While the picture below looks like, and is, a really healthy field of mustard, there is a sad note for the reason it is here today. Take a look at the piles of dead trees in the middle of the mustard and you will see the remnants of apple trees, rotting in the sun.





Until about five years ago this area was known as the apple capital of Ontario with over 32,000 acres of apple trees of all varieties providing juice to most of this region as well as a lot of North America.





Then the Chinese began to dump juice on the Americas and it resulted in the destruction of this whole region as an important apple growing area of the continent. The above picture is of the Gardner warehouse and juice operation, now for sale. The Gardners are friends of the Martins and we have had parties together, but the loss of the apple business has resulted in the elimination of property and employment for this family as well as hundreds if not thousands of other apple growers and workers.

This field on highway 26 across from the Gardner home is one of many for sale and soon to be cut down and cultivated into some other cash crop. Currently there are less than 10,000 acres of land which is still classified as apple production, but even most of these acres look like the below one which has just recently been cut and is ready for firewood; some of these trees more than 50 years old.

And the boxes which held tons of apples as they were carted to the juice mills now are empty and themselves headed for the scrap heap or the pallet mill.