Full Belly Files | Dave Beamer’s Apple Orchard

This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on November 10, 2023. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

I’m standing alongside a busy Santa Barbara thoroughfare, surrounded by a rainbow of reds, pinks, oranges, browns, yellows, and greens, from plump orbs to tiny squares, some freshly taut and rock-hard to the touch, others mushy and smashed and buggy. The air smells sweet and then sour, sometimes a touch rotten, and my hands are getting stickier by the minute.

With permission and a provided bag, I’m raiding the late Dave Beamer’s apple orchard, where more than three dozen different varieties of apple grow from grafted sticks on just about a dozen trees. There’s the minty, citrusy, verbena-esque Pettingill; the chalky, pineapple- and banana-like Hudson’s Golden Gem; the brisk and crunchy Red October; and the acid-tart Hauer Pippin, to name but a fraction.

An engineer by trade — who rode his bike to work at Goleta firms such as Digital Instruments, Veeco, and Bruker for decades, even through the pouring rain — Beamer was a horticulturalist by hobby, and an impressively dedicated one at that. His January 2015 list of planted apples included 74 varieties, though he’d removed nine by then for not producing good fruit. It’s hard to exactly tell what’s left today, as the metal ID tags labels have fallen off with time, but I collected about 10 different kinds in the 15 minutes or so I spent foraging.

“He was like a citizen scientist. He was a specialist,” said John Richards, a retired marine scientist who befriended his neighbor years ago when he saw Beamer planting oak trees along Modoc Road. “And he was extending that information to people.”

I met Richards rather randomly. He’d read my profile on Elizabeth Poett, came to the public event at the Presidio where I interviewed her, and then approached me afterward to say hi and talk about the commercial fisherman Mike McCorkle, who recently died.

I don’t even recall how we started talking about apples, but I’m always intrigued by the distinct expressions of interesting fruits, as I’m constantly identifying and describing such aromas and flavors for my wine criticism work. A few weeks later, I met Richards at Java Station along with Beamer’s sister Becky Witt and his longtime colleague Peter Glanz, who’d taken cuttings from Beamer’s trees and planted them over the years.

Glanz met him during their Bruker days, when Beamer often ate alone. He’d found it hard to communicate since the age of 11, when he started losing hearing due to Ménière’s disease. But Glanz got to know him anyway, eventually planting a few of Beamer’s apple cuttings in his own yard. “It’s more than I can eat, so I end up just juicing them,” said Glanz of his small but mighty orchard.

Richards planted Beamer’s cuttings too, selecting the Laxton’s Fortune — a crunchy red apple that was first identified in England back in 1931 — and the Golden Noble, which is also English, dating back to 1820. “This is the Golden Noble that my wife and I really like,” said Richards as he shared dried apple slices with us at Java Station.

Born in Michigan and raised in West Covina, Beamer came to UCSB like Becky, his older sister. After their dad died tragically in 1978, they inherited some money, and Dave bought the duplex in 1981 where he’d later plant his trees, many of which were purchased from Trees of Antiquity in Paso Robles.  

He died last year at age 70 on October 6, 2022, from early-onset Alzheimer’s. Since then, friends and relatives from various corners of his life seem to be finding each other, coming to realize that this quiet, humble man had quite an impact on the Santa Barbara community.

For instance, Beamer taught grafting classes at Mesa Harmony Garden in 2017, recalled Hugh Kelly in an email to Becky.  “It was always a treat to have him around, and I’m just one of the many people who learnt a lot from him about growing and propagating apples,” said Kelly, who also grows four different varieties of Beamer apples on one tree in his own yard.  

Renowned organic gardener Larry Saltzman, a cofounder of Mesa Harmony, knew Dave through the Santa Barbara chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers. They taught grafting classes together, said Saltzman, explaining, “He was remarkable.”  

In my short time with a few of these folks, Becky appears most appreciative of hearing about her late brother. “When I died, I came to learn that he really loved me as his older sister, but we didn’t really spend that much time together,” she explained, aside from the usual holiday gatherings. Beamer liked to visit relatives up in the Pacific Northwest, which is likely where his apple affinity took root, and was “very in favor of environmental work,” said Becky.

Her challenge now, as the landlord of the duplex, is what to do with all the apples. The tenants and neighbors aren’t eating them, apparently unaware of how vastly different and more delicious they are than the boring, store-bought apples that dominate so many American grocery shelves. The most obvious answer would be to call in a food bank or backyard harvest service, but there’s some concern that even they may not want the ragtag batch of variably ripe apples.

I had mentioned the notion of making hard cider a couple times during our visit. I even gave a brief version of the humorous-but-true tale in which Neil Collins, the Tablas Creek and Lone Madrone winemaker and founder of Bristol’s Cider in Atascadero, first met the Trees of Antiquity founder Neil Collins in a Paso Robles dentist office when their shared name was called by the receptionist.

[Click to enlarge] Pages from Heritage House article about Dave Beamer | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Funny enough, when I got home, sitting atop my email inbox was a message from Lucas Meisinger, the nephew of Collins the winemaker/cidermaker, inviting me to come watch their apple pressing in Atascadero. I told him that I was probably too busy to make it up that way this month, but that, coincidentally, I’d just got back from this crazy orchard with apples that have no home.

“That’s pretty awesome,” replied Meisinger. “If u ever need somewhere to press them u know where to find us.”

I don’t think it’s going to work out for this year, as most of the apples are quite ripe or past that point. But Becky was intrigued, and the Bristol’s crew was genuinely interested. If that ever happens, I’ll be sure to let you know where to find Dave Beamer’s Orchard Cider.

Until then, send me your Dave Beamer memories, and I’ll share some more next week.

From Our Table

Here are stories you may have missed:

• If last week’s headline snafu for Full Belly Files made you miss my report on tasting (legal) underwater wine, here’s the link for that.

• I caught up with restaurateur and super-chef Brad Wise to discuss Rare Society’s first year in Santa Barbara and how the Central Coast plays into his wood-fire style.