Horne Creek Living Historical Farm lost a friend and valued ally last month with the passing of Lee Calhoun.
According to Horne Creek Site Director Lisa Turney, Calhoun, an author and recognized expert on Southern heirloom apples, passed away peacefully at his home in Pittsboro on Feb. 21.
Calhoun began an ongoing relationship with Horne Creek at a time when staff was working to restore the Hauser orchard as part of the farm.
According to Turney, it was Calhoun’s contribution of 400 apple tree varieties that launched the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at the farm in 1997. At the time, he was already considered an expert on heirloom apples. He and his wife, Edith, grafted the 400 trees along with another 400 dwarf trees which serve as back-ups, assuring that no variety would be lost. At the time, the trees made up the largest single donation that Horne Creek had received.
“Lee has probably grafted and donated over 1,000 trees,” she added. “He has played an important role in the preservation of our southern agricultural history. There are probably about 200 varieties at Horne Creek that can’t be found anywhere else.”
With Calhoun’s guidance and help, Turney said, the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard and the orchard program at Cornell University are now “probably the two most significant apple collections in the country.”
After helping to establish the orchard at Horne Creek, Calhoun returned regularly to host programs and work with Horne Creek Horticulturist Jason Bowen.
“I knew Lee for over 30 years,” Turney said. “He was a really good teacher who made things easy to understand. He liked storytelling and was good at it. The people who attended his programs were mesmerized by his talks.”
“Lee worked alongside our staff,” she continued, “often driving the 200 mile round trip to Horne Creek and back several times each month. His dedication to the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard and Horne Creek Farm was recognized by everyone associated with our site.”
Calhoun’s interest in apples came naturally. He graduated from North Carolina State University in 1956 with a degree in Agronomy. He also had an instinctive love of history.
After college, he entered the military and went on to retire from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. After coming to Chatham County, Calhoun started growing apple trees at his home. He had started with more common varieties but eventually began to add older, harder to find varieties. An elderly neighbor gave him the names of varieties he had never heard and he determined to find as many as possible to add to his orchard. The search began a lifelong mission that lasted over 40 years.
He and Edith Calhoun began to research university libraries and, as others heard of his quest, they began to contact him with information and suggestions. Their research eventually carried them to the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, MD, where the Calhouns went through over 100,000 nursery and seed catalogs.
The wealth of research led to the writing and 1995 publishing of his book, “Old Southern Apples.” Lee, who did not type, would write in longhand about the people he had met and the apples he had discovered. Edith would take his notes and type them, creating the manuscript for the widely received book that has now become a collector’s item.
A second edition was printed in 2011, including some 1,800 apple varieties that either originated or were widely grown in the South before 1928.
“His book was the impetus,” Turney said, “to get a lot of other people interested and started. Without him, this aspect of our history would have been lost. He left some giant footsteps to fill.”
“Lee was a friendly and gracious man who was very giving,” she noted. “He was in this to save a valuable part of the South’s apple heritage and we’re humbled that he entrusted that legacy to us. He will be missed.”
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Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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