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Taste, Memory will inspire a new generation to nurture the happy marriages
of plants and place that make communities lively, resilient, and deeply
meaningful.Rowan Jacobsen, author of American Terroir

buchanan

Taste, Memory may well be the most beautiful book ever written
about food biodiversity and how it has landed on earth, in our mouths
and in our hearts.Gary Paul Nabhan, from the foreword

Taste, Memory is a beautiful read that illuminates the challenges to and

significance of biodiversity, a subject that David frames with our taste buds
and personal food histories. A wonderful book, and an important one!
Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors

Taste, Memory traces the experiences of modern-day explorers who reveal our
shared food heritage and reconnect us to long-held traditions and tastes that are
at the heart of the locavore movement.
In Taste, Memory, author David Buchanan explores fundamental questions
about the future of food, farming, and biological diversity. What place does a
cantankerous old pear or too-delicate strawberry deserve in our gardens, farms,
and markets? To what extent should growers emphasize efficiency and uniformity
over anything odd, quirky, and regional? Whats the right balance between
preserving the past, maintaining our agricultural and culinary traditions, and
looking ahead to breed new foods?

Taste, Memory begins and ends with a simple premise: that a healthy food
system depends on matching diverse plants and animals to the demands of land
and climate. In this sense of place lies the true meaning of local food.

and why they matter

Restoring Diversity
to Our Fields,
Markets, and Tables

cover design by kimberly glyder

cover photo by tamara staples

chelsea green

chelsea green publishing

85 north main street, suite 120
white river junction, vt 05001
802-295-6300
www.chelseagreen.com

m em o ry

forgotten foods, lost flavors,

t ast e , me mory

Using taste as his compass, Buchanan uncovers authentic endangered flavors,

making us all long for another serving.Poppy Tooker,
New Orleans food activist and host of Louisiana Eats

Taste,

d av i d b u c h a n a n
foreword by gary paul nabhan

Eleven

the cider tree

hats a Milden, John Bunker says as he bites into an apple

in an abandoned orchard in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, in
October 2011. He recognizes the variety from its pale yellow color
splashed with red, its conical shape, and the flavor, color, and
texture of its crisp, juicy flesh. Once relatively common in New
England orchards, Milden has all but disappeared. West Coast
plant collector and nurseryman Nick Botner sold scions of this
variety until his retirement last year, but its now commercially
unavailable. Little information about it remains.
According to John the next tree is a Baldwin, as are most others
in this abandoned orchard. Four of us trail behind him as he walks
from tree to tree, tasting apples, examining characteristics of the
fruit, unlocking their secrets. We walk carefully to avoid tripping
over dense roots and stumps. Until recently this acre or so of land
was heavily overgrown, its Mildens, Baldwins, and other as yet
unidentified varieties forgotten in the woods. Over the past two
years property manager John Greene and his crew have cleared the
brush, revealing three dozen stately old trees loaded with surprisingly blemish-free fruit.

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John Greene picks one of the Baldwins off a low-hanging branch,
shines it on his shirt, and smiles broadly. He knows these trees are
unlikely survivors. By John Bunkers estimate they date back over
a hundred years, which means that in addition to escaping the past
few decades of rampant development, they lived through the 1934
freeze that destroyed most Baldwins in Maine. Surrounding ocean
currents moderate the winter climate here, and the family-run corporation that controls these two-thousand-plus acres has protected
it from subdivision. John Greene supervises managed forest, open
fields, farmland, and wildlife habitat, including areas designated
for the protection of an endangered species in Maine, the New
England cottontail rabbit. These Baldwins and Mildens produce
fruit year after year that supports other wildlife, like wild turkeys
and white-tailed deer. The ground under our feet is covered with
apples in varying stages of decomposition, and dozens of bushels
remain on the trees, weighing down branches up to twenty-five
feet above our heads. Some of the larger trunks, a foot or more in
diameter, have tipped over and rooted in place, sending new shoots
skyward. Clearly no one has come into this orchard with a pruning
saw for the better part of a generation.
John Greene pulls me aside as we finish in this area. Theres
a much older apple tree in the woods near the water, he says. He
describes it as a giant several feet in diameter, near the site of one
of the oldest homesteads on this large property. Its probably the
oldest apple tree in Cape Elizabeth, he tells me. Want to go take a
look? Of course I do. Hes never seen any fruit on this ancient tree,
so it isnt worth John Bunkers time, but maybe I can help figure out
if it was ever grafted and pruned. We leave the rest of the group
as they head to a younger orchard in a nearby field, hop into the
cab of Johns truck, and make our way through a maze of access
roads winding through beautiful spruce and fir forest. The roads
peter out as we approach a tidal river that links the ocean to nearby
marshes. We park and jump out, eyeing the dense underbrush.
The tree is somewhere over there, he says, pointing to a nearby
clearing. Mindful of tick-borne Lyme disease, which is increasingly
common in this area, I wander down the road searching for a break
in the vegetation. Meanwhile John forces his way directly into the
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thickets, and a couple of minutes later shouts that hes found the tree.
There arent any apples, he confirms, and not much else to see.
Dont bother trying to get in here, he shouts. Its not worth the
trouble. Soon he bursts out of the brush again, swiping at the front of
his pants and clearing away by his estimate more than a dozen ticks.
What would it take to rescue this tree? he asks as we climb
back into the truck. He wants to know if Im willing to graft it.
Easy, I tell him, wed come back in March and take cuttings
from the new growth. I could graft scions to new rootstock for you
next spring.
Are you willing to do that? he asks.
Sure, love to, I say. A stately old apple tree, standing alone in
the woods, full of untapped secrets: irresistible.
We know nothing about this tree. It might have been grafted
and grown intentionally, or it may have sprouted wild from a seed
dropped by a passing deer. But John is a professional forester, and
if this apple tree is as old as he believes, it dates back to the days
when most surrounding land was cleared for agriculture. Even if
this is a wild seedling, there may have been good reason to spare
it from the woodsmans axe. We could be looking at a favorite old
dessert fruit, an apple settlers stored for winter eating. Or, more
likely, fruit they pressed for cider and fermented into alcohol. Since
this tree no longer bears, theres only one way to know. Ill call
you in March, I tell John. Well collect scions, graft trees to new
rootstock, and in three or four years, if all goes well, taste the fruit.
As I think about this ancient tree over the coming winter, it
looms large in my imagination as a potent symbol of all that weve
forgotten and neglected. To me it represents an enduring sense of
place, a relationship to food very different from our own, and ways
of living on the land that have all but disappeared. This tree symbolizes resilience, the ability to survive trends and cultural shifts
to maintain something of lasting value. I start thinking of it as the
cider tree. Cider, not only because most early orchards were planted
from seed for this purpose, in a grand, unintentional breeding
experiment, but because at one point or another most apple varieties found their way to the press. Cider is at once the humblest of
uses for the apple, our most adaptable fruit, and its most forgiving.
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Whether tannic little crab apples or fine dessert varieties, every
fruit can add something of value to the whole in a cider blend.
The winter of 201112 is extraordinarily mild in Maine. By early
March our limited snowpack is melting away, and spring is stirring
in the air. Not a lot of time remains to collect dormant scions before
sap starts running in the trees and buds begin to break into new
leaves. My brother is in town, and we call John Greene and arrange
a visit the following afternoon. Well meet at his office, located in a
barn at the end of a long private road.
The next day at the appointed time we pull into a muddy parking
space and take a look around. Johns office is in a breathtakingly
beautiful location, two hundred feet from the shoreline, surrounded
by open fields, with an unimpeded view of the ocean and nearby
Richmond Island and Scarborough Beach. Today the sky is cloudless;
bright sunshine reflects off the remaining snow. The temperature
is rising well into the fifties, and the smell of the ocean fills the air.
I head into the barn to find John as my brother talks with a friend
whos come along for the visit, a recent transplant to Portland deeply
interested in place-based foods and regional culinary traditions.
My friend jumps into the cab of John Greenes truck with his dog
while my brother and I clamber onto the wooden flatbed. We hang
on for the ride down an unplowed road as the truck cuts slowly
through several inches of remaining snow. John parks at the edge
of a field, and we grab our gear and head into the woods. I carry a
saw and pruners but leave the aluminum extension ladder on the
truck, hoping to avoid lugging it with me.
With the leaves off the trees and a blanket of snow holding down
the undergrowth, the late-winter landscape looks very different
from last fall. The tree is easily accessible in its small clearing, easy
to spot from even a hundred yards away. This is a huge apple tree,
standing over thirty feet tall with a trunk about seven feet in diameter. Curiously, we find two other, younger apple trees perfectly
aligned in a straight row with their much older cousin. They look
like wild seedlings, misshapen and unkempt, never pruned. Could
they have sprouted from the stumps of older cultivated trees?
We decide to remove scions from each of these three trees, so
one day we can compare the fruit. If any of the apples are identical,
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or nearly so, this would suggest they were planted intentionally. I

squint into the bright sunlight at the base of one of the smaller trees,
searching for new growth suitable for grafting. Success depends on
finding healthy, year-old shoots at least three or four inches long.
The first small tree has a bit of recent growth near its crown, atop a
twisting, half-dead trunk. Despite knowing it would be easiest to
reach it with the extension ladder, nevertheless Im feeling either
adventurous or too lazy to walk back to fetch it. So I clamber into
the branches, lean out precariously to reach the topmost growth,
and with a few saw cuts remove enough wood for several grafts.
The next tree is starting to rot, and theres only one branch worth
taking. The trunk sways while I climb and make the cut, removing
enough wood for two grafts and throwing it down to my brother.
Before I reach the ground and head for the oldest tree, my cider tree,
John Greene walks over to it, jumps up, grabs the lowest branch, and
pulls himself up. Neither of us likes to stand by and watch; this is too
much fun. John reaches for the saw, makes a couple of cuts, and drops
enough wood to the ground to graft several new trees. Our work is
done. I clip young shoots off the larger branches, add labels, wrap
them in plastic bags, and later store them in our refrigerator to remain
dormant for another month, until the weather warms and its time to
graft. If all goes well, in three to four years well return new trees to
this site, and give this old variety a chance to persevere into the future.
Like the Endecott pear tree, which has survived every era of
American history from the Pilgrims to the post-industrial twentyfirst century, this tree has stood alone in the woods for generations
as everything around it changed. How fortunate for us that it
remains alive and healthy, that we have this opportunity to collect
scions and taste the fruit. With luck this apple can escape the fate of
so many other historic foodsseeds that died in a cupboard, trees
cut down for firewood, animals bred out of existence. As heartening as this is, however, finding such a tree as yet uncollected also
reminds me of all thats been lost. And not only of extinct plant
varieties themselves, but our understanding of the place-based
traditions that sustained them. While collecting these foods, its
important that we preserve a working knowledge of their stories,
because we protect what we understand and value.
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Twenty years ago, when I set out to build a plant collection and
regain a sense of place through food, it didnt work. This was in
part because central Washington State wasnt really my home, and
Id made no long-term commitment to remain there. Even after six
years in that beautiful valley, an eternity for anyone under the age
of thirty, when asked where I came from the answer was always
Boston. I understand New England, know that I belong here, and
have always felt somewhat rootless when living anywhere else.
Today the only trace that remains of my gardens in Washington,
and of the heirloom beans, grains, vegetables, berries, and fruit
trees that grew there, is a muddy old planting journal that rests on
our bookshelf. Its pages describe my first fledgling efforts to collect
and grow rare foods, and they include crude maps listing trees
and berries from eastern Washingtons now defunct Bear Creek
Nursery. I worked hard to keep those plants alive, watering faithfully by hand from the nearby irrigation ditch, but their continued
survival depended on my care. After my departure the twenty or
so fruit treesvarieties like Duchess of Oldenburg and Haralson
apples, Flemish Beauty and Clapps Favorite pearswithered and
died. It was a good lesson about stewardship. I didnt really belong
in that place, and didnt have within me the commitment needed
to adapt to it.
What was missing? The answer seems to be partly about ecology and sense of place, partly a larger cultural connection to
the community. Although some of the best friends Ive ever had
were in that Washington valley, something about the American
West always felt alien to me. I was as displaced as the fruit trees
in my gardens. No more a native than the varieties listed in my
old journalDuchess of Oldenburg apples, originally from Russia, imported to this country by the Massachusetts Horticultural
Society in 1835 and widely grown in northern Maine; Haralson
apples, developed in the early twentieth century at the University
of Minnesota; Flemish Beauty pears, originally from Belgium; and
Clapps Favorite pears, bred in Massachusetts in the nineteenth
century by Thaddeus Clapp from a Flemish Beauty tree. Eventually
these trees could have adapted and thrived in their new home, but
not without ongoing attention and care.
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When I left behind my gardens in Washington, it seemed that

time had passed by these heirloom foods, and they would never
make their way back to most tables. But over the past decade so
much has changed. My decision to return to this work several years
ago was due in part to deep cultural shifts in our approach to food.
These days old hippie co-ops have gone mainstream with chains
like Whole Foods, cooking shows attract audiences from all walks
of life, and even corporate campuses sprout vegetable gardens and
orchards. Today most Americans are aware of what they eat in
ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. We
look at agriculture, cooking, and land use with new eyes, and this
has transformed everything for me. Its possible now to believe that,
after Im gone, others will plant and save seeds from my vegetable
collection, care for my fruit trees, and appreciate the stories and
rich history behind them. Were beginning to reclaim traditions
that once seemed irretrievably lost. And when these stories have
in fact disappeared, were picking up the threads and beginning
anewtaking scions from old apple trees, experimenting with
heirloom seeds, and learning their secrets.
These cultural changes play out for Karla and me every day in
the way we cook, eat, and think about our food. After collecting
scions with John Greene, my brother and I return to the house and
pull out a bottle of hard cider. He brought it with him to Maine
from an orchard near his home in Maryland. Karla fills the oven
with lamb from a friends farm and roasting vegetables from my
gardens, regional heirlooms like Canada Crookneck squash, Gilfeather rutabagas, and Early Blood beets. The smell of garlic fills
the air. We taste the commercial cider side by side with bottles from
our own basement, sampling from trees Eli Cayer and I picked
together last fall, and pairing each with aged cheeses from small
farms in Maines midcoast region. Musty yet sweet, with alcohol
levels hovering around 5 percent, the ciders go down easily. We
pour glass after glass, comparing respective aromas and flavors,
imagining what each apple contributed to the whole.
Eat it to save it. This line from my irrepressible friend Poppy
Tooker, a chef, preservationist, and food activist from New Orleans,
immediately comes to mind as we enjoy the feast. Eat these
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delicious frost-sweetened beets and rutabagas, these rare squashes,
so they can reclaim their place in our fields and on our tables. To
this I might add another twist: Share it to save it. If these plants
remain only in private collections and fail to find their way into the
world again through our gardens, farms, and markets, then their
richness will be lost to us. Sharing them, connecting them to our
everyday lives, is the key to their survival. Its what matters most.
The purpose of these foods is to be eaten.
Toward the end of March 2012, the coming season begins to
take shape. Crocuses are blooming, lilacs are starting to bud, and
Karlas two beehives are frenzied with activity. Mustard, lettuce,
and arugula sprout in my greenhouse, surrounded by nursery
plants showing their first signs of new life. Dozens of fruit scions
lie dormant at the back of our refrigerator. These include apples
and pears I rescued last week by chance from seven trees in Massachusetts, which may be more than two hundred years old. Most
were completely hollowed out and rotting, waiting for someone to
come along and save them. Meanwhile many of the trees I planted
two years ago are over eight feet tall. We may have our first taste
of George IV peaches this summer, if their blossoms can escape
late-spring frosts. All the pieces of this puzzle, my effort to create
a farm to bring new life to rare foods, are starting to make sense.
Seeds of an idea planted more than twenty years ago, on the far
side of the continent, are bearing fruit.
This patchwork farm of mine isnt some re-created vision from
the past, a romanticized pastoral life. Its based on the realities of
this particular time and space, on collaboration and shared goals.
As much as New Englands lost farmsteads have important lessons
to teach us, we no longer live in an agrarian world. But if were
going to reach some new, better place, build on our newfound
appreciation for good food, then we need to find creative ways to
weave the best of the past into our lives. This is what I believe,
and what motivates me to continue my work: that even the smallest
garden can express something nearly forgotten, become a pocket of
diversity in a world that looks and tastes increasingly the same. Its
up to each of us to decide what well leave to future generations.
And the time to begin is now.
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