||| FROM MICHELLE HASSEBROCK for ORCAS ISLAND MUSEUMS |||
The Eastsound Museum is pleased to host a community open house THIS SATURDAY, December 2nd, 11am-3pm. We will have kid friendly activities, 10% off in our gift shop, and local experts around the museum answering questions about our exhibits and Orcas history.
Come and mark the wintertime wind-down with us!
Kwiaht will also be joining us this Saturday to do a special heritage apple tasting and discuss the history of orchards on Orcas Island. The earliest orchards on Orcas were planted in the 1860s, but apples, in the form of native Pacific crabapples, have thrived on the island far longer. Over the past century and a half not only have the original orchard trees continued to grow and produce, they have also given rise to novel seedling varieties that grow nowhere else on earth, are uniquely adapted to the conditions on Orcas, and including hybrids between the native and planted trees.
In 2024 Kwiaht is working with WSU researcher Dr. Cameron Peace to genotype some of these unique varieties as well as to use genetics to identify forgotten heritage varieties.
You can help them explore and protect this part of Orcas’ historical legacy by donating through the Orcas Island Community Foundation’s holiday grant catalog at GiveOrcas.org.
You can sample some of these heritage apples and ask Kwiaht’s botanist Madrona Murphy fruit questions at the Eastsound Museum’s Community Open House this Saturday.
