The Lost Orchard Project

In Ontario’s apple country, nestled among the Blue Mountains in Grey County, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of lost and forgotten apple trees.

The area, about two hours north of Toronto, is considered Canada’s largest concentrated area of apple growers thanks to the ideal climate created by Georgian Bay and the Niagara Escarpment. Every winding road is sprinkled with apple orchards — some offer pick-your-own, others sell apple pies and goods. But many are left abandoned and untended.

Mark Skinner, owner of Windswept Farm, created the Lost Orchard Project to fix that. Nestled between the Beaver and Big Head River Valleys, the organic farm Skinner owns with his wife, Courtney, is “naturally abundant with wild seedling apple trees and a beautiful old grove of wild Perry pears,” he says. He was working at Caledon’s Spirit Tree Cidery when they bought the land, paving the way to make their mark in Ontario’s flourishing cider industry. But it wasn’t until Anne Freeman, Dufferin Grove's market manager, mentioned she had friends in Meaford with an unused orchard that the Lost Orchard Project was born.

“Once word got out locally of what we were up to, things really snowballed,” Skinner says. “The [orchards] are a mix of beautiful urban and rural sites, [and include] some of the original plantings in Meaford and the Blue Mountains,” he explains, adding that many of the orchards have become biennial, only bearing fruit every other year.

The Skinners get a broad mix of apples from the trees, including Northern Spy, Cortlands and Empires — but they’ve also discovered heirloom varieties such as Liberty, Snow, Cox’s Orange Pippin and Wolf River. The juice in the small apples tends to have less sugar and low nitrogen levels, leading to prolonged fermentation. But “we have been really happy with the low and slow results,” Skinner says about the Lost Orchard Ciders. It takes four to six months to achieve complete dryness with the forgotten apples. Then, the cider ages for another six to nine months.

As one would guess, the project isn’t without its challenges. Some orchards are so overgrown it’s impossible to get ladders in, forcing the team to adopt a “shaking onto tarps” method of harvesting. The very basics of getting harvest gear from location to location is another trial — but it’s worth the effort to save the region’s traditional orchards, one bottle of fine cider at a time.

Windswept Orchard Cider
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