Legends of the Fall Unity event heralds apples of all kinds as the sweetest tradition of the season

UNITY – Ben Franklin’s old line “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” indicates that apples are good for health.

For a Lincolnville farmer, they just weren’t healthful enough for his children.

Bob Sewall said that in 1914 eating half an apple provided all the iron a growing child needed for that day. “Today, you would have to eat 26 commercially sold apples in one day to get that same benefit,” Sewall said Saturday.

He began an organic apple orchard in 1978 to grow apples that were healthful enough for young families and their children. Today, his 550 trees produce a variety of apples, including Jonathan, Priscilla and Golden Delicious varieties that Sewall presses into a sweet, crisp cider.

The benefits of eating organic apples, how to cultivate and harvest, making cider or wine, and even how to bake a champion apple pie were featured at the annual Great Maine Apple Day, held Saturday at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association education center in Unity.

More than 150 varieties of apples originated in Maine, from the Nutting Bumpus in Perham to Sweet Sal in Winthrop to Dudley Winter from Castle Hill to Ben Davis from Minot.

The names may not always be familiar, but Maine’s heirloom varieties are real contenders against the more common MacIntosh, Northern Spy or Cortland varieties.

Nancy Kline of Washington bought a bag of Pomme Grese apples, which are small, dark green and fuzzy-looking, from vendor Tony DaSilva of Unity. “This is just right for a bite,” she said.

DaSilva grows 52 varieties of apples at his apple and pear orchard, including a sweet apple named Westfield Seek No Further. This was DaSilva’s first harvest and he said it was a good year for him.

The many vendors on hand either praised this year’s harvest, like DaSilva, or gave it terrible reviews.

“It was good, bad and ugly,” said Connie Sweetser of Sweetser Orchards in Cumberland Center. “We got some of the best, biggest apples ever and some of the ugliest.”

Spring rain knocked bees from blossoms, said Steve Meyerhans, who owns Lakeside Orchards in Manchester and The Apple Farm in Fairfield. “It was a very difficult spring,” he said, “and we got off to a slow, painstaking start. Then we had a good summer and the trees tried to catch up but never did.”

Peter Ricker of Ricker Orchards in Turner, the state’s largest organic orchard, said rain during past weekends cut the visits to his pick-your-own operation in half.

Jason Davis of the seventh-generation Cayford Orchards in Skowhegan said the loss at his pick-your-own business was balanced by increased sales at his farm stand. “It was a very good year,” he assessed.

But in the end, whether it is an heirloom variety or the common MacIntosh, which apples farmers grow are dictated by consumers. “It’s totally a taste issue,” said Ricker. “They direct us.”