The Things that Reconcile

Walking around our small orchard a couple of weeks ago, David and I discovered to our dismay that our plum trees were suffering from curculio blight (that causes plums to shrivel up and die prematurely) and black knot. In addition, the trunks of two of our apple trees were girdled by borer. We immediately got on the phone to our local nursery and to the arborist who sprays our trees in the spring.

Ever since we started our gardens and our orchards ten years ago, it became clear that David and I responded differently to matters affecting our garden. For me, the goal was to attract wildlife and intervene as little as possible in the life of our plants and trees. For David, gardening provided a respite from the demands of his work and he was not above taking shortcuts to simplify the process. As a beekeeper, I wanted to promote practices in our gardens and orchard that would protect my bees, along with other wildlife. David's response to hindrances was more impatient. Upon seeing weeds sprouting in the driveway, for example, his hand was more likely to reach for a chemical that would deal with the problem quickly and efficiently than struggle with something that required more time and might not render perfect results. I wanted an approach that would integrate our actions with a a view of life around us as sacred while David sought for practical and swift action. Our two different approaches frequently clashed as we tried to respond to the various challenges produced by trying to grow fruit and vegetables.

Then came the crisis in the orchard and our concern for how to deal with the harm being done to our trees strangely brought us closer philosophically. It began with a book our arborist gave us to read entitled, The Apple Grower, by Michael Phillips. The author, an apple grower in northern New Hampshire, makes the case, in a very even handed way, for growing apples organically -- something that many orchard experts argue is impossible. With some relief (because we realized we were not alone) we read that growing fruit -- and particularly apples -- is the most demanding and frustrating endeavor of all, even with the aid of a full chemical arsenal, let alone organically.

A major obstacle for fruit growers (and David saw himself in this group) has been, as Michael Phillips points out, an expectation for a kind of perfection in our fruit that would have been unheard of in earlier times. This artificial expectation is a result of the scientific and technological advances in agriculture designed to control plants and "pests." Phillips also comments on the symbiotic relationship that "pests" have with their host plants and wonders whether, in the larger scheme of things, the apple (or any fruit, for that matter) exists for us humans to consume or whether it exists for a more intricate and complex purpose having to do with the host plant and its relation to the larger environment. The human may in fact be outside of this equation, not at the center.

These two observations have caught David's attention and have somehow re-calibrated his thinking about the nature of stewardship and the care of our orchard. This morning, a clear and sunny day, David put into practice the first of the many suggestions offered in the book for protecting fruit trees from unwanted parasites in a sustainable way: he applied diluted white latex paint to the lower half of all the trunks of our fruit trees. Interestingly, as he is migrating towards a more integrated approach to caring for our gardens, I have become more open to considering a more diverse array of options for overcoming some of the hindrances to growing fruit and vegetables, moving us closer to reconciling our different approaches. This does not mean we will melt into one view, but rather I suspect we will find more common ground as we gather our resources together to carry out the complex but rewarding work of sustainable gardening.

As I'm writing, dusk is falling at the end of a beautiful summer day. The birds have become quiet and in the distance I can just hear the howling of coyotes. And for some reason I am reminded of a something in Willa Cather's book, O Pioneers!. At the end of Chapter IV, the main character, Alexandra, is describing to a friend she has not seen for many years, why she hopes her youngest brother, Emil, will choose to leave home and travel, like her friend: "Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen.... She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she did n't see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's come back she has been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting."

Like Carrie Jensen, the things that reconcile us and provide meaning to our daily choices often come in unexpected forms. A troubling development in an orchard, a move to another state, something some one says -- it can be anything, but the response is always unmistakable. It takes us out of our comfort zone and re-orients us, making sense in a new way of things we took for granted. Decisions we make at a very local level ultimately make sense when understood in a larger context. Making decisions to grow fruit and vegetable in a sustainable way is as much our responsibility as it is a commercial farmer's. Learning to love one other is an important step to loving the world that is so big and interesting.