Maine
Maine grower is changing the state's fruit tree landscape
The Fameuse apple originated in Canada in the 1600s, but its role in Maine’s apple history was epic.
It’s thought to be a parent of the state’s popular McIntosh, which has been a staple for hundreds of commercial and private orchards around the state for more than 200 years.
The Fameuse and other old varieties like it, such as the Black Oxford, Cherryfield and Chenango Strawberry apple, almost disappeared but were revived and now thrive across Maine.
Their tales often go back to early settlers who brought the trees from overseas to plant on new homesteads and farms. Black Oxford, a Maine original, was discovered on the farm of an Oxford County nailmaker in the 1790s; a Hallowell tree planted in 1799 is still alive. Cherryfield was developed in that Down East town more than 150 years ago, then rediscovered by residents. The Chenango Strawberry apple was originally called Frank after the first name of a New York man who introduced it; others know it as Zepherus Chernogous.
By the 1970s, many such Maine trees were near the ends of their lifespans. Their fields were overgrown, the farmers who planted them forgotten. When Palermo resident John Bunker started rediscovering them, they were mostly “mysterious, anonymous gifts from the past.”
These apples, their histories and their abilities to thrive in Maine’s weather could disappear forever if someone didn’t take action soon, he realized. That led him to create the first Fedco Trees mail-order in 1984: a two-page handout, including 17 apple types, stapled to the Clinton-based Fedco Seeds cooperative catalog.
Over the next 40 years, Bunker’s hobby grew into a business that has changed the state’s fruit tree landscape on homesteads and small farms, saving and spreading these varieties that could have been lost otherwise, along with other unique fruits, trees and ornamentals.
Though heritage apples are familiar to many Mainers, Fedco Trees’ current coordinator Jen Ries said there’s still work to do. Until everybody knows about heritage fruit and you can find it at any grocery store, the mission continues, she said.
Popular choices for Fedco customers today include the Black Oxford; Baldwin, one of New England’s oldest apples with origins in 1740s Massachusetts; and Northern Spy, an all-purpose from Connecticut first planted from a seed more than two centuries ago.
Estimates vary, but the United States likely had more than 7,000 such cultivars in the 19th century and probably has less than half that many today as commercial production focuses on favorites such as Granny Smith and Honeycrisp. More genetic diversity in plants means more resilience from weather, disease and pests, which disappears with extinction, according to numerous researchers, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Back in the early 1980s, local resources for Maine gardeners focused on vegetable production, according to Bunker. He thought people should have access to fruit education and tree stock too — plus, he had questions about their history.
He uncovered fruit names, history and characteristics through books, conferences, a booth at the Common Ground Country Fair, tracking down experts, finding mentors and, occasionally, knocking on a stranger’s door after driving by an interesting tree. Bunker estimates he’s spent hundreds of hours in orchards, botanical gardens and arboretums in Maine, Boston and New York.
He decided early on to make the catalog intelligent, honest, educational and focused on what he knew best — cold-hardy varieties growing in Maine.
If someone from Texas read it, he hoped they’d be inspired to start their own locally focused project. Heritage apple nurseries and preservation orchards exist across the country with a scattering of other “fruit detectives,” working independently and together in groups such as the Historic Fruit Tree Working Group.
The catalog grew, and a physical community did too around an annual in-person spring sale of discounted extra stock. That event was an equalizer, Bunker said, drawing businesspeople alongside homesteaders.
By 1994, his hobby had grown into a full-time job. Ries started working with him 22 years ago and took the lead at the tree division around 2020.
This year’s catalog has 170 apples and 650 listings, from cherries to groundcover plants to asparagus. Popular choices include the Madison Peach, Montmorency Cherry, Purple Heart Plum, American Elms and American Chestnuts, according to Ries, plus lilacs and cold-hardy heritage roses. The division sold more than 100,000 plants and trees last year.
Small local farms grow about three-quarters of this stock with mentorship from the company. Some have started their own nurseries.
Fedco also grows trees from farther south, such as the Chestnut Oak, with a native range from Georgia to southwestern Maine that’s now surviving farther east, and American Sycamore, which previously grew in the southern states and the central Midwest.
That’s in response to the way climate change is shifting growing conditions and bringing new pests, according to Ries. People are starting to plant southern species here to prepare for a warmer climate, a process called assisted migration.
The company also added a refrigeration system to keep its trees dormant through the winter, which they need to survive cold temperatures and grow successfully. In the past, it stayed cold enough to store them outside.
Things have changed on the commercial side of Maine’s apple landscape too, according to Renae Moran, a tree fruit specialist with the University of Maine. Twenty-five years ago, McIntosh, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious were dominant.
Honeycrisp, a patented fruit first sold in the late 1990s, is the focus for growers and the university’s research farm now, she said, along with other trademarked cultivars that growers are trialing themselves.
The university doesn’t have data for hobby growers, though she noted an increasing interest in hard cider. Moran said many farmstands carry heritage or antique apples, but sales are limited in comparison to commercial types.
Every year, Ries sees new customers be surprised by the variety of fruit that exists. She’s also seeing more new gardeners and people growing food in cities or suburbs, using the trees to feed their families, serve as memorials or mark life events.
Forty years in, Bunker comes across apple trees he sold that have grown large enough for grandchildren to climb on.
“It’s very personal for people to plant a tree,” Ries said.
TOPSFIELD, Maine — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.
Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.
Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.
“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “[If] school starts at [7:45 a.m.], what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”
Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.
“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”
Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.
A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.
As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.
East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.
In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.
The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.
After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.
“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.
Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.
“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”
Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.
“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.
“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Good morning and Happy Sunday everyone. Skies are cloudy with fog across much of Maine this morning. Rain has entered locations along the interstate and to the northwest. Temperatures vary from the upper 30s to mid 40s. Winds are out of the SE between about 5-15 mph.
Today will be a wet and impactful day with rain and even snow anticipated as a large cold front passes through Maine. Skies will be cloudy with plenty of fog lasting through the morning. Rain will expand across the interstate by the late morning hours, reaching Downeast locations by midday/the early afternoon.
By the early to midafternoon, temperatures will start to drop across northwestern locations as the cold front passes through Maine. This will result in rain turning over to mixed precipitation and eventually snow across the Western Mountains, Moosehead region, and Northern Maine. Rain will continue steadily and at times heavily across the foothills, Interstate, Coast, and Downeast. A few thunderstorms are even possible closer to the coast.
Snow will expand across areas to the northwest of the interstate this evening, reaching all the way down to Interior Midcoast communities, the Bangor region, and Interior Downeast areas by sunset and into the start of the night. Precipitation will taper off across Western Maine shortly after sunset, before exiting the entire state around midnight tonight. High temps today will vary from the low 40s to low 50s with SSE to NW gusts reaching 20-25 mph.
Snowfall totals will vary under 2 inches across Western, Northern, and Interior Downeast locations. However, a few pockets of 2-4 inches are possible, mostly in higher elevations across the mountains. Rainfall totals will accumulate around a half inch to three quarters of an inch when all is said and done.
Precipitation will be out of Maine by midnight tonight, with cloudy conditions giving way to mostly clear skies by sunrise. Lows overnight will dip back below freezing across much of the state, from the low 20s to mid 30s tonight, so cover up any plants or flowers outside. WNW gusts will reach 20-25 mph. A Small Craft Advisory is expected offshore.
Skies will be partly to mostly sunny across the interstate and coast on Monday morning. However, by the late morning to midday hours, clouds will build with a few scattered rain and snow showers in spots. Conditions will remain on the cloudier side in the afternoon before clearing up around sunset into the start of Monday night. Highs will be chilly on Monday, from the low 30s to upper 40s. WNW to SW gusts will be a bit breezy, reaching 20-25 mph, which will add to the wind chill factor.
High pressure will build on Monday night, remaining overhead on Tuesday. Skies will be sunny in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Highs will remain cool, in the 40s across the board with North to SW gusts only reaching 15-20 mph.
A weaker low-pressure system could bring showers across Maine on Wednesday and Thursday. There is a bit of model uncertainty on exactly when it will impact Maine. The GFS has impacts on Wednesday, while the EURO, GRAF, and GDPS models have most of the impacts on Thursday. We will continue to monitor this system and potential impacts. All it looks to provide as of now are cloudier skies and rain showers, with some snow shower chances farther to the North.
By Friday and Saturday, conditions are trending on the drier side with sunshine and average temperatures returning to the forecast.
SUNDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Cloudy with AM fog. Rain becoming widespread throughout the day, turning over to snow to the north & west during PM. SSE to NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
MONDAY: Highs from low 30s to upper 40s. Partly to mostly sunny early. Developing clouds with scattered rain/snow showers by midday/afternoon. WNW to SW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
TUESDAY: Highs throughout the 40s. Sunnier AM. Partly to mostly sunny PM. North to SW gusts reach 15-20 mph.
WEDNESDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Mostly cloudy with a few rain showers. Few AM snow showers possible North. SSE to SSW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
THURSDAY: Highs from mid 40s to mid 50s. Cloudier skies with rain showers possible. Some AM snow showers possible North. NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
FRIDAY: Highs from upper 40s to mid 50s. Partly cloudy. NNW gusts reach 20 mph.
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in September 2022.
When it comes to Maine hiking, summiting Katahdin is the ultimate achievement.
Maine’s tallest mountain stands at 5,269 feet, and there are a number of different trails hikers can take to get up and down Katahdin. And while some are harder than others, none are easy.
But the views are incredible.
Whether it’s the rugged terrain of the Knife Edge or the vast landscape of the 200,000 acres that compose Baxter State Park below, here’s a look at what it’s like to climb Katahdin.
Hunt Trail
Abol Trail
Chimney Pond Trail
Cathedral Trail
Saddle Trail
Northwest Basin Trail
Knife Edge
Tablelands
South Peak
Hamlin Peak
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