Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Page 40

38 AT L A N T I CA
pointing to his mini apple empire planted behind
their barn. Almost 200 years later, the family can
still grow a mean McIntosh – and 34 other varieties
of apples so crisp it almost sounds like I’m biting
into a cracker.
After 80 years of apple tasting, Dick’s favorite is
still the classic McIntosh. Connie, 76, likes the Red
Gravenstein, or, she says, “whatever one I happen
to reach.”
Every fall the Sweetsers, with the help of six
part-time helpers, pick between 2,500 and 3,000
bushels of apples from their 1,000 trees, which
by any standard is considered a small operation.
The entire state of Maine produces just over one
million bushels of apples per year. Washington
State, the nation’s largest apple grower, produces
somewhere between 80 and 100 million bushels (a
bushel of apples weighs about 42 pounds).
Orchards in Maine, the Sweetsers say, are a dying
industry, and it’s hard to keep young people in the
business. Not to mention it’s a lot of work.
The Sweetsers, who married in 1951, have bat-
tled various pests over the years, including some
who are bigger than they are: deer, who like to
snack on apples as much as humans do, and who
also like to feed on the trees’ soft bark.
“Essentially we have to coexist with them,”
says Dick. “But we’ve recently erected an electric
fence around 200 of the newer trees.” They’ve
also staged battles against foxes, coyotes, raccoons,
porcupines, wild turkeys, and even, yes, one big
bad moose that has trampled their grounds. Three
years ago they lost 10 percent of their crop thanks
to a particularly harsh winter.
Winter is the pruning season, spring is for fertil-
izing (the Sweetsers are not organic apple farmers,
but have a policy of spraying as little as possible),
summer is mowing, more mowing, and monitor-
ing the trees, and fall, Connie says, is the season of
“pick, pick, pick. Dick raises them and I pick them.
We’re a good contract, aren’t we?”
MAINEa
Portland, Maine.
City promoters sometimes tout Portland, just two
hours from Boston, as a mini-San Francisco.
034-44MainAtl606.indd 38 18.10.2006 22:04:49