![]() ![]() “Ripples” tells the story of Ben Bramley (named for an heirloom English apple variety), a man who left his small apple-growing community of Abundance and returns to find that he has more than outgrown the strictures of small town society. “Ripples” was published by SFK Press in 2019. To learn the art of fiction, he enrolled in Charlotte’s Queens University low-residency MFA program, producing “Ripples” as his master’s project. He started writing poetry and short stories, eventually producing the hybrid memoir, “One Apple at a Time,” based on his grandfather’s life.īut he was drawn to fiction. Williams is currently growing a tantalizing array of varieties of apples from the rich, juicy Scarlet Nonpareil to sweet, greenish-yellow Reinette Grise de Portugal, selling them in Hendersonville’s curb market.īut even as he began grafting trees, Williams began to graft stories-taking memories from the farm as well incidents from his family’s past, fusing them to new shoots of imagination with wordsmithing and creativity. If all goes well, the new tree will produce fruit about two years later. He uses scions (sprouts that grow where the previous winter’s pruning cuts were made) then “bench grafts” them to the rootstock of heirloom variety. Williams’ grandson, Evan Blackwell, is already carrying on the family tradition. ![]() Instead, he grafts new trees from what’s called a scion. ![]() “Apples are unusual in the plant world in that they do not reproduce by exact kind,” says Williams. It was then that he started his own orchard, deciding to grow now almost-vanished heirloom varieties of apples that had been available before widespread commercial growing took hold and reduced the number of cultivars available. “And I do enjoy apple growing.” But they prevailed and he left home and pursued a career in civil engineering, working in both Atlanta and Charlotte for decades before returning to Henderson County and renovating an old storage shed on his family’s property to live in. “It’s a lot easier to do something you know,” he says. While some boys might sneak off to play in the woods, Williams’ guilty pleasure was books.Īlthough his parents encouraged him to leave the farm and go to college, he was reluctant. What was a little unique about the family was their deep commitment to education, and for Williams in particular, his love of reading. There were few families around that weren’t involved in the apple trade. But they were hardly unique for the area. By the time he was growing up there in the 1950s, his family had been tending apple orchards for six generations. His first ancestors arrived in the area in the late 18th century with a land grant to settle this then-remote part of the state. Williams’ roots in North Carolina’s apple growing community could scarcely go deeper. Spring comes to Bare Naked Orchard in Henderson County, North Carolina in the form of pretty apple blossoms. ![]()
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