The Patron Saint of Maine Apples
John Bunker has made it his mission to rescue Maine's forgotten fruits.
By Michael S. Sanders, photography by Russell French
If you see a guy out in the wilds of Maine bumping very slowly along a dirt road on a fall day in his pickup, his head almost out the window as he scans the land of an old farm gone to ruin, you might, if you're a cynic, think him a real estate agent. And you would be wrong, for John Bunker is not at all interested in property. He is looking at the trees, particularly the ancient apple trees, now scraggly, overgrown, their enormous trunks eaten by rot from years of neglect, the plumage overhead meager indeed, with sometimes only a single branch still bearing scarce fruit.
