Find an event
Tree to get ready
Upstart Chicago Rarities Orchard Project grows apples, throws parties.
Apple season’s here in all its crisp, luscious glory—unless you’re Dave Snyder, in which case apple season is still about six years away. Snyder, 31, is the founder of the Chicago Rarities Orchard Project (CROP), a year-old organization hoping to plant rare-fruit orchards in empty lots around town. He’s starting the project with little-known apple varieties, such as the Esopus Spitzenberg, an intense sweet-tart fruit (and Thomas Jefferson’s favorite).
Right now, CROP’s 60 or so trees (representing 35 varieties) are just babes. Each two feet tall and too young to produce fruit, the saplings, snuggled together in a shady yard in the Brighton Park neighborhood, look like a group of Charlie Brown’s Christmas trees on summer vacation. (Soon, the potted trees will be planted for the winter.)
While Snyder seeks a permanent home for the plants, some parties are being thrown in their honor. CROP is entirely volunteer run (including a six-person board of directors) and donation funded. Last year, 150 people showed up to its first fund-raiser, at Danny’s Tavern in Bucktown, which raised $900 to buy the trees. In mid-September, CROP held a silent auction of artist-created piñatas at the West Loop gallery Spoke. The next pro-fruit party is a rock show October 8 at the Hideout, where part of the cover goes toward arboreal pursuits.
To skeptics, Snyder points out that a lack of plant diversity has spelled doom before. “Monocultures are a very dangerous thing,” he says. “The thing that led to the Irish Potato Famine was only one variety of potato being grown.” If scare tactics don’t work, Snyder goes for the gut: “Imagine if you thought you knew what wine tasted like, but you’ve only had one type of wine.”
There are more than 100,000 apple varieties, but most sold at market belong to just 11 varieties; CROP aims to reverse that trend one apple at a time. Even the apple opposed can get behind CROP’s social agenda: Snyder is focusing his site search in the grocery-deprived East Garfield Park neighborhood.
Surprisingly, rare-fruit fanaticism is a recent development for Snyder, who remembers as a child grudgingly weeding his mom’s flower beds. Seven years ago, the gardening bug bit; Snyder moved to an apartment across from Lakeview’s Ginko Organic Gardens and began to volunteer. In 2007, after reading a New York Times article about rare apples, he got the urban-orchard notion.
Once Snyder finds an appropriate city-owned space, greenspace-preservation land trust NeighborSpace has agreed to apply to the city for land ownership, allowing CROP to put an orchard there for free. So far, the Chicago Department of Zoning and Land Use Planning has turned down several of CROP’s applications, including a few sites on West Franklin Boulevard near the Garfield Park Conservatory, saying that the land is on hold for other purposes, but recently, the department has offered to help find a lot. After the site is found, CROP will test the soil and add to it organic matter and nitrogen—a two-year job.
When fruit finally appears, half will be given to the community, the other half sold to support the orchard, which is good news for those of us who want to sink our teeth into an Esopus Spitzenberg—and are willing to wait.
Raise a glass and some funds for CROP at the Hideout (1354 W Wabansia Ave, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com) on October 8, when Follows, Implodes and Disappears will play. $10.
