What Became of Kilvert's Pips?

Here is one possibility!

The sequence of images [link above] does actually show how to turn a wooden bowl from green apple - in spite of the bad visual puns. 'Green apple' refers to the wood rather than the fruit, 'green' timber in general being timber that is unseasoned, therefore wet. Turning such wood is referred to as green turning. When fresh felled, apple is VERY wet; so wet that water is thrown from the turning wood in a fine, refreshing, mildly scented drizzle in quantities sufficient to soak the turner. Green apple is heavier than water as the image at left [one of the images in the slide show] attests. Yes; that's a real picture and no; I did not nail a piece of lead to the bottoms of the bowls!

The images arose out of my acquiring some twenty tons of apple logs from an old cider orchard on Newton's Farm in Herefordshire. This has no connection with Sir Isaac that I know of, in spite of the apple theme. The orchard was cleared of all its fine old trees in favour of planting small, nondescript modern easy picking things by a commercial maker of chemical beverages, who shall remain nameless,  which has the effrontery to market the stuff as cider. Converting twenty tons of timber into bowls leaves one with plenty of time for thought. The images resulted.

The twenty tons I acquired was but a tiny proportion of the timber that was felled. From memory [this was back in the early 1990s] I'd say I took less than ten percent. Some of the remainder was sold as firewood by the owner; the bulk went up in a massive conflagration. Living, as I now do, in Somerset, another area famous for its cider, I have been struck by how small the local apple trees are in comparison with those I got from Newton's Farm and elsewhere in Herefordshire, some of which were four feet in diameter. Either apple trees simply grow bigger in Hereford or all the big old trees in Somerset have vanished. Apple wood has very limited use. Even as firewood, it requires twice as long as any other to dry adequately on account of its initial wetness and its density. The latter contributes to its propensity to split during drying; even sawn into planks it tends to crack and split. Once dry, it is very, very hard indeed! I know of only one commercial use for apple apart from small turnery; it was cleft and used as inserted teeth in mill cog-wheels where, because of its hardness it lasted well when alternated with metal cogs. Metal on metal cogs can produce sparks - especially undesirable when milling gunpowder but generally undesirable as many substances reduced to fine powder are potentially explosive. 

The Rev. Francis Kilvert (1840-1879) had the cure of souls in three parishes on the the English Welsh border. He was an inveterate walker who recorded his extensive peregrinations in diaries kept between 1870-79. Some of them have been published - much emended. Parts of them were destroyed by his family for reasons that are not hard to guess. Some passages from the published diaries suggest that the Rev. Francis Kilvert, in common with another celebrated reverend gentleman, shared a fascination with small girls that today would probably have landed them both in the dock. 

The diaries are worth reading for other reasons. They record, in evocative and humorous detail, much of his life and in particular his walking. As Newton's Farm is only some five miles from two of the places where Kilvert lived (Bredwardine and Clyro) it is not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the trees can trace their lineage to the said Rev's pips. Unlikely, admittedly - but it all helped pass the time at the time.