photo by Jon Stinnett Nick Botner inspects the fruit of one of thousands of apple trees on his farm.

Botner boasts biggest collection worldwide

Yoncalla farm is home to 4,000 apple varieties





Many interesting critters can be found on the 80-acre parcel of land outside Yoncalla that Nick and Carla Bottner call home. The farm, which sits on the original Applegate Land Claim, plays host to cows, llamas, alpacas, emus and often wild creatures like ducks and turkeys. But for Nick Botner, it’s all about fruit, and more specifically, apples.

He’s been called a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, and his affinity for the fruit is becoming legend. But that’s bound to happen when you grow upwards of 4000 (yes, that’s right—4,000) varieties.

A visit to the Bottner orchard is like touring a live encyclopedia of apples. Tall, mature trees hang heavy with fruit. Younger trees planted closer together also produce prolifically, and grafted saplings of various lengths sit in long rows, waiting to grow tall enough for an eventual transplant. Each is marked with a silver metal tag bearing its varietal name (assuming the raccoons have left the shiny metal plaything alone.) A tall fence keeps the deer at bay.

“Somebody once called it the largest private collection in the Milky Way Galaxy,” Botner said.

He’s probably right, and indeed it’s difficult to imagine a more extensive array of fruit. And it’s not just apples. Botner also boasts about 500 varieties of pear trees, 500 grape varieties, 160 cherry and 120 plum types, in addition to what he calls “miscellaneous fruit” such as quinces and a prolific paw-paw tree.

Botner cites an earlier inability to grow fruit as his impetus for cultivation now. Having spent over 20 years on land in Alaska growing hardy crops, (but certainly no apples) Botner moved his family to Yoncalla after a long search for suitable farmland.

“I just wanted to grow things after spending so much time in Alaska and not being able to grow much,” he said. “You spend half of your time in Alaska coping with the weather; it’s tough to do much else.”

Now, the Botners reside on 125 acres, and Botner is hard at work on his second orchard, which he started in 1988.

“There were no trees at all when we first came,” he said.

Even toward the end of a bad year for apples (and this certainly was a bad year, with a cold, rainy spring allowing little pollination for the trees and later rains fostering scab growth) Botner’s orchard teems with life. I was fortunate enough to follow the master down many of its rows. Armed with a pocketknife and paper bag, Botner held forth on the virtues of many of his trees and explained his methods.

The orchard’s earliest trees were planted at eight-foot intervals. Now, however, Botner plants them just three feet apart because the trees don’t need to attain their highest height for his purposes. Small sections of PVC pipe filled with drinking straws hang from many trees, home to Mason Bees that are welcomed in to pollinate the trees.

Botner says he doesn’t really have a favorite apple.

“With 4,000 varieties, you can’t really have a favorite,” he said.

Nevertheless, he does admire certain apples for certain qualities. There’s the popular Liberty variety, which he says is one of the most disease-resistant varieties. There are Floria varieties that resist scab. Northern Spy varieties are among the area’s oldest and are “hard to beat.” Botner named the Christmas Delight after the day he discovered a tree growing in a ditch, in addition to its late production. Varieties developed at Purdue and Rutgers Universities are special.

“Everything they make there is perfect,” he said.

And that’s not to mention the Trout Pears or Dabsen Plums, the white Muscat grapes or the paw-paw, which Botner said is “probably the best fruit on the farm” and boasts a unique flavor cross between a banana and mango.

Many you-pick fruit enthusiasts make the journey to the Botner farm each autumn, and the fruit they don’t pick ends up in the Botners’ bellies or on the ground.

“We don’t have the cool storage to keep them all,” he said.

Botner also supplies apples for the Apple Day Festival, held in alternate years at the historic Applegate House nearby.

A tract of roto-tilled land in the orchard represents its last eventual expansion, Botner said.

“I’ve got to stop because I’m overworked on what I have already,” he said.

Botner also wants to write a book about some of his trees, likely entitled “1001 Apples.”

“I’ve got another thousand ready for the second book, too,” he said.