When October rolls around, I am always reminded of apple season in Easton. We may be known as the Christmas Tree Capital of Connecticut in the 21st century, but towards the end of the twentieth, we could just as well have been called the Apple Capital. With three large producers – Slady’s, Silverman’s, and the Aspetuck Valley Orchards, fifty years ago, Easton likely grew enough apples to supply all of Fairfield County.
By the early 1970’s, north and southbound traffic came to a virtual standstill on both Sport Hill Road and the Black Rock Turnpike on every weekend afternoon from mid-September to early November. Northbound traffic was backed up as far as the aerator (or as some old-time residents call it, the Spray or the Fountain) by the dam on the Aspetuck on any clear and crisp Saturday or Sunday afternoon, with both the east and west parking lots at the Apple Barn overflowing with patrons eager to purchase baskets of apples and jugs of freshly pressed cider. Over on Sport Hill Road, the backup wasn’t quite as bad, but that was before Silverman’s had fully established their current menagerie of farm animals on the eastern side of the highway. Slady’s on Orchard Lane was a bit more off the beaten path and attracted more locals than out-of-towners but was still bustling with activity on most weekend afternoons.
In the pre-Aquarion days of the 1960’s and 70’s, the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company played an intricate part in the Easton community. They employed more local residents than any other institution, even providing dozens of first-time jobs to teens during the summer and early fall. The historic homes they owned along Black Rock Turnpike were all well-maintained and occupied by company employees as part of their compensation package. The lands surrounding Easton’s three reservoirs were mowed and constantly trimmed by crews managed by supervisors that had been hand-picked by company patriarch Sam Senior who also resided in Easton. BHC’s local team expressed a great deal of pride in how the company’s properties, land, and business interests appeared to members of the communities in which they operated.
The Aspetuck Valley Orchard operation was a shining example of the company’s long-standing efforts to be an integral part of Easton. Their flagship Apple Barn always bore a shining coat of red paint and white trim. The interior had the look and feel of a real barn but was always spotlessly clean and full of the wonderful aromas of the fresh fruit and vegetables they displayed and sold. Long wooden tables had different varieties of their apples carefully displayed in splint style woven wooden baskets of various sizes. One gallon glass jugs of freshly pressed apple cider were kept cool in a large, cork insulated room at the northeast corner of the building until they were needed to refill the coolers in the main display area. In the fall, the exterior was tastefully decorated with corn stalks, and neatly arranged rows of pumpkins ready for carving.
The Apple Barn was so well known, it became a destination for many families from down county and beyond. On any given weekend afternoon, it wasn’t at all unusual to see a good percentage of the cars in both parking lots adorned with New York license plates. In November of 1962, the New Yorker magazine bore the image of the Apple Barn on its cover that had been created by artist Garrett Price.
In 1971, culinary expert Marjorie Page Blanchard of nearby Green Farms, wrote and published a 63-page cookbook, The Orchard Sampler, that exclusively featured both modern and historic recipes of the three fruits that Aspetuck Valley Orchards grew and sold: apples, peaches, and pears. That book became a best seller at the Apple Barn, and many long-time Easton residents proudly retain their copy and prepare some of Blanchard’s featured dishes every autumn. Readers of this article can peruse the Orchard Sampler in its entirety on the Historical Society of Easton website – A Taste of Easton and Redding Cookbooks – Historical Society of Easton Connecticut (historicalsocietyofeastonct.org).
The history of the Apple Barn began over 100 years ago. The Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, under the leadership of Samuel Senior, designed an elaborate plan that included tying three reservoirs together in series that would bring water from as far away as Redding all the way to Bridgeport using only a few miles of underground pipe. Land purchases began soon after the turn of the century and continued all the way into the 1930’s.
By 1917, these acquisitions made BHC the majority landholder in Easton, and a new position was created, Manager of Land Resources. Franklin Hubbell, a recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts, was hired to manage the lands that wouldn’t be flooded but could serve a purpose other than simply acting as a watershed for those acres that were.
According to Noel Quinton, the son of Dr. Richard Quinton, Mr. Hubbell’s successor, Franklin made a “systematic inventory of BHC’s acreage, classifying the land according to the requirements and opportunities he observed. Farms acquired by the company had open fields and pastures, so he planted numerous stands of evergreen seedlings to prevent soil erosion. Wetlands in the watershed were simply left intact to continue functioning as natural sponges during periods of high rainfall and snowmelt. Harvestable timber stood in BHC’s woodlands, in quantities sufficient to warrant the building of a sawmill behind the Wakeman-Osborn barn on Black Rock Turnpike. A used engine built by the White Motor Company was brought to the site from New York City to supply the mill’s power. Close to Mr. Hubbell’s Easton home was an upland property known as Flirt Hill which he apparently explored very thoroughly. Two miles of the Aspetuck Valley’s western edge were defined by the base of this curiously named prominence, which rose to an elevation of over 520 feet. According to nineteenth-century maps there were no signs of settlement on its plateau, yet Franklin Hubbell saw significant potential for this tract.
“After studying Flirt Hill’s drainage, Mr. Hubbell concluded that much of the land was well-suited for agricultural purposes, specifically the central area which had no surface runoff. Furthermore, the upper eastern slopes offered reduced exposure to winter winds and springtime frost, advantages which favored the planting of fruit trees. Presumably, it was he who advanced the idea of establishing a commercial orchard on the property, and after receiving management approval, development began in the 1920s. Under his direction work crews built an access road, cleared the large plot of land, planted many different varieties of apple, peach and pear trees, and built ancillary structures such as equipment sheds and water tanks.”
In total, about one-hundred acres became the Aspetuck Valley Orchards. The land could be accessed from a road that the company had carved out of the side of the hill on the western side of the Black Rock Turnpike and by another along the northern side of Freeborn Hill Road. A retail sales outlet as well as a large sorting facility and cold storage area were created in an English style bank-barn that sat on the eastern side of the highway below.
Multiple varieties of apples were planted, and Franklin’s crew was trained to properly prune each tree to get a maximum yield of high-quality fruit. By the late 1930’s, harvests were so large, itinerant Jamaican workers were brought in to supplement the local work force to pick all the fruit before it could fall to the ground and be damaged. Workers were paid by the box, and those who could work fast made good wages over the few weeks they hustled to bring in the crop.
Growing fruit is not without its perils. Early warm weather can sometimes result in premature flowering that will set the buds for that year’s crop. Should a subsequent frost come along, an entire crop can be lost if it is exposed to sub-freezing temperatures for only a few hours. Deer present another set of issues. A harsh winter often results in hungry deer stripping the bark of the fruit trees, leading to the tree’s early demise. A healthy crop of either apples or peaches will also attract deer who enjoy the easy pickings just before harvest time. A good size buck standing on his hind legs can pluck fruit as high as ten feet above the ground. In 1965, the BHC erected a fence that was about twelve-feet tall around the entire orchard – solving the deer problem for many years.
As the years progressed and some of the older trees needed replacing, a few plots were changed over to vegetable production; a move that provided additional product for the retail operation, allowing it to open earlier in the season. Christmas trees grown on nearby BHC lands extended the fall season to Christmas, so by the early 1970’s, the Apple Barn was a viable business for about seven full months each year.
According to a brochure published by the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company in the 1970’s, a good year saw production of about 25,000 bushels of twenty-five varieties of apples, together with nearly twenty varieties of peaches and ten more of nectarines. There were six types of pears, eight varieties of grapes, along with both plums and blueberries. Melons, pumpkins, corn, squash, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes were also grown on the property and sold at the Apple Barn.
But over the past couple of decades, the once prosperous Apple Barn has seen a host of changes that have reduced its presence to the point where it may soon be nothing more than a pleasant memory for those of us who recall it in its heyday.
The BHC changed its name to Aquarion in 1991, and in 2000, the company was purchased by the Kelda Group of Great Britain for $596 million. Kelda’s business plan didn’t include operating ancillary businesses such as the Apple Barn and the huge orchard it managed. The Aspetuck Orchards retail operation was sold to a private operator who in turn leased the sales barn, and the Flirt Hill orchards were then abandoned. The product lines changed as the years progressed, but the Apple Barn had a difficult time keeping pace with area supermarkets that carried some of the same specialty jams, jellies, and cheeses at lower prices. Without the locally grown fruits and vegetables, the business lost much of its former appeal.
A subsequent sale of Aquarion to an Australian bank in 2007 resulted in even less interest and support for community operations within the towns that provide the water that Aquarion sells. In 2017, Aquarion was purchased for nearly $1.7 billion by Eversource, a Hartford and Boston based utility company that has no strong community ties to Easton. As of this writing, Aquarion is once again on the market, as Eversource no longer sees it as a good fit to their energy business. Perhaps it never was.
Much of the land that makes up the 1009-acre Trout Brook Valley Reserve in Easton and Weston is now and forever preserved and protected by the Aspetuck Valley Land Trust. On a recent weekday, a colleague and I were invited to hike the land that is adjacent to the old Aspetuck Valley Orchards. Guided by Ranger Jim Wood, we were able to view the remnants of the once vibrant fruit trees. While the land owned by the Land Trust continues to be well maintained, the area still owned by Aquarion is slowly being reclaimed by mother nature.
The fence that once kept out the deer now has areas where the barbed wire is missing, and portions of the fence are sagging. We saw multiple deer that had leapt over the poorly maintained barrier and into the blueberry orchard the Land Trust maintains. Those animals are now trapped inside because they can’t find their way out. According to Ranger Jim, carcasses of dead deer ravaged by coyotes are often found inside the compound. Members of the Land Trust have requested that Aquarion repair those sections of the fence that are no longer impenetrable, but those requests now go unanswered.
The size and scope of the old orchards is impressive, but we couldn’t help but to think their abandonment seems like such a wasted resource of precious fruit bearing trees and fertile hillside land. It would surely seem that an orchard of that magnitude could have been leased to someone who could have kept it viable and productive; but instead, it sits abandoned and in a few more years will be nothing more than a fading memory of a few old timers like me.
One can only hope that the Apple Barn doesn’t meet the same fate as the orchards that once served it. Let’s all hope that Aquarion’s next owner is more community minded than its present one. Easton deserves better.
