2000 ❖ SHAW ISLAND HERITAGE APPLES ❖ HOOKED, HUNG, AND PRESSED

ISLAND APPLES©
Traditional Hand-hooked
Wool on Linen, 42" x 60"
Completed Anno August Two Thousand
Shaw Island, WA.
Click to enlarge.

     

This textile, made in the age-old technique called "traditional hooking," is one in a series of hand-hooked rugs designed to celebrate some of the history woven through the woodlands and salty beaches of Shaw Island. 

    Heirloom apples are a special part of culinary life on the island, thanks in part to the hard-working homesteaders who cleared the ground, split and erected cedar rail fences to keep out the deer, and planted hundreds of sapling trees, not from seeds as did Johnny Appleseed, but regulation nursery stock. Improving the land on which they had filed a claim was a requirement to earn a patent deed. Some of these improvements beginning in the 1870s and '80s were listed by claimants on papers documented with the federal government (copies of surviving applications were archived in the historical museum in 1997.) 

      Several bearing trees still survive, primarily on private property, as indicated by the red dots on the map. For country folks, an apple is not a mere apple. Research in the 1990s for the rug project included a survey sent to several elders who had enjoyed many years living on Shaw Island, surrounded by a multitude of different apple cultivars. Responses came from near and far. The answers to one question regarding their own favorite island heritage apple–yielded no surprise–the blue ribbon goes to the juicy, sweet Gravenstein. Delbert D. Hoffman told this historian he was fond of the Wolf River simply for the eye-catching red beauty in a bowl on the kitchen table. 

      

Leon Fonnesbeck,
in his handknit tuque,
retired from his law practice
to serve as chair on the Opalco board.
He gathered, washed, and pressed a
bounty of apples on his little estate– 
 a big orchard and a small art-filled home
on Ben Nevis Loop Road, just below 
Wayne Fowler's airstrip.
Shaw Island, Washington.
Photo mid-1980s.

      

      In the early 1970s, Leon Fonnesbeck planted 300 trees, sourced from the Thorsons of Waldron, mowed the orchard easily viewed by passersby, and assembled one very skookum cider press. 
      After Leon's amazing garlic crop was harvested to dry in his timber-frame workshop he termed the "Taj Mahal," and the surviving apple trees began producing–out came his trusty Gravely equipment. Leon cheerfully gathered and washed his cartloads of apples to press gallons and gallons of cider for thirsty friends.
      The names of an energetic duo are inscribed on the wooden heart on the trunk of the tree, under Pomona's crown. When islanders Jack and Bess Temple picked apples for an afternoon cider pressing with friends– their truck was full. They had Peter on their team, once known for building wooden boats, who repaired the old wooden press parts and in 1992 made one hundred hefty wooden apple crates from milled, windfall Douglas fir logs. Sadly that timber became available for milling following back-to-back wicked winter storms in 1989 and 1990. 

      Over the decades hundreds of gallons of Shaw Island apple cider have been put by for winter. 

    Here's a tip of the sweet cider glass to all the crew that has added richness to life in this small island community.