Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question submitted by our audience.
Today, we tackle this question from Ben St. James of Barnet:
“What happened to the Tinmouth apple and why is it so hard to find today?”
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Seeds of curiosity
Josh Crane: Earlier in the year, we got this question from a listener named Ben St. James:
Ben St. James: What happened to the Tinmouth apple and why is it so hard to find today?
Josh Crane: The Tinmouth apple. This was the first time any of us at BLS had heard of this variety of apple, named for its place of origin in Tinmouth, Vermont.
When we followed up, Ben told us he’s trying to create a “living museum of historically significant apples” in his backyard orchard — apples like the purplish “Blue Pearmain," which appears in an old Henry David Thoreau essay. Or other varieties you’d be hard-pressed to find at the grocery store, like “Ashmead’s Kernel”, “Liberty” and even the “Westfield Seek-no-further.”
And, apparently, the Tinmouth, which we learned was cultivated for cider-making around southern Vermont in the 18- and 19-hundreds.
The only problem for Ben’s backyard apple museum is that he couldn’t find the Tinmouth — not in any seed catalogs, or orchards. In fact, Ben isn’t the only one who’s tried to find it. Apple enthusiasts have scoured New England for it — and so far, it seems like no one has been able to track it down for a very, very long time. One apple expert told us it’s, quote, “functionally extinct.”
So, Ben’s question sat dormant in our archives. And months passed.
But then one day, fate intervened — a chance encounter with, perhaps, the only person who could help us crack this case.
Pressed for answers
Sabine Poux: I met Wheaton Squier at a wedding in Rhode Island. We were sitting across from each other at dinner. And when I learned he’s from Tinmouth, I had to ask him about his hometown’s elusive, namesake apple. And he was like, oh yeah, I can help you find it. You know, casual.
Which is why a month later, I found myself sitting at Wheaton’s kitchen table in Tinmouth.
Wheaton Squier: I’m trying to remember when I first heard about it … I've known it was a thing for probably half my life, so maybe 18 or so years.
Sabine Poux: Wheaton is 37. He grew up in Tinmouth, which is a small town nestled into the hills near Rutland. And he’s really embedded here. Wheaton’s aunt is the town clerk. His grandfather used to be the local constable.
Wheaton is a farmer, an ultimate frisbee coach, a theater camp director and a gravedigger. And for the 10th year in a row, he’s also hosting a cider pressing festival at his house. It’s called “Presstival.”
Wheaton Squier: Every year we'd be like, oh, let's invite a few more friends. Let's see what happens. And now it's sort of a big, more public community event.
Sabine Poux: At this Presstival, kids are getting their faces painted and neighbors are standing around, chatting. The center of the action is a shredder that pulverizes apples into tiny pieces before they’re bagged and loaded into an old hydraulic cider press, which squeezes all the juice out.
It seems like the perfect place to start asking around about the elusive apple in question. I poll Betty Jaquay.
Sabine Poux: So what do you know about the Tinmouth apple?
Betty Jaquay: Other than it apparently existed at one time? I don't know.
Sabine Poux: And Cole Elmendorf.
Cole Elmendorf: Well, I don't really know anything about it. Heard rumors.
Sabine Poux: What have you heard?
Cole Elmendorf: I've heard that there's an apple, a pristine apple that only grows in Tinmouth, choice for making cider. But as far as I know, nobody's found it yet. And nobody knows where to find it.
Sabine Poux: This is kind of how the apple seems to live in the collective Tinmouth memory. It feels like part of a fairytale, or a fable. Not of real life.
It’s practically in the same vein as another Tinmouth legend Cole tells me about.
Cole Elmendorf: So whoever finds the Tinmouth apple should, should then go look for the wheelbarrow full of silver. ‘Cause that’s the other thing—
Sabine Poux: Wheelbarrow full of silver. Local lore has it that there’s one stashed somewhere around town, either deep in the bowels of a swamp or high up on a mountaintop, depending on who you ask.
Sabine Poux: These are the kinds of stories that could eat a person alive with curiosity.
Marshall Squier: We have storytelling here all winter.
Sabine Poux: This is Marshall Squier, Wheaton’s dad. He’s wearing jean shorts and holding a cup of cider. His long hair is tied back into a pink bandana.
Marshall Squier: People have heard of the Tinmouth apple. I don't think most people in town have a clue that there really was one. Yeah, they hear — show me one, show me a bigfoot. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: If the Tinmouth apple is Bigfoot, Marshall is a true believer. He even thinks he’s seen it with his own eyes.
Marshall’s family moved to Tinmouth in the early 1950s, long after people had already stopped planting the Tinmouth apple in their orchards. But Marshall remembers at least one old timer who was already searching for it back then. He told Marshall what it looked like and asked him to go look for it — which he did, off and on, for years. And while searching on his family’s land, he found a contender the old-timer got excited about.
Marshall Squier: Anyway, I picked a few up there, and one he thought was, could have been the Tinmouth apple.
Sabine Poux: He says the fruit he found back then had a big dimple on it. It was white inside and tasted sweet.
Marshall Squier: It tasted, you know— there's so many different kinds up there, most of them so sour that a bear wouldn't even eat them. But, no, it tasted good. Had a different kind of a flavor to it.
Apples to apples
Sabine Poux: Everything Marshall says is matching up with the description in one of the only places you can even find anything about the Tinmouth apple.
Sabine Poux: So what is this book?
Wheaton Squier: This book is called The Apples of New York. It’s an old book.
Sabine Poux: While “Presstival” rages on, I head back inside Wheaton Squier’s living room to check out this tome of a reference book. It’s huge, with a navy cover inscribed with gold lettering. It was published back in 1905.
Wheaton Squier: A lot of the references in here are from the 1800s and stuff. So it's a pretty comprehensive book and very scientific. There's a lot of words I do not know or understand …
Sabine Poux: Words like, “oblate.” And “bracted.” You know, apple stuff. And even though this book is about apples in New York, there’s an entry about the Tinmouth, which it says was first recorded in 1857.
Sabine Poux: Can you read what it says under the entry?
Wheaton Squier: Yes. (Reading) “So the Tinmouth apple is a fall and early winter apple of good size, good quality, and rather attractive appearance. The tree is a good grower with an upright habit…”
Sabine Poux: The apple, the book says, is medium-to-large. It’s supposed to have a dimple, or a cavity. It also goes by the names “Vermont Pippin” and “Tinmouth Sweet” — and, true to the name, it’s supposed to taste sweet, and a little tart, too.
Wheaton Squier: Yes. (Reading) “The skin is tender, pale yellow or greenish, often with a bright, deep blush and over spread with thin bloom. Dots, numerous — greenish or russet — giving the surface a somewhat rough appearance. The prevailing effect is yellow.”
Sabine Poux: Oooh.
Wheaton Squier: Yeah. “This variety originated at Tinmouth, Vermont, and was much esteemed in the region of its origin,” which makes sense for Tinmouth type things. We think all of our stuff is very cool. Um…
Sabine Poux: In its heyday, the Tinmouth apple was esteemed in the Tinmouth area. And, today, it’s special in the apple world because it’s so darn hard to find. Every cider and apple expert I reached out to in my reporting knew about the Tinmouth – with most saying something to the effect of, “Oh, of course, the elusive Tinmouth apple.”
But back in the 1800s, there were many thousands of regional apple varieties just like it.
Those apple varieties each had their own tastes, their own looks and seasons — each tailored to the needs of their communities.
Like the Roxbury Russett of Massachusetts, which is said to be one of the oldest apples that originated in America. Or the Granite Beauty of New Hampshire.
Ben Watson: When you first bite into it, will have almost a warm spice taste like curry or cardamom or something.
Sabine Poux: This is Ben Watson. He’s a self-described apple nerd and keeps a blog called “Brother Apple.” He lives in New Hampshire, which is why he took interest in the Granite Beauty — an heirloom apple that has those warm spice notes.
Ben Watson: I've never tasted that in any other apple in my life. And I don't think anybody else has either.
Sabine Poux: These heirloom apples with their idiosyncrasies, they started fading from orchards and store shelves in the early 20th century, when farming really started to change. Big companies distributed apples nationally, and they wanted consistent, shippable fruit. Produce buyers stuck to just a handful of apple types that they deemed marketable. And farmers adjusted.
Ben Watson: And then you have to keep in, into account after that, that there was Prohibition, too. And so people weren't, you know, encouraged to make hard cider.
Sabine Poux: All these many thousands of regional apple varieties shrunk down to just a handful that you’ll actually see in stores. They’re the Red Delicious, Granny Smiths and McIntoshes of the world. The big boys.
Along the way, many of the more bespoke varieties of apples have been lost to history. And Ben says most people don’t even know what to look for, anyway.
Ben Watson: They don't know that this apple is Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple. Or they don't know that this one is, you know, used to be called by some funny name, and is great for, you know, drying, or the best for apple butter, or something like that. You need to have that cultural context to make these apples viable.
Sabine Poux: Hm. I'm curious, like, how much the Tinmouth apple has come up in your writing and research?
Ben Watson: Not at all. Because it's one of those apples that is, I mean, that we refer to as “functionally extinct.”
Sabine Poux: “Functionally extinct.” I can’t say this phrase is the most encouraging to hear in our journey to find it.
There are all sorts of reasons an apple like the Tinmouth could’ve fallen into functional extinction. For example, the way it looked. Remember, the Tinmouth has all these little spots that give it, per the Apples of New York book, a “somewhat rough appearance.” It’s not exactly screaming, “buy me.” Which is maybe why the book also posits that the Tinmouth, “does not seem to be desirable for general commercial planting.”
But not all hope of finding it again is lost. Ben says what “functionally extinct” really means is “commercially extinct.” There could still be wild apple trees out there, still growing Tinmouths.
Ben Watson: I mean, the good thing about apples is that the tree, the trees, live a long time. So you can go decades with nobody doing anything with a particular apple variety. You could go 100 years and suddenly somebody will rediscover…
Sabine Poux: “Somebody will rediscover.” Maybe those somebodies could be us.
_
A fruitful hunt
Sabine Poux: I’m back in Tinmouth with Marshall and Wheaton Squier. Now, we know what we’re looking for. And we know that Marshall, Wheaton’s dad, might have seen the Tinmouth apple on his family’s land half a century ago.
There’s just one left to do.
Marshall Squier: The elusive Tinmouth apple.
Sabine Poux: Go find it.
Marshall Squier: This is my old kill barn, this is where Rainbow lives.
Wheaton Squier: And this is where our theater camp happens.
Sabine Poux: It’s really fun driving through Tinmouth with the Squiers. Between the two of them, they know exactly everything about this place.
Marshall Squier: That’s my sister. She could tell you about the Tinmouth apple.
Sabine Poux: We're driving toward the spot where Marshall — and his siblings — grew up. It's also where he thinks he once found the Tinmouth apple all those years ago.
Marshall has lots of stories about this place: of sledding down the driveway, of following cows up a trail on the side of a mountain.
Marshall Squier: I used to juggle apples and rocks chasing the cows…
Sabine Poux: And as we pull up, we see there are still cows here. Now, they belong to Wheaton and his sister.
Wheaton Squier: The proverbial apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right? (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: We’re up in a pasture high above town. You can see both the Taconic Mountains and the Greens.
Marshall Squier: Yeah, this is what I wanted to show you. This is what I spent my lifetime looking at. Riding the tractor…
Sabine Poux: Is it nostalgic?
Marshall Squier: Oh very.
Sabine Poux: As we head into the woods, I start to notice apple trees everywhere. But this is not an orderly or established apple orchard like it was when Marshall was a boy. Most of the trees in here can’t compete for sunlight, so they’re small, almost phantom-like.
But some are really big, and ancient looking. And still fruiting. They remind me of the trees apple expert Ben Watson talked about. The ones that can lie waiting for years and years until someone comes to find them.
Sabine Poux: These are apple trees?
Marshall Squier: Yeah, these are apple trees. These are the ones that were here when I’m a kid. These are old trees. They just don’t get much bigger than that.
Sabine Poux: And this is right around where you found—
Marshall Squier: It was right around this—
Sabine Poux: We see one that looks like multiple trees in one. It’s huge, knotted and twisted. With its topmost branches curling over like a shelter.
Our Tinmouth apple alarm bells go off. Because any tree harboring original Tinmouths would have to be really old, like this one. And Marshall says we’re not far from where he remembers seeing the possible Tinmouth, 60 years ago.
Wheaton excitedly tears off into the brush toward the tree, stomping through leaves and battling back brambles.
He comes back with something in his hand.
Wheaton Squier: Alright. Look what I found.
Sabine Poux: Okay.
Marshall Squier: See, that's the thing that it had. Is this dimple.
Wheaton Squier: Right.
Sabine Poux: The dimple — like the one Marshall saw as a kid. The apple is yellowish, with a bright pink blush up near the stem. It’s a little gnarly looking, with all these brown dots.
Sabine Poux: Wait, wait. Before you, before you bite in. What was the description on the…
Wheaton Squier: I forget.
Sabine Poux: I have a picture. Mind if I pull it up?
Wheaton Squier: Not at all.
Marshall Squier: I’m still going to bite it. (Laughing)
Sabine Poux: (Reading) “Cavity: large, acute, deep, broad, russetted with outspreading russet rays.” Outspreading russet rays, I see that.
Wheaton Squier: I mean, yeah.
Sabine Poux: (Reading) “Skin tender, pale yellow or greenish, often with a bright deep blush.”
Marshall Squier: There you go.
Wheaton Squier: I mean, right?
Sabine Poux: (Reading) “And overspread with thin bloom. Dots, numerous, greenish or russet, given the surface of a somewhat rough appearance.” You guys!
Wheaton Squier: That’s pretty close.
Marshall Squier: That's damn close.
Sabine Poux: It matches the description pretty closely. But does it taste like a Tinmouth?
Sabine Poux: I’m nervous.
Marshall Squier: Well maybe we shouldn’t.
Sabine Poux: If this was an Aesop’s Fable, we wouldn’t bite into it. And we’d just leave it. We’d throw it back. But it’s not.
(Apple bite)
Marshall Squier: Good, though. (Laughter) … That’s a good apple. Try a bite?
Sabine Poux: Sure.
Marshall Squier: So you’ve bit the Tinmouth apple.
Sabine Poux: Mm.
Wheaton Squier: It’s pretty tart. This one is, anyway.
Sabine Poux: I could see how it might make a nice cider. It’s delicious.
We’re standing around, taking turns biting into this apple and trying to figure out if it’s the real thing. And then, Marshall says something that’s perhaps the most compelling evidence of all.
Marshall Squier: I get these feelings before things happen sometimes. I’m a finder, I can find stuff. Like somebody loses something. And when he showed me that apple, for some reason that dimple was showing right up at me. And it gave me a little rush. It did.
Sabine Poux: As we walk back to the car, we stop to scrutinize basically every apple we see. It’s become a bit of a game.
Wheaton Squier: "Dots, numerous, greenish or russett"…
Sabine Poux: It’s like a riddle.
Sabine Poux: We don’t find any other trees with Tinmouth apple-like fruit. But the seed of curiosity, so to speak, has been replanted.
Marshall Squier: And now you’ve got me interested again, ugh.
The apple of our eye
Sabine Poux: I leave Tinmouth with my very own possible Tinmouth apple. And it becomes like this precious cargo. I agonize over how to store it. Jump in front of my roommate, who tries to eat it one morning at breakfast. Because I know exactly who I want to bring it to.
Ben St. James: We moved out here about two years ago. So this is me, my effort of pruning this apple tree.
Sabine Poux: This is Ben, the question-asker who sent us on this wild apple chase.
I visit him on his property in Barnet, where he stumbled upon a bunch of apple trees after moving in.
Ben St. James: We really didn’t know what was out here.
Sabine Poux: And this fall, he planted 10 more. They’re scattered around his yard, each one swaddled in chicken wire. They’re all those rare kinds of apples — the kinds you won’t find in the produce section of the grocery store.
Sabine Poux: So you like the apple varieties that are kind of off the beaten path?
Ben St. James: Yeah. I mean, just the fact that, even if it's not my favorite, it could be somebody's entry into experiencing a different type of apple. You know?
Sabine Poux: That’s how the Tinmouth came on his radar. He was reading about all these weird fruits — and while he was able to locate some of them, the Tinmouth was one he couldn’t find.
Ben St. James: So it was this kind of open mystery cold case.
Sabine Poux: If you could find the Tinmouth apple, would you plant a Tinmouth apple tree here?
Ben St James: I think I would need to. It’s the Vermont Pippin, right? It’s the quintessential Vermont apple. If it can be discovered somewhere, I'd love to have it here. I'd certainly make room for it.
Sabine Poux: I’ve brought Ben a small paper bag. Inside is one of the apples from my trip with Wheaton and Marshall — the one we think might be the Tinmouth.
I give mine to Ben.
Sabine Poux: OK. Alright. So what do you think?
Ben St. James: That’s really cool. You can see the lenticels right there. Those dots. That's really interesting. It's almost like a plucked chicken. That’s really not the best image—
Sabine Poux: Why do you say that?
Ben St. James: Well, just the dots are yellow within the areas of red. That's really cool. I can't believe you found it. I think it's a, it's been a mystery.
Sabine Poux: Do you think this is, do you think this could be it?
Ben St. James: I don’t know…
Sabine Poux: Ben’s on the same page as us. He says it looks like it could be it, but he’s not sure.
And, a DNA test can’t give us a definitive answer, since there’s no Tinmouth sample in the database to stack it up against.
We’ll send our samples for testing anyways, to see if we can rule anything out. But in the meantime, I give Marshall and Wheaton Squier a call, a few weeks after our Tinmouth apple treasure hunt.
Marshall Squier: We got half the country looking for this apple now.
Wheaton Squier: Yeah. We’ll at least come get a few of the apples from that tree next time to put in the Presstival cider. Get a tiny percentage in there. A few drops. Everybody can have some.
Sabine Poux: We’ve had time to marinate on all of it. Marshall’s talked to some of his neighbors. Thought back on his memories of talking to that old guy about the apple as a kid. And even though we have mostly circumstantial evidence, he says he’s made up his mind. He thinks we found the real deal.
Marshall Squier: And the fact that these are some of the oldest apple trees up there, just by the size of them, are 150 years old or more, I feel pretty confident that that was, you know, part of an old orchard. And that these actually could be original Tinmouth apple trees that are still left.
Sabine Poux: So, now what? Like what are, what are you guys gonna do?
Marshall Squier: Well, I’m going to go up and cut some limbs off. And splice them on to some of these old dead …
Sabine Poux: To get another Tinmouth tree, you’d have to graft a branch from the tree we found in the woods onto another tree. And that’s exactly what Marshall hopes to do.
Marshall Squier: So all I got to do is graft it on and the Tinmouth apple is up and running again.
Sabine Poux: Where are you going to plant ‘em?
Marshall Squier: Um … I’m not telling. (Laughter) It’s not going to be in Wallingford.
Sabine Poux: There’s something that’s been bothering me since I was in Tinmouth.
The apple we found was right on Marshall's old family property. Like, it was sitting under his nose the whole time. If it was right there, why did it take so long to find it?
Sabine Poux: If you knew that was where the apple might be all this time, like, why’d you never, why’d you never go back?
Marshall Squier: No one really pushed — until you came along, no one was looking for the Tinmouth apple. And then you got me, “Well, heck.”
Sabine Poux: All of a sudden, thanks to Ben’s question and a little bit of dumb luck, the search resumed.
Marshall Squier: So, here we are. I mean, you inspired me to get the apple going now. And actually we’re going to get it growing. Now I’ve got time. I’m going to get the Tinmouth apple going again.
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Credits
This episode was reported by Sabine Poux. Editing and additional production from Burgess Brown and Josh Crane. Our intern is Camila Van Order González. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Catherine Morrissey, John Bunker, Ryan Yoder, Erin Robinson, Dan Bussey and Paige Heaverly.
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