Return of Apple Festival good for Homesteads community

The Cumberland Homesteads Apple Festival returns this year (2021) Sept. 25-26, on the Tower grounds at the intersection of Highway 127 and Highway 68.

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard …

Walt Whitman

The apple — the fount of original knowledge, a literary and idiomatic workhorse, a symbol of all that’s good with America, grown in all 50 states. Mom, baseball and a certain kind of pie? Doesn’t get much more American than that.

So it should be no surprise that the original Homesteaders took full advantage of the versatile apple. Orchards were a part of most homesites and many homes had cellars where whole apples could be stored.

With different varieties the Homesteaders hoped for a steady crop from June to first frost — usually late September or early October — when the apples that do best on the Cumberland Plateau come to fruition. Like Whitman, it was the fall harvest that was most anticipated.

An apple can be sliced, diced, fried, dried, “sulfured”, baked or made into applesauce, apple butter or preserves. It can be eaten raw, either skin-on or peeled. Some people eat the core, leaving the stem the only unused part. Little wonder, then, that the apple was an important part of a self-sustaining homestead.

The goldenrod is yellow
The corn is turning brown
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down …

Helen Hunt Jackson

The Apple Festival, produced by the Cumberland Homesteads Tower Association and held in late September, celebrates that heritage and the “wisdom of preserving the bounty of the harvest.”

After a year off because of — what else — COVID-19, the Tower board is in full planning mode and expects this year’s event on the weekend of Sept. 25-26 to be better than ever. “(The Festival’s return) is really huge,” says Brian Hall, board member. “People want to get back out … if the weather’s good we think we’ll break the (attendance) record.”

The Festival’s roots go back nearly 30 years, to the mid-1990s, when the Tower board was looking at ways to fundraise and to preserve the community’s heritage and legacy. Vicki Vaden, an artist like her father and a third-generation Homesteader on both sides of her family, had often thought about how nice the tower grounds would be for an art festival. Why not use them for a festival that celebrates the Homesteads, using the apple as an anchor?

The idea caught on and the Apple Festival was born, bringing together crafts, music, storytelling, petting zoos, food vendors and more, all in the shadow of the tower, itself a key player. Festival admission includes a visit to the museum, gift shop and the 97 steps to the tower’s observation deck (worth doing if you’re able, for the view of course but also the masonry and the ingenuity you see on the way up and down).

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Martin Luther

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

Henry David Thoreau

Not every variety of apple thrives on the Cumberland Plateau but a number of them do very well, says Greg Upchurch, a county extension agent and a fruit specialist. He ticks off a few — Libertine, Arkansas Black, Ben Davis, Summer Queen, Smokehouse, Black Twig, Mutsu, Winesap, Gala, and the Cumberland Hardy, developed in the 1960s by Dr. Charlie Martin at UT’s Plateau AgResearch and Education Center.

Even those that do well need a lot of attention. Upchurch says trees and orchards are susceptible to late freezes, deer, disease pressure, moisture and insects. He even runs a program called “Fruits of Labor” to help people understand that a lot goes into growing fruit.

“You can spend a lot of time, effort and money (on an orchard),” he says, “and Mother Nature might have other plans. It’s tough growing fruit here in the Southeast.”

None of that deterred the original Homesteaders, who planted their orchards anyway, often with heirloom varieties they brought from home. (Upchurch says its likely some of these were of the same variety but called different names.) Remnants of those orchards can be seen while driving around the area.

It's unsettling to meet people who don't eat apples."

Aimee Bender

Keeping the spirit of the Cumberland Homesteads alive while preserving a unique piece of history is both a noble goal and a big job. People are discovering the beauty and economy of living on the Cumberland Plateau in record numbers, including the Homesteads.

And for some, that includes the sense of community — and the challenge of living in a Homestead house. Like Kati O’Rourke and her family, for instance, who moved here from Murfreesboro nearly four years ago, into a Homestead house.

You’ll see her at the Festival, likely doing whatever is required at the moment. She sits on the Tower board and is vested in the event and the community and keeping the Homestead spirit alive.

O’Rourke says she and her husband and son moved here precisely for the community. She says she and her husband aren’t really spontaneous but they each “just knew” the moment they walked into the house that they would eventually buy.

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.

Jane Austen

“We’re going back to some of the things we did when we started,” says Brenda King, board president, at a recent meeting. She’s talking about an apple pie contest, which somehow they’ve gotten away from but seems like a natural, a given, for the Apple Festival. Everyone agrees.

Your seeds shall live in my body
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart
And your fragrance shall be my breath
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons …

Kahlil Gibran

Like the apple pie contest, the Apple Festival is a natural, a given, for the Cumberland Homesteads community. Taking a little time to celebrate the original Homesteaders — their drive, their grit, their spirit — and their legacy seems especially important in today’s world.

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