In the early 1950s my Grandfather purchased a piece of property about 5 miles from the family farmhouse. The new land possessed a few fields, pastures, and a sugarhouse. Every spring he would relocate several cows from the main farm to the pastures, and he would make maple syrup in the sugarhouse. According to my father, Grandpa never made any real money with the whole thing; he did it because he loved it.
Just behind the sugarhouse next to a huge, sloping rock was an old apple tree that produced huge, sweet, and exceedingly juicy apples that my Grandpa referred to as “Pumpkin Apples.” Unfortunately in the only two pictures of the sugarhouse from the old days that I can find, the tree is just out of frame. The pumpkin tree has outlived the sugarhouse and still stands today; however, it hasn’t produced apples in several years.
The memories of family members and neighbors seem to contradict each other slightly. According to my father the apples looked like “multicolored little pumpkins” but only tasted “fair.” My brother thought they were “juicy, delicious”; my cousin, “bright red, sweet, mealy”; and the neighbor, “the juice would run down your chin.” One thing everybody is agreement on is that the apples were “huge.”
Because of its lack of bearing I have been unable to identify its variety. When I first discovered heirloom apples I assumed that the tree must be the “Pumpkin Sweet” variety I was coming across on several websites and in books. On one website I read that the varieties “Pound Sweet” and “Pumpkin Sweet” were one and the same. On another sight they were offered for sale side by side with different descriptions. As I dug deeper I found “Pumpkin Sweet” trees with the region they were from in parenthesis next to the name. It became clear that the Pumpkin moniker was not enough for a positive identification. Then I read a book, Not Far From the Tree by John Bunker of Fedco Trees, which brought the pumpkin confusion into focus. *On pages 49-50 John writes:
“For many years I would hear rumors of Pumpkin Sweet sightings here and there around central Maine. A few years ago I decided to sort things out. I collected six apples thought to be Pumpkin Sweet and displayed them all at the Common Ground Fair. My goal was to weed out the imposters. It was an interesting sight: Six different apples from six different locations around the state. Each had an owner who believed they had given me the true Pumpkin Sweet. After much agony I concluded that it was not a case of mistaken identity. Rather, I decided that Pumpkin Sweet is just a wonderful name for a big sweet apple, and that years ago no one particularly cared, or even knew, if someone else had already taken it. Over time it found itself attached to a range of large apples. Stanley’s was the largest. One friend suggested that, just as a Pumpkin Pine is a huge pine tree, it makes sense that this name would be attached to a number of large apples. Bob Dow of Orland contributed a wonderful Pumpkin Sweet to the display that weekend. Though not very large, it was brownish-orange in color and even had vertical creases... like a pumpkin.”
With this new insight a likely scenario unfolded. My Grandfather one fall day looked up into the tree and upon seeing huge apples thought “ah, a pumpkin tree!” Four generations later it’s still known as the “Pumpkin Tree.”My brother now owns the property where the tree is located. I have encouraged him to cut down the native trees to the south of the tree that are shading it from sunlight. Last fall he began doing this. Hopefully with a little invigoration from the sun the tree will produce another crop in the coming years.
Last spring I grafted three “Pumpkin” trees to Russian seedling rootstocks. I have already planted one in my back yard. My sister plans on planting another next to her family’s newly built sugarhouse.
*Quoted with the permission of John Bunker
