A sampling of some of the apple varieties grown at McDougal Orchards
Photo: Polly McAdam
By Gail Burnett
This year’s apple-picking season may be over, but McDougal Orchards in Springvale has continued to receive attention – and from an unexpected place. The Wall Street Journal featured the business in an Oct. 11 story, “In Search of Maine’s Rarest Apples.”
Writer Jen Rose Smith came to the orchard on Hanson Ridge Road in late September to get a taste of some of the older and lesser-known varieties that McDougal grows – things like Margil, Ashmead’s Kernel and Black Oxford. Her guide was Polly McAdam, operations manager and co-owner of the business that has been in her family for many generations. Photographer Sofia Aldinio visited a week later, snapping a picture for the newspaper’s 4.5 million subscribers of McAdam picking a Hudson’s Golden Gem apple.
The story quoted Todd Little-Siebold, a historian at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, saying Maine has undergone an “apple renaissance” in recent years, with more people interested in finding and trying unusual varieties.
McAdam agreed with her former professor, noting that customers are beginning to realize Maine offers more apple varieties than McIntosh and Cortland. Other growers and experts from around the state, including well-known heirloom apple advocate John Bunker, were also featured in the story.
Heirloom apples have been grown on Hanson Ridge since before the first McDougal married into the Hanson family. McAdam explained that the family has records of varieties like Greenings, Sheepnose, Russets, Spitzenbergs, Porters and Sweets going back to the early 1900s. In 2000, McAdam’s mother Ellen McDougal McAdam began grafting apples onto Paulared trees to try out more varieties. Soon the orchard was offering Blue and Gray Pearmain, Tolman Sweet and Lady apples, among others. The family now offers about a dozen heirlooms among its 40-some varieties. Heirlooms are also grown at other area orchards, including Kelly Orchards in Acton.
McAdam and her brother and business partner Matthew have added more varieties and have started offering apple tastings. They say that some customers visit out of curiosity and some out of nostalgia for varieties they hadn’t seen in years. One man, McAdam said, comes to buy Bramley’s Seedling, an apple he grew up eating in England. She said she and her family are happy to help visitors branch out from the apples they’ve always known.
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