We don’t know much about this tree, except that it is a green apple still standing (barely) on an old homestead on the south shore of the North Fork of the Yuba River @2600’ in Sierra County, near Goodyears Bar. Kate Wolf was a my friend, who wrote and recorded the song “The Lilac and the Apple Tree” in the late ‘70s. Kate told me the inspiration for the song was an old homestead she had found near Goodyears Bar, where she spent her summers in her teens and 20’s. I never asked exactly where it was located, and when she passed away so early in life I regretted not having learned the location that inspired Kate. About 15 years later, talking with our mutual friend Utah Phillips I mentioned that I was curious where these plants were. Turns out Utah knew the man who might know the location. After many attempts (that’s a story in itself!) I finally learned the location from this secretive old man, as it is the homestead that his grandparents settled in the 1850s. After hiking a couple miles to this abandoned site in the forest I found the lilac and the apple! (and a rose that we are growing) We have been hiking to the site, and growing the lilac ever since, and use the proceeds from the sales of the lilac to provide financial support to Camp Winnarainbow, a performing circus camp for children and adults founded by our mutual friend Wavy Gravy. Camp Winnarainbow was one of Kate’s favorite projects. See: www.campwinnarainbow.org. For the last three years we are also producing the apple tree, and soon will have the rose as well.

Since it grows in the shade of a dense fir forest that has grown up since the 1800’s, the apple tree blooms but does not mature fruit. Perhaps you would like to plant this special heirloom and help us figure out what it is? Preserving a unique piece of our history, she is…