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>> TOM BROWN: "It's a race against the clock.
And I feel like it's, you know, my responsibility
to find as many of these as humanely possible while I can.
Well how I got interested in apples-
I've always loved farmers markets and I went to one in
Winston-Salem (NC) and there was a man there that,
he sold apple trees but he came in the summer and early fall
and sold these wonderful apples, and,
I was just fascinated by all the colors and shapes and textures
I've been hunting apples for about fourteen years now."
Tom Brown: "Well, years ago there were hundreds of varieties
and you can trace this in some of the old nursery catalogs,
I have old nursery catalogs that date back to the early 1800s
and in there they might have two hundred varieties, or two hundred fifty varieties listed,
and then as you got closer and closer to the early 1900s,
these shrank to maybe only thirty varieties."
>> BROWN: "I found out that there was one lost apple in my area of western Forsyth County
and so I started looking for it and I wasn't having success
so I approached my hometown newspaper over at Statesville
and they ran an article about my looking for old apples
and I found five real rare apples and then after that I was hooked,
and now I'm up to over 900 varieties of found real trees."
>> BROWN: "That one right there reminds me of an apple that I've been looking for called "Fort's Prize"
>> FARMER: "Ford's Prize?"
>> BROWN: "No, Fort's Prize." [spelling]
I have to do more than find them I have to get them back in circulation,
and this is through preservation orchards and I also sell trees,
and I've donated...shared freely with what I've found with other people that sell apples."
Tom Brown: Oh wow, now look, guys, look at that.
The time to find these is rapidly closing because somebody
couldn't come behind me in thirty years and find nine hundred varieties
because the old trees are dying and the people that know the names
are passing away."
>> LOCAL MAN: "There's an old tree or two up here, sitting right up here?"
>> BROWN: "But to me it's such a terrible shame if these slip into extinction,
because this is part of our wonderful agricultural heritage and a lot
would be lost if these became extinct."