Yes, there’s a Steemit connection this time, sooner or later. On July 4, I want to honor a true American hero, but not for the reasons you think. By the way, this hero worked as far north as Ontario, so a belated Happy Canada Day to you northern sorts! Unlike some American folk figures, this hero was a real person, though his legend grew after his death.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a gravestone pays tribute to the man known as Johnny Appleseed, the great frontiersman and lover of apples. His epitaph reads, “JOHN CHAPMAN. HE LIVED FOR OTHERS.”
Johnny Appleseed was a kind and generous man by most accounts, but he also had other reasons for planting apples. If you learned about him in school, I guarantee they didn’t tell you the full story. The real John Chapman was an entrepreneur who embodied the independent spirit of the frontier. As Steemit bursts out of beta to celebrate its own independence, Chapman’s story holds important lessons for us all.
What Kids Learn in School
When I was a school kid in the United States, I learned about Johnny Appleseed. Today, my kids have iPads in their classrooms, but back then we didn’t have computers or even videos. I still remember the day when the teacher came into class with a film and a cassette tape about the young Johnny Appleseed. Sometimes they borrowed a real film projector from someone, but other times we just watched filmstrips. The filmstrip looked like a big roll of photo negatives; it would go in front of a projector and someone would spin it with a crank while the cassette tape played. If we were lucky, the sound would match the speed of the “movie” projected on a white canvas sheet in a darkened room.
I’m not as old as the dinosaurs. My school was in the middle of nowhere. There just wasn’t a lot of technology.
The film told us that Johnny Appleseed wore a pan for a hat. He journeyed through the American West around the year 1800 with a sack of apple seeds, scattering them wherever he went. Supposedly, he did this out of the kindness of his own heart, planting apples that settlers could eat as they colonized the land. Plus, he did it because he was just crazy about apples, according to the popular accounts.
The film I saw may have been this Disney Educational Productions version which includes that song I still remember. It featured the line: “The Lord is good to me. And so I thank the Lord. For giving me the things I need. The sun and rain and an apple seed.” It actually doesn't tell you much about Johnny Appleseed, but focuses on his earlier life. I’ve since found the YouTube version, which is here if you are interested:
The Rest of the Story
What they didn’t tell us was this: the real John Chapman didn’t scatter seeds at random. Born in the heart of apple country in Massachusetts, he learned the orchard trade from his father. Heading out west ahead of the land boom, he planted nurseries of apple trees in areas that were being settled along the Ohio River. He chose his locations strategically. He fenced his gardens to keep trees from being eaten by deer or other animals. He found a local person nearby in each area to take care of the nurseries and sell off tree shares to settlers until he returned the following year to check on them and plant more trees.
Today, any orchardist or commercial grower would plant grafted apple trees. Grafting is the process of asexual reproduction by joining scionwood from a particular apple variety with another rootstock. Today, most of us would use semi-dwarf or dwarfing rootstocks, since the trees come into production much more quickly than a tree that is planted as a seedling (3-5 years vs. 10 years).
In the early 1800s, grafting was not widely used; it required land and was too much trouble. They simply planted seeds from apples, which meant they didn’t know what kind of fruit the tree would produce. Apples don’t come up true to seed. If you plant a seed from a Fuji Apple today, it could grow up to produce fruits that resemble a Granny Smith or Golden Delicious Apple just as easily. More likely, because good eating varieties are genetically rare, your seedling might produce some sour, scabby fruit with low vigor, which isn’t even fit for the table. That’s why we use grafted varieties today, so we know what kind of apple we are planting.
Quality Didn’t Matter Much When They Were Drinking It
As it turned out, the quality didn’t matter that much for Johnny Appleseed, because these apples weren’t meant for eating. Chapman reportedly gathered his seeds by picking through the apple pomace at cider mills back in his native Massachusetts. He was not planting these apple trees for food; he was planting them for cider. Settlers were more likely to colonize the area if they had a source for hard cider apples. And they could make cider from “spitters”, apples that might be too sour or too bitter to eat.
Hard apple cider is a drink made from fermented apples that contains an alcohol content of up to 8%. Many people drank more cider than water. It was the safe drink of a young nation.
If you didn’t know this before, it may be news to you that America’s founding fathers and mothers went around drunk or buzzed much of the time. Dr. David Williams at George Mason University wrote an article examining the role of cider, which includes the following explanation (this portion of the text is specific to New England, but the situation was much the same throughout the American colonies):
Numerous anecdotes testify to the popularity of hard cider as Americans' preferred drink on the farm and in the town from the colonial period to its demise. Because public sources of water in unsanitary old England were not fit to drink from, the colonists at first distrusted the water in the new world, and their opponents even used the fact that they drank water as a sign of their obvious desperation. Apple trees for cider production were among the first fruits planted in the British colonies. John Hull Brown reports that from the early 18th century to 1825 even children drank hard cider with breakfast and dinner. By the 1670s, orchards in New England were producing up to 500 hogsheads of cider annually in some communities. In 1721, several villages in New England reported a cider production of over 3000 barrels a year per village.
John Adams (the second president of the United States) drank a tankard of hard cider every morning. Horace Greeley, looking back at the early years of the 19th century, recalled that a barrel of hard cider lasted his family barely a week; anybody dropping in had his mug filled again and again, "until everybody was about as full as he could hold....whole families died drunkards and vagabond paupers from the impetus first given by cider-swilling in their rural homes." (The source is listed at the end of this article.)
In his bestselling book, The Botany of Desire, author Michael Pollan wrote, “Up until Prohibition, an apple grown in America was far less likely to be eaten than to wind up in a barrel of cider. In rural areas cider took the place of not only wine and beer but of coffee and tea, juice, and even water.”
Johnny Appleseed planted cider apples. And while the real John Chapman was kind to others, almost to a fault, he did not have charity in mind with this venture. He also was a missionary for his church, another interest he pursued on his trips, but that wasn’t his main reason for venturing west either.
John Chapman was a businessman. He was betting on future growth.
As more colonists arrived in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, as well as parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, his apple trees would fill a big demand for cider. Remember, it takes up to ten years for a tree to begin producing fruit. John Chapman was thinking into the future, though he starting selling his trees to settlers right away.
Frontier Law. Claiming Land and Selling Shares
In those days, anyone claiming land in the “west” could settle it. Frontier law allowed a settler to make a claim by planting a certain number of fruit trees in a three-year period. As an article in the Smithsonian Magazine explained:
At the turn of the 19th century, speculators and private companies were buying up huge swathes of land in the Northwest Territory, waiting for settlers to arrive. Starting in 1792, the Ohio Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers: anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on the wilderness beyond Ohio's first permanent settlement would be granted 100 acres of land. To prove their homesteads to be permanent, settlers were required to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees in three years, since an average apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit.
Ever the savvy businessman, Chapman realized that if he could do the difficult work of planting these orchards, he could turn them around for profit to incoming frontiersmen. Wandering from Pennsylvania to Illinois, Chapman would advance just ahead of settlers, cultivating orchards that he would sell them when they arrived, and then head to more undeveloped land. (Link at end of article)
In fact, Chapman would find a local partner for each nursery who could not only take care of each orchard while he was out planting more, but would also sell off shares in the trees. He would visit his nurseries again once per year to check on them, sell some to settlers, and plant more trees as the law required. When John Chapman died in 1845 at age 70, he owned more than 1200 acres of land which he had claimed with these nursery homesteads. And that total does not count the many acres and trees that he sold off, staying just ahead of the big settlement push that consumed the American frontier.
Some reckon that Johnny Appleseed became rich from his entrepreneurial venture. But that wasn’t what people saw, nor was it the caricature of him that endured in folk tales. There never was any historical evidence that he wore a pan on his head. That may have been an image cooked up by Disney. But he certainly was an individual, the kind of larger-than-life character that people talk about.
Chapman became a vegetarian late in his life. Apparently, he went to great lengths to protect any animal, even mosquitoes. He never married, believing he would be treated better that way in heaven.
There were first-person historical accounts of the man walking through the woods barefoot, so that part of the story is probably no myth. With his missionary zeal, he converted a number of Native Americans to his religion, but he also maintained good relations with those who did not convert. They said that he was touched by the Great Spirit. More than once, John Chapman was known to have given away the clothes he wore to those in need. He walked around wearing a bag that had holes cut for his arms.
Johnny Appleseed set out with an innovative vision and worked hard to achieve it. I guess you could call him a Steve Jobs of the 1800s. But Appleseed’s real legacy was planting thousands of apple trees throughout the American Midwest. These contributed greatly to the development of apple varieties that could grow successfully in the United States. And they produced lots of hard cider right up until FBI agents cut many of them down with axes during Prohibition. One of John Chapman’s trees still survives today in Nova, Ohio, where he planted it in 1830.
If you have a good business plan and execute it with success, then you can be as weird as you want. You can even give away the clothes off your back to needy people if you want. You might even be proclaimed as a genius and end up as a cult hero.
Apple Economics
A wise person once said, “You can count the seeds in an apple, but you can’t count the apples in a seed.” I’m sure you’ve heard the similar saying credited to Lao Tzu: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Since Johnny Appleseed was a vegetarian, we’ll stick to apples.
Why should you plant an apple tree? Most people like apples. They are relatively easy to grow in most temperate climates; even an apartment dweller with half a day of sunlight can grow them in large containers on a patio, walkway, or deck. If you live in a more tropical area, you can substitute another kind of suitable fruit.
Apple trees take little care and there are many disease-resistant varieties available today. You can juice them, cider them, vinegar them, or turn them into pies, jellies, dried apples, and many more culinary delights. From personal experience, I can say that when kids harvest food from a garden or orchard, they are much more connected with their food sources and more likely to eat extra fruits and veggies each day (that’s been proven by studies also; link below).
What are the economics of planting an apple tree? Let’s say you spend $25-30 to buy a grafted dwarf apple tree and perhaps some soil and perhaps a container. A small bag of organic fruit tree fertilizer will cost a few dollars last you for years. So you’re out about $30.
How much does it cost to buy high quality organic apples where you live? $2 per pound? More? Less? In season, you might get them off a neighbor’s tree for free, but out of season, you’ll be spending more at the store, so your average expense may be higher than you think. I’ll go with $2/lb. because it’s easy; adjust that as you wish.
The average American eats almost 20 pounds of apples per year. We know that everyone needs more fruits and veggies, and Europeans eat closer to 46 pounds per year, so let’s go ahead and take 30 pounds as a ballpark number. So you are buying around 30 pounds of apples per year at $2/lb., which is $60 per year.
Growing your own tree requires a $30 investment. A dwarf apple tree can come into full bearing in its third year, producing 50-100 pounds of apples per year. These trees have an average lifespan of 15-20 years.
What does your investment look like over that period? I'm not very good at math; here are some estimates:
Year 1: -$30 spent on apple tree, supplies
Year 2: No change
Year 3: 50 lbs of apples @ 2/lb. = + $100 - $30 investment = $70
And from here, we go with the cumulative totals, adding $100 in fruit production annually. Remember, that’s a conservative estimate, as the harvest could yield twice as much.
Year 4: $170
Year 5: $270
Year 6: $370
Year 7: $470
Year 8: $570
Year 9: $670
Year 10: $770
Year 11: $870
Year 12: $970
Year 13: $1070
Year 14: $1170
Year 15: $1270. More optimistic scenario: $2540.
And your tree might live longer than 15 years.
If you had three trees, an early, mid-season, and late apple, all ripening at different times when you need fruit (or when you can sell or barter it), try this: After paying off your $90 investment, you’d save or “earn” $3810 (pessimistic scenario) or $7620 (optimistic scenario). If you get sick of apples, substitute a peach or plum or something else that’s easy to grow and fun to eat.
Hey Wall Street, can you beat that kind of return?
How much energy and pollution did you save by not buying your fruit from halfway across the world?
Steem Power is a Money Tree, For You and Others
“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” Bernard Baruch
Are you the kind of person who eats the apple or plants the seed?
If we learned anything from the story of Johnny Appleseed, I think it was the principles of success that he applied in a frontier economy. Cryptocurrency is still a frontier economy and Steemit is a ground-floor opportunity, much like John Chapman reaching the frontier ahead of the settlers. Here are my top take-aways:
1.) Frontier Spirit: Be bold. Look ahead and stake your claim. The crowds are coming. As with the Gold Rush, it was the people running railroads and selling supplies who ultimately made more money than most gold miners. They were there first and saw an opportunity.
2.) Long term Plan: Come up with a plan that’s visionary and has clear goals, but is something you can accomplish over time.
3.) Persevere: Stick to it. Put in the time and hard work. Dispel those negative thoughts. Make it happen.
4.) Partner with Others: Look for other people who have complementary skills. Let them do what they’re good at and let you focus on working from your strengths.
5.) Work Smart. Plant and Grow: If you need money, cash out your STEEM when necessary. But if you sell anytime soon, you’re getting pennies on the dollar. Realize that Steem Power is basically the equivalent of having stock options in a platform that could be the next Google or Facebook.
Powering Up is like planting apple trees for the future. How much more fruit will that yield for you over time? If you Power Up, you are creating…
…a Money Tree! Holding Steem Power gives your votes more power, and this allows you to have greater influence over which authors and which posts get paid. You can even vote on your own posts and pay yourself if you wish. More importantly, if you believe that a decentralized social media site on the blockchain that pays people to post and vote on good content has great potential, then the smart money wants a stake in that growth.
Power Up, as much as you can afford to do. Opportunity knocks. Let’s accelerate the growth by trusting in this platform. That’s the Frontier Spirit.
Happy Independence Day, Steemit!
Sources:
Dr. Williams Cider Article: http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Edrwillia/cider.html
Smithsonian Magazine article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/real-johnny-appleseed-brought-applesand-booze-american-frontier-180953263/?no-ist
Mentalfloss, More Facts on Johnny Appleseed: http://mentalfloss.com/article/62113/9-facts-tell-true-story-johnny-appleseed
MNN article on Johnny Appleseed: http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-johnny-appleseed
Botany of Desire: http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/
Revival of hard cider: http://www.splendidtable.org/story/the-revival-of-hard-cider-once-john-adams-daily-drink
Children Eat More Fruits and Vegetables if They Are Homegrown: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418163652.htm
Great post I am new here how can i get money from steemit
When you post good quality content and when you upvote others whose posts become popular, then you can be paid for the work. For a good introductory guide to Steemit, you might check out the e-book that some of us wrote, which is only 99 cents. If it's not available where you live, then you can get most of the same information here on Steemit, but it is a complex system. If you are comfortable having fun as you learn it, then just try things out and you'll learn as you go. Feel free to look me up on the Slack Channel and I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. -Tom, @donkeypong
Let's plant and let's see since they grow, now that we have the opportunity!
nice article