Here I sit, with a cold cup of freshly pressed apple juice, gifted by a neighbour, to write about apples. The idea came to me a few weeks ago when I went to Salt Spring island for their annual Apple Fest. A day filled with immense apple appreciation is all it took to get the wheels turning for an apple themed letter. Apple trees don’t seem to get much press when it comes to herbal medicine. They tend to get put into the category of “food” for the most part, or at least that’s how I’d been viewing them. But, as the ol’ saying goes, let thy food be thy medicine - and apples really are just that.
Years ago now, we went to our first Salt Spring Apple Fest and brought some unknown apples from my parent’s orchard. In the community hall, which was the mecca of the apple festivities, sat a group of old ladies at the apple identification table. I handed over my mystery apples and after a moment or two of examining my fruits, they were able to tell me with wise-woman certainty what rare varieties I held (which I then didn’t write down and immediately forgot, fml). I wonder how it would feel to be that good at something. Gives me something to aspire towards.
This year, we came without apples but left with a bag full of heritage varieties and tummies full of pie (we got the third to last slice!!). We stood in a line with no clue of its destination for an eternity and came to a long apple tasting table. We shooed away the excited wasps and filled our cheeks with a slew of apples: Merton Worcester, England, 1914. Blue Pearmain, New England, 1833. Or, my favourite, the red fleshed Hidden Rose, a “recent discovery” from Oregon. We zig-zagged through a maze-like orchard, which felt romantic in an Edwardian sorta way. Do you know how many varieties of apples exist? A hell of a lot! Dotting the orchard like little Easter eggs were these very on brand signs, which provided some ah-has and some laughs:
I suppose I have my own humble apple beginnings. I got hired for my first job when I was twelve years old at an orchard in the Okanagan where I grew up. My position? Apple peeler. Luckily, this was a big operation orchard with all the machines and gadgets, so I wasn’t peeling apples by hand, but I was still standing out by the barn filling bucket after bucket of peeled and cut apples. I’d end each shift covered in sticky juice, with apple skins somehow inside my shoes and in my hair. My parents would pick me up and, as a reward, would get me an appleanch - the orchard’s famed apple slushie (***hot tip if you find yourself in Vernon). To this day I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a sweeter nectar. Truly a gift from the gods!
Apple trees exude magic, and there is lore and myth aplenty to back that up. They are seen as a portal for both new life and death and have been given the names “fruit of the Gods” and “fruit of the underworld”. The upcoming pagan sabbat, Samhain, which coincides with Halloween, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, etc., is also known as the Feast of Apples. It was believed that eating apples during this cross quarter day would make it possible to communicate with spirits. In Celtic tradition, apples would get buried in graves to provide food for the dead. A few years back, I became a wee bit obsessed with the myths of King Arthur after reading the Mists of Avalon. Avalon, the lost island, is a mythical paradise full of magic, priestesses, and faeries. The name Avalon actually means “isle of apples” in Welsh. Symbolically, apples are incredibly powerful. However, there are two sides to that coin. On one side, you have themes of life-giving, healing, and immortality. Love, too, as apples belong to the rosaceae family, and like many of their relatives (hawthorn and rose for example) are associated with love. However, on the flip side of that coin you have this concept of them being the forbidden fruit. While it was never specified in the bible what fruit Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden, it is often depicted as an apple. Interestingly but likely coincidentally, the latin name for apple is malus and the latin word for evil is malus or malum. This brings to mind Snow White and the poisonous apple - something so tempting and irresistible yet tainted in an evil light.
There is power and magic in the apple tree, and like anything powerful, some people will see that as a threat or a danger. It’s as if this fruit was caught in the crossfire of paganism and Christianity, with the latter flipping the script and swapping out love, health, and longevity, for sin, temptation and greed. To summarize my half baked thoughts on this, I take the darker symbolism of apples with a grain of salt as it feels like it stemmed from the sweeping in of Christianity and the rewriting of millennia of pagan-rooted myths and legends. Nearly all pagan beliefs, celebrations, and motifs were appropriated, or given a new spin (like witchcraft and magic being seen as satanic and malevolent). On that note, apples feature heavily in witchcraft and, fun fact, reveal a ☆pentagram☆ when cut in half horizontally.
The reality of it is that apples are fortune-bringing. What I mean by that is that apples have been a crucial crop for people throughout history and played an important role in their diet - and still do in fact, as apples are the most consumed fruit globally. Having a successful harvest from your orchard would’ve been a huge fortune in times past. Apples ripen as autumn sweeps in and are great storage fruits; carrying you through the long dark days of winter whether they be consumed raw, baked, or made into cider. This brings me to the tradition of wassailing. This is a long standing practice of honouring the apples trees, a tree blessing of sorts, that takes place in early-mid January. Gatherings would take place in orchards, where cider would be had and shared with the trees along with songs and poetry. The word “wassail” means “be in health”, so this tradition set out to bless the trees to ensure a rich harvest for the following year. In some corners of the world this practice lives on, but much less so, as you can imagine. So take this as your sign to visit an apple tree this midwinter and bring some cider or a poem to share.
‘Wassail the trees, that they may bear
You many a plum, and many a pear:
For more or less fruits they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing’
- 17th century poem by Robert Herrick
Iðunn, the Norse goddess of youth and fertility, is the keeper of the golden apples of immortality, so there seems to have always been this idea of apples being connected to health. Think of the age old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. There’s truth to that! Apples are packed full of fibre, vitamin C, quercetin, and pectin. Due to the fibre, they provide a low blood sugar spike, making them a great fruit for people struggling with insulin resistance and diabetes. From a herbal perspective, apples are cooling and astringent. They are a great aid for conditions of inflammation as they soothe the tissues. This applies to things like heart burn, indigestion, diarrhea (use under ripe apples), constipation (use ripe apples), gout and arthritis. You can use apples topically as well! If you have a wound you can take a slice of apple to the skin to soothe the area and the pectin content in apples actually helps to speed up healing.
Apples are sooo versatile. You can eat them raw, juice them, make cider, make vinegar(!), bake with them, cook them, make sauce, the list seemingly never ends. I just had a “making day” with my dear friend, Julia, and we made a huge batch of apple butter which we deemed to be a roaring success. You can make a tea with cut up apples, or use the flowers in the spring for medicine, and even the bark. Traditionally, people would cook apples into a sauce or chutney to eat with fatty foods like pork to help with digestion. Genius really! I could probably write a whole newsletter just on ACV (apple.cider.vinegar.) alone as it’s possibly the ultimate health tonic. Seriously, get that stuff in you!
There’s a lot one could say about apples, clearly. When I started doing research for this I came across this apple cider syrup, which I am now convinced I absolutely need. Last month we received our first cider club delivery from Twin Island Cider (check them out - they do a lot of very cool things with apples!), and now have a few bottles of divine cider to indulge in. Now is the time to get obsessed with apples, friends. I hope this little newsie will help to deepen whatever relationship you have with the special fruit! Thank you for reading, sharing, and caring.
ཐི♡ཋྀ
