Hobbies are important. Whether it’s beekeeping, rock climbing, or tai chi; they’re the recess of adult life. They turn us into early risers, night owls, and weekend warriors, with mental and physical benefits paid out well beyond the activity itself. We take pride in our hobbies and might even dream about making it big, but let’s be real, we’re all amateurs. For most hobbyists, “don’t quit your day job” is sound advice. For the rare few, hobbies become something bigger.
A retired chemical engineer from Clemmons, N.C., Tom Brown developed a passion for finding and conserving “lost” varieties of what is perhaps the most recognizable fruit there is—the apple. The apples of Tom’s eye, however, are not the ones we know. Not the McIntosh, Granny Smith, or the crowd favorite Honeycrisp. Tom is passionate about heritage apples, which are “old timey” and, unlike the ones you see at the grocery store, they have not been farmed at scale and selectively bred for perfection. Tom’s apples are irregular, sometimes even ugly, and go by names like “Greasy Skin,” “Transcendent Crab,” or “Flat Limbertwig”. They come from trees tucked away in back yards and on abandoned family farms—remnants of a simpler time in agricultural history. Sadly, heritage tree populations are dwindling and with them, so are their rare fruits. For Tom, learning of this was a call to action.
It all started at a Winston-Salem, N.C. farmer’s market on a Saturday afternoon in the late 90s. A stand selling oddly shaped and uniquely colored apples caught Tom’s attention and he had to know more. He learned that these were heritage apples and that there were ongoing searches for more of them in his local area. Intrigued, he began educating himself and eventually joined the pursuit. Little by little, Tom’s hobby became a passion, and he found himself driving to all corners of Appalachia in search of rare varieties. Twenty five years, 400,000+ miles, and 1,000+ apple discoveries later, Tom is known colloquially as the modern-day Johnny Appleseed. His keys to success? “An understanding wife and an all-wheel-drive car.” Tom’s wife, Merrikay, is often by his side for his apple excursions, and together they’ve racked up hundreds of thousands of miles on each of their two Subarus.
It's fortunate that Tom was already retired when he took up apple conservation because he may indeed have had to quit his day job. He politely declined a phone call for this article because of the overwhelming amount of outreach he has been getting, both from apple enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike. His popularity is spreading like wildfire, compounded by features in the Washington Post and Southern Living. You wouldn’t get this impression from his website, Applesearch.org, which has loads of information about apples but very little about the man himself. Managing the attention has proven difficult, as he remarked over email, “there is insufficient remaining time for all the apple preservation work that I urgently need to do.”
In a world where popularity is so easily capitalized upon, Tom remains humbly dedicated to his cause. He’s a man with a unique hobby and doesn’t seem to want much more.
