Kalispell man grows 400 apple varieties in small orchard

KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — This apple is not your everyday supermarket fruit.

Its skin is a yellow wash with splashes of carmine down the sides and a streak of russet near the stem, and it hangs boldly juxtaposed against its leafy backdrop. This diminutive fruit is perfectly shaped and easily plucked from the bough.

If you take a bite, the satisfying crunch offers a crisp strong flavor with a good little kick of acid on the back. For an apple, it’s surprisingly complex on the tongue.

This apple is the Martha crabapple, a favorite fruit of Rod McIver.

“It’s a fairly early apple, but it ripens over a long period so you can snack off it for a good month,” McIver said with a lilting Southern accent. “It’s beautiful, it’s tough, and most people complain it’s too sour, but I think it just has a wonderful flavor.”

“That’s what got me started on all this,” McIver added, gesturing around his small orchard property.

On a scant three acres off Rose Crossing sits McIver’s small house and a large barn. In a fenced-off portion of the front yard is a garden and a dozen fruit trees, mostly apple with a few exceptions (one of McIver’s favorite pear trees, a cross between an Asian and European variety, towers over this part of the yard). The area immediately surrounding the house is dotted with more trees — pears, plums and a few more apples.

But further back on the lot, behind a classically red barn, sprawls the heart of McIver’s passion.

He calls it his Montana home orchard project — 13 rows of seven or eight trees apiece. Each tree has anywhere from one to 10 different varietals grafted onto them. By McIver’s estimate, he is propagating somewhere between 200 and 250 different fruit varieties, probably closer to 300 if you count the...