Editor’s note: Miller wrote the following regarding the onetime Meacham’s Apple Orchards near Wilton, where Mathy Construction has proposed to construct a rock quarry.
By LEVI F. MILLER | Wilton
The first time I visited the orchard was probably close to 20 years ago, in October. We had a cold and chilly fall rain, a north’wester, but on this day patches of blue sky and sunlight appeared between fast-moving, dark clouds.
We were told windfall apples could be picked up at this orchard at the edge of our community, where we had moved to less than a year before. At the entrance of a dead end road leading into rolling farm country and wooded hills hung a large, homemade sign on two rough posts. Across the white-painted sign in large letters was the name ”Meachams’” with an apple painted at each end. After following this road around several curves to its very end, we arrived at Meacham’s Apple Orchards, although no orchard could be seen.
We were in a beautiful quiet valley with an old farmhouse nestled among tall shade trees. The old barn had fallen down, leaving only the stone foundation. A few older buildings existed, plus a much newer shed, which was the apple shed where apples were sold. There were many varieties of apples in different hues and colors, each crisp, sweet, or tart, in October’s freshness. Customers sampled and chose baskets or bags of apples according to their tastes and desires. We were directed past the old barn foundation along an old dug road leading steadily upward toward the ridges of farmland far above the quiet valley homestead.
The path was rough and rocky, but eventually we did get to the stop, followed the path to our left, and there was the orchard.
The orchard in full fall fruit was amazing and wonderful to behold. It covered one whole ridge of possibly 10 acres surrounded by wooded hillsides dropping toward the valley floor below. The well-cared-for, trimmed apple trees stood in long, neat rows, with limbs bending beneath gold and crimson fruit. Even the casual observer would have noticed the orchard owner’s knowledge in varieties, tree grooming, and coming orchard maintenance. Due to the wind and rain the night before, there were many apples beneath the trees, and we soon had accomplished our mission.
With the passing years, the orchard owner grew more frail. There were sons, but they took little interest in the orchard business. Eventually the apple shed was closed and the orchard left uncared for. At times I would again visit the orchard, now grown over with weeds and grasses. The neglected trees would still bear some fruit among their broken, untrimmed branches. In the fall of the year, it is the perfect feeding place for deer and other wildlife. The fields are now rented out to the neighbors, the elderly man has passed on, his wife continues in the farmhouse, the boys come home at deer season time.
I especially like to visit the old orchard in the springtime, when the trees have burst forth in clouds of pink and white with buzzing honeybees and bumblebees. Even though the orchard has been long abandoned and neglected, it has continued to hold a certain nostalgic link to the past, a certain charm, though of melancholy and sadness.
Lately there have been rumors, very disturbing rumors. The land has been sold to a large rock quarry company to mine and blast the whole ridge, including the orchard.
Already great machines have been seen, and the lady wishes to have the orchard trees cut for apple-smoking firewood. Once again I climb the tall bluffs and rock ledges to the ridge top. The orchard trees still stand in silent solemn rows. The tall lookout-tower deer stand, with its many steps, still stands to guard the orchard, as it has done for many years.
An old sawmill stands forgotten at the end of a brushy draw. Cottontail rabbits, attracted by the fall apples, have winter chewed the underbrush and saplings. The old apple-picking machine with its high-lifting arm stands weathered and neglected in the grasses. On a knoll within a stand of trees are the remains of several beehives, now tumbled over in decay, where once buzzed busy bees and a farmer and orchard man harvested sweet honey for his family. Along an old trail have been parked various farm implements, now being overgrown with brush. Along the ridge run long strips of corn stubble and alfalfa fields.
All this has been a farmer’s vivid dream of the past. Already long rows of red-tipped stakes, each with a mound of earth by its side, run up and down the ridges. A drilling rig has already tapped the deep, secret, underground rock and gravel, affirming its multi-million dollar treasure. In the near future, the digging is expected to begin. Great diesel-powered yellow caterpillars will begin pushing away the top soil, the fertile fields, the brushy wooded pockets … and the old orchard.
Tall draglines and excavators will begin digging to find the 60-foot layer of crushable rock, which supposedly lies in the deep grave beneath. Booming blasts of dynamite will rock the peace and quiet of the surrounding valleys and will quake the tall cliffs and bluffs. A wide road will be built to this out-of-the-way place, with the din of the gravel crushers and the continuous hissing of brakes, gear switches, beeping backup signals and long lines of trucks moving to and from the quarry.
The fine gravel will now be used to build the roads and highways of the world and as fill on which to build huge buildings of modern technology.
This is expected to continue for 20 years, for 30 years, ‘til the ridge is dug out and the land lies in ruin and desolation. Although it may be claimed, the soil will be thin, a valley of rock and clay.
Who will remember the fields of grain and alfalfa, the sweet-scented air of blooming apple trees, of delicious fall fruit … who will remember? The great machines will have rolled away, the earth-jarring blasting ceased, and all is quiet, too quiet, the dream is past.
