,” Williams said.
The local apple orchard restoration project was one of 10 organizations to receive grants that totaled $730,000 through the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s 2015 Specialty Crops Program. Funds were received by the Colorado Department of Agriculture from the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, which aims to enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops.
Other grants were awarded to the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee, Colorado Proud, Colorado Department of Agriculture, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College and the Colorado Nursery and Greenhouse Association.
“The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project was one of the most outside-the-box programs in Colorado to receive this grant,” Schuenemeyer said.
Formed as an informal partnership with the Montezuma County Historical Society in 2008, the restoration project hopes to revive the fruit orchards that were once prominent in the agricultural landscape of Southwest Colorado.
Since its formation, restoration project officials have rediscovered three apple varieties that were considered extinct – the raspberry apple, the Colorado orange apple and the Cedar Hill black apple.
The restoration project has also helped to initiate an orchard trial with Colorado State University to identify local seedlings and rare varieties that grow successfully in the region and develop relationships with hard cider start-ups for production purposes.
“Our orchard economy can work here, and it grows here,” said Schuenemeyer. “We have tremendous market potential.”
tbaker@the-journal.com
