Save the heritage apples

Winter apples ready for the picking.

It was daylight on the homestead.

Early as it was I was more than a little late for breakfast. The homestead cabin had been built in the 1890s by a pioneer.

The Homestead Law of 1862 was the coolest thing to ever hit this country, unless you were an Indian. At the time they were not considered U.S. Citizens. 

Indians were unable to file homestead claims on their own land. Everyone else just had to build a residence at least 12 feet square, cultivate a crop and live there five years. That gave you clear title to 160 acres of prime bottom land. 

The railroad was coming. The land rush was on. Homesteading was a family affair. Your wife could file a claim. Your kids could too once they were old enough. 

The prime bottom land was soon taken. What the Indians called “The Jimmy Come Latelys” were forced to move up into the thin soils of the foothills where farming got tougher. 

The homesteaders chopped and burned back the forest to plant potatoes and cabbage amid the stumps. These “stump ranchers” went to great lengths to clear enough land to grow enough food to eke out a living. 

By the Great Depression farming got even tougher than that. Many of these wilderness homes were deserted and taken by the government for back taxes.  

That's most probably how this cabin came to be abandoned by its family. Since then it was used as a haven in the wilderness for trappers, lost hunters and those that researched antiquity. 

In the 1980s the roof of the cabin collapsed in the snow. By the ’90s the 100-year-old homestead cabin was a pile of rotting wood buried in blackberry vines. 

The orchard in the meadow was the only sign of man ever being here. These few remaining pioneer orchards are more than just pioneer artifacts.  If it's true that we should consider the medicinal and food value of plants in the rain forest before we cut it down, it might be a good idea to save the seed of these fast disappearing heritage fruit trees. 

The diverse varieties of apples in pioneer orchards can ripen at any time between august and February. The flavor of these apples, particularly after a frost makes the genetically engineered mush ball that passes for an apple these days taste like the cardboard box it came in. 

I'm not the only one that likes these old orchards.  If you want one of these old time apples you're going to have to compete with the bears. 

You'll probably lose. 

These old fruit trees can grow to great heights and bears are just better climbers than we are. And if that last shiny red apple is a little too far out of reach, the bear can just break the branch off. 

The bears not only provide a valuable pruning service they are good at eliminating one of the unpleasant surprises you can find in an apple tree, the bald faced hornet's nest. 

Finding a hornets’ nest while picking apples can make you scamper down the tree like a squirrel.  Bear will just eat the hornet's nest and keep on picking apples. 

I've watched bears sitting over a pile of apples the size of soft balls, holding the apple between its paws, chopping them up in her jaws while sucking the cider out, a picture of pure enjoyment. 

I scared her off. I would have stolen her apples, if they hadn't landed in bear manure. 

My best advice would be to get your apples off the tree. 

The wolf problem

Erosion caused by elk feeding on saplings.

Do not be alarmed citizens.  There is no plan currently being proposed by any known government biologist to re-introduce wolves to the Olympic Peninsula. 

The howl of the wolf is a true symbol of the wilderness that has not been heard here since the wolves were bounty hunted to extinction back in the 1930s. It was a familiar scenario that was played out across the West. 

With the coming of the railroad the human population increased to the point where there was no room for wolves. They had to go. 

Since that time, many other species of fish and wildlife such as the 100-pound salmon and the Olympic Mountain moonshiner have become rare, endangered or just plain extinct due to the rising human population. Biologists are only now just beginning to explain how each of these individual creatures is vital to the health of the ecosystem. 

For example, I have long contended that the reason for the decline of our salmon runs are caused by “nylon pollution.” 

It is my own term for the fact that our salmon are being overfished throughout the extent of their range. I thought there is just too much nylon fishing gear in the water for the fish to survive their journey. 

Nylon pollution kills.

I was wrong. According to the biologists, it's not nylon that's killing the fish, it's the elk! 

Without the wolves to eat them there are so many elk along the Hoh River that they have killed off the trees, causing erosion, siltation and a rising water temperature, all of which is bad for fish.

According to biologists, if we could just get the wolves running the elk, trees would once again grow along the river, stopping erosion and shielding the water from the sun's harmful rays. 

People who may have seen the Hoh in flood stage, when giant spruce trees roll down the river scouring the gravel bars like freight trains, might doubt the elk have destroyed the river theory, but they're not biologists. 

The biologists know that any possibility of wolf reintroduction is still too controversial. So instead, the wolves will be “trans-located.”

You probably can't tell the difference, which once again shows why you're not a biologist. 

Rest assured that no Canadian wolves will be used in the trans-location effort. Only American wolves will be eligible for this program. 

Trans-location calls for moving the wolves from areas in Washington state where people want to get rid of them into places where people don't have wolves yet.  However the wolf is reintroduced or trans-located doesn't matter with the health of the ecosystem at stake. 

Any responsible wolf trans-location effort would have to include the restoration of the wolf habitat and a corresponding reduction of the human population. 

While no biologists is suggesting that people be forcibly removed from their homes for wolf habitat restoration, we would expect those who support the wolf trans-location to move voluntarily. 

Any reactionary anti-wolf obstructionists whose bourgeois sensibilities foster an unhealthy emotional attachment to their homes are liable to change their tune and become willing sellers once they are surrounded by howling packs of wolves. 

Ideally, the initial wolf trans-location effort would establish a healthy population of wolves where they would provide the most benefit to the ecosystem as a whole and provide optimum enjoyment to the people who want the wolves in the first place. 

That is why I would propose we first trans-locate the wolves to a place where people love them, our state capitol in Olympia.