HOW 'BOUT THEM APPLES?

Officials in Leominster, Massachusetts, recently brokered a deal to preserve the last remaining apple orchard in Johnny Appleseed's hometown.

For more than 100 years orchardists at Sholan Farm, in the north-central Massachusetts town where John Chapman was born, farmed Macintosh, Yellow Delicious, Cortland, and other apples. But this year the 60-acre orchard has lain fallow because the farm's owner wanted to build four-bedroom homes on the 161-acre property, according to the mayor's office.

"It's our last working apple farm," says Mayor Dean J. Mazzarella, a lifetime resident of Leominster. "Here we are, the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed, and it would be a little embarrassing if we couldn't keep it."

Working with local nonprofit groups, the city agreed to buy the farm for $4.75 million from its owners, the Possick family of New Jersey. Mazzarella says he hopes to maintain the apple orchard and keep the remainder of the land as open space.

"The farm is unique to maintaining the character of the community," Mazzarella says. It will be added to the 600 acres the city has purchased in the last five years, completing a trail system from the most western to the most southern part of the city.

The orchard nearly lost its home because of development pressures and changes in the domestic apple industry. The last person responsible for tending the apples, David Chandler of Sterling, Massachusetts-based Meadowbrook Orchards, says the economics of the apple industry made it difficult to maintain the property.

Over the past two years domestic apple prices have plunged because of the "dumping" of apple concentrate from the People's Republic of China, Chandler said. China has been selling or "dumping" apple-juice concentrate at 91 percent below the cost of production, according to the McLean, Virginia-based U.S. Apple Association.

But Leominster residents took action. The Citizens to Save Sholan Farm, a local group with about 100 members nationwide, lobbied the city to purchase the land. Robert M. Regan, whose four-acre property abuts the orchard and who acts as spokesperson for the group, says he hopes the city will preserve the apple orchard.

"I would like to see it remain an agricultural edifice to Johnny Appleseed, rather than turn it into something that's going to change the character of the orchard," Regan says.

Mazzarella says he will hold "listening" sessions for community input, but he hopes to reopen the apple farm and perhaps open a Johnny Appleseed museum or retail entity. But his priority remains keeping the land as open space, he says.

"There's a lot of things we can do with [the land]," he says. "But the fact that no homes will be built on it is important."