For many folks in Fleming County, the best apple to use in cooking is the Goddard Apple.  This variety of apple tree is named for the area of the county it was established in and for Joseph Goddard, the founder of the community.  The concern for this variety, is the few trees that are left are over 100 years old and in major decline.  

A regional apple tree workshop  was held at the Fleming County Extension office in March 2018 with participants attending from 7 counties.  Along with classes on all aspects of orchard management, the program included a grafting workshop.  Prior to the workshop, agents contacted a local historian that lived in the Goddard area and knew the families that still had some of the trees. Agents visited those farms and collected scion wood from the trees and shared the material with participants at the workshop.  With over 25 samples grafted and shared throughout the community, the hope was that some would survive and produce new trees to preserve the variety.  Agents took grafted trees to the host farm to plant and also pruned the original trees to encourage new growth with the hope for additional cuttings for years to come.

In April 2019 one attendee from the grafting workshop sent us this message:  "I grafted a scion to G.202, from what I remember it was the "Fleming County Stripey" cultivar.  Yay! The graft took and the tree is now in our orchard."  The Fleming County Stripey that the attendee referenced was one of two Goddard Apple varieties that were offered at the workshop.  The orchard at which the scions were collected had one stripped variety of the Goddard Apple and is the only one left according to the orchard owners.