Dear Readers,

After work on Tuesday, I sat at Ike and Lisa’s wooden kitchen table, pen and notebook in hand. Ike sat across from me, his hair in its usual mad scientist frenzy and a cell phone pressed to his ear. He was saying, “We did better than a lot of areas did, I mean, Michigan is getting virtually no crop at all…” He was referring to the late frost we had in April, which destroyed a lot of the buds on trees throughout the Eastern US region. The frost did some damage to our pears, but everything else seems intact.

Lisa and Ike met in college over twenty-five years ago, and started North Star Orchard not long after they graduated. While Lisa is basically the manager of the entire farm operation, Ike is the brains behind the growing practices. Luckily for me, he’s really interested in sharing his thoughts and experiences from a lifetime of farming. So on Tuesday after work, I got to ask him some questions about growing fruit… I left several hours later, having filled pages and pages of notebook paper with his answers. I plan to share some of the wealth of information in Ike’s invaluable brain in many future blog posts. For now, I want to talk about tree hormones.

Yes, trees have hormones. Generally, they do the same thing in trees as they do in animals– that is, send messages that induce changes. Plants don’t have glands that secrete hormones; the cells themselves are in charge of that. Scientists have identified 5 classes of hormones that occur in plants, which do everything from regulating root growth to telling the buds when to bloom.

For the past month, we’ve been “training trees,” or tying tree branches down– attaching them with string to clips in the ground. If all of the branches were left to their own devices, they would naturally grow upwards, towards the sun. They would keep growing and growing, instead of stopping their growth to produce fruit. By tying the branches down and changing the shape of the tree, the tree’s hormones signal to stop growing and start producing. Cool, right?

For the rest of the summer, we’ll spend tons of time “thinning” the trees, or snipping off the majority of baby fruit on the trees so that enough of the trees’ energy goes to producing incredible fruit on a moderate scale. Most orchards use chemical thinners– sprays that cause the tree’s hormones to basically abort many of its blooms. That saves tons of time and money, as workers aren’t needed to thin if chemicals can do it.

Ike uses the safest, mildest thinners on the apples, but they are ineffective on the pears; so we’ll thin hundreds of trees by hand. I spent 16 hours in the pear trees this week, a pair of clippers in my hand, often balanced on a ladder high up in the trees to reach as many of the buds as I could. The work is meditative and really lovely. I love being on a ladder in a tree while the sun shines through the bright green leaves, and the sounds of the leaves rustling and the birds singing is all around me.

I can’t wait to try this fruit… it sure takes a lot of effort! My mouth is already watering for a crunchy, sweet, juicy Asian pear…….

Laura Beth
(read this and other posts from Laura Beth’s blog here)

Back 25 years ago, when Farmer Ike (The Fruit Breeder) and I were getting married in between our junior and senior years of college (how about them apples?!), Ike was considering going to grad school for plant breeding (which he opted not to do) and was already working on developing new varieties of fruit (which he has done).

The first project he started, while we were still in college, gave us a number of trial apple seedlings which moved around with us as we finished school and moved on to work on farms. At one point, we had the apple seedlings growing in pots in our college apartment (which was certainly a conversation starter at parties). To differentiate the individuals, we gave them working names based on characters from the films 2001 and Alien (hey, why not?). That first apple breeding project resulted in our apple “Monolith”, which is, you must admit, a more interesting apple name than the others had. Apples “Hal”, “Floyd”, “Ripley” and “Bishop” are definitely less-interesting names, but “Monolith” is still a conversation starter.

“Monolith” was a long time coming, what with us graduating and then moving several times over the next 5 years before we started North Star Orchard and could give it a permanent home.

The next fruit breeding projects yielded the new peach varieties “Margaret” and “Erin”, both of which are fairly petite, but very flavorful and juicy. “Erin” was named for Ike’s orchard assistant Erin. And “Margaret”? I have no idea. Ike says he just likes the name. (I notice there is no “Lisa” anywhere abouts….)

The Fruit Breeder is back to apple variety development projects now. One, started a couple years ago, is a cross of Gold Rush and Florina. Those trees, now over 6 feet tall are in later stages of selection.

Making selections in fruit breeding reminds me of some of those reality TV shows where people get whittled down to where there’s one left in the game. Same things go here. Potential varieties are culled out based on their lack of disease resistance, a poor growth habit, and eventually, by the taste of the fruit they bear. Unlike those TV shows, however, we don’t take great glee in tossing out the ‘losers’. But decisions are made nonetheless, and may the best variety win.

Please take note: The Fruit Breeder makes use of plain old ordinary plant sex to develop new varieties, not modern in-the-lab type genetic engineering or GMOs (genetically modified organisms). For more info about “Sex in the Orchard”, check out our blog post from last year here.

Just last week, The Fruit Breeder made a bunch of selections from new fruit breeding projects he started last year. Although to us, it looked like he was tossing them aside willy nilly, in each case he was making real decisions on these little babies’ first efforts of life. The ‘winners’ were planted out in rows in our front field, right next to the ‘teenagers’ who went through the same selection process last year.

Now that we have space to plant so many babies, we certainly don’t name them all. Back in the college days, we started with only five babies, so naming came naturally. Now, there are hundreds. But someday there may be only one or two “winners” from these crosses and then we’ll have to go about the difficult process of naming them.

We may have to go with names from some shows/movies which are more current. How about “Leela”, “Sheldon”, or “Schrute”? Hmmm….we may need to work on that. But with long-term projects like this, The Fruit Breeder has plenty of time to contemplate names. Although, I’d still like to know where “Margaret” came from!

Dear Readers,

Say you want to plant an apple tree. So you bite into a Honeycrisp apple, save the seeds, dig a hole in the yard, and put a seed in. You expect to have Honeycrisps in a couple of years’ time. Right?…

Wrong! The seed that you planted will create an apple tree, but that apple tree may not resemble a Honeycrisp tree at all. Lisa explained it like this: two people get together and have a baby. Can you expect that baby to be exactly like its parents? Not at all! Same with fruit trees. So your “Honeycrisp” tree may bear good apples; but it’s possible it will have yucky apples, or no apples at all, or it may be prone to disease, unlike its parent tree.

So, where do apple trees come from? Most orchards graft their trees, which means attaching the branch of one apple tree to the trunk of another. The result will be apples like those from the branch you’ve attached. There are several kinds of grafting; we used whip grafting.

Ike has a long list of apple varieties he wants to plant– see above. He ordered a few scions, or small, budding branches, of each variety. We grafted them onto the rootstalk, which is a generic apple tree that will provide the root system for the tree once it’s planted.

Here’s the fun part. Using a knife, the grafter makes a cut that exposes the inner wood on one end of the scion, and the same cut on one end of the rootstalk.

The grafter makes a slit in each cut so that the scion and rootstock will fit together.

The two pieces have to fit together as exactly as possible. They will heal into one piece, so the more exactly they fit, the easier it is for them to heal neatly.

Here’s the connected wood, all wrapped up to heal. That rubber band covers special grafting tape, both biodegradable. Once the tree has healed and grows, the bandages will snap off.

Each tree is labelled and put in a bucket of water, roots down.

Are you all ready to plant your own orchard now? Grafting is actually the easy part. What comes next is more challenging– keeping the tree healthy once it’s planted in the ground. Disease, pests like insects and rodents, and weather can be harsh enemies to young trees.

Claudia (on the far right above) was a rock star, grafting with Ike for hours and hours. The rest of us bandaged up the trees and labelled them. We listened to the Beatles, thanks to Karen’s Ipod, and Ike told stories of his various adventures. After such meticulous work for so long, we got pretty silly towards the end of the day. There were lots of giggles.

Speaking of giggles: there are some goofy apple variety names out there, like James Kirk, which Ike ordered because he likes Star Trek. We already grow Enterprise apples, so all Trekkies will feel welcome at our orchard. Here are some other funny ones, from hundreds of tree varieties that have been grafted at North Star:

Bloody Ploughman (yum…?)

Freiherr von Berlepsch (try pronouncing that, let alone saying it three times fast)

Lord Hindlip (sounds like a Princess Bride character)

Green Cheese (again. yum…?)

As always, feel free to comment and ask questions!

Laura Beth

1 big assortment of baby trees + 1 bunch of awesome helpers = 1 brand new orchard!
This project definitely deserved a video, so here it is!

PS. These are the trees I’ve been writing about lately in the posts “141” from last spring and in “20 Years of…” which celebrates the first orchard we planted as well as this new one. New Farm Helper Laura Beth also wrote about her planting adventures here.

If you’d like to share in this new adventure, you can sponsor one of these babies, for yourself, a special someone, as a memorial or as a gift to grow up with (for a baby). Click here to sponsor a tree and help to flavor the future!

Dear Readers,

Welcome to my first post of the 2012 season!

It is the season for planting, and we at North Star Orchard are busy tucking apple, peach, Asian pear trees, and grape vines firmly into the ground. They arrive from our suppliers in 10 foot long, heavy boxes, their roots kept moist inside plastic wrap. Each morning, we load a truck with the boxes and drive less than a mile through rows of blooming apple trees to the next field. One person drills holes in the ground with the tractor, and everyone else plants the baby trees, using hoes to surround each tree with a small mound of dirt.

I have some exciting news… that tractor driver is ME!!!

On my second day at work, Ike (the farmer and co-owner of North Star Orchard with his partner and wife, Lisa) taught me how to drive a tractor on the quirky Kubota L210. I learned to drive stick at Drumlin last season, so I had some elementary knowledge of how to drive a tractor. In the past week, I have spent almost 20 hours driving the L210. My job is to back carefully up to equadistant marks along the rows, and drill a hole with the drill attached to the back of the L210.

Lisa and Ike are trying something new with these baby trees: they are asking people to sponsor a tree. Sponsors get a tag on their tree, free gifts from North Star, and information about how their tree is doing over the years to come. Some people give the gift of a sponsorship as a memorial; others do it to have a baby tree in their life. If you’d like to sponsor a tree, don’t be shy! Click here for more info.

At North Star Orchard, we grow literally hundreds of varieties of fruit. In the past week, I have had a couple of Goldrush apples left over from the 2011 season; every bite contains a shock of rich apple-cider flavor that develops with each second. As Ike said to me at my interview in the fall, “We are big fans of crisp.” That’s when I knew I had to work here; there is nothing better than a perfectly crisp apple, straight from the orchard. Over the season, I hope to open my imagination to a world of fruit that I couldn’t have dreamt of; and I will be sure to share it with you.

As always, please ask questions, and comment! If I don’t know the answers, I’ll ask the farm crew, and pass along the info. Enormous thanks to Lisa, who took the pictures of my first time on a tractor.

Love,
Laura Beth

P.S. And Lisa put together this lovely video of pictures, detailing our work this week… to some VERY enthusiastic music. This is how excited we are ….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGmbewWSB4

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.
-Chinese proverb

I came across this proverb a couple weeks ago, right at the time when I was seriously contemplating the fact that this year marks the 20th anniversary of North Star Orchard. It was really amazing timing, finding that proverb. Ike and I planted our original orchard twenty years ago, in 1992, and this year we are planting a brand-new, very unique orchard.

The “best time” to plant trees was twenty years ago, although we didn’t know it. Just think about twenty years ago with respect to the locally-grown foods movement -it basically didn’t exist. Sure, there were farms around, but most of them were not growing food to be consumed locally. There were NO producer-only farmers’ markets in this area. There were NO CSAs in this area. None. My, but times have changed.

This is an age, however, when many of us are very afraid of where things are headed. Climate change, GMOs, rising gasoline prices, fracking, political and economic nonsense…the list goes on and on. Yet, we should also think about the GOOD things that have happened over the past twenty years: the rise of Farmers’ Markets, CSAs, reusable totes taking the place of plastic bags for many people (including me), more people learning how to prepare food or even grow food at home. These are all fantastic changes we’ve seen, and they are something to keep in mind when you’re feeling low about the other very concerning things going on. As Shannon Hayes, author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture said in a talk recently, “Hope is a renewable resource.” Thank you, Shannon; we definitely needed that. (Note to self: repeat this phrase daily)

Lucy Larcom, a 19th century writer, poet, and model for changes in women’s societal roles, said, “He who plants a tree plants a hope.” I concur. Our “hope” in 1992 as we, a young couple in our mid-twenties, planted our first trees was simply that we’d be able to make a living at being essentially a micro-orchard. No one planted orchards of 4 acres in size at that time. There was also no market for our fruit at the time we planted. Things changed as our farm grew, thankfully, and our hopes were realized when the first producer-only market in the area, the West Chester Growers’ Market, opened during the first year our little orchard bore fruit.

Now is the “second-best” time to plant trees. And it’s true. Many of us now have a new vision- to live as responsibly as we can, and try to encourage others to do likewise, not by coercion or argument, but by example. We see a new generation of children to whom going to the farmers’ market or CSA is the normal way to get food, and to whom reusing bags and enjoying meals as a family is the normal way to live. Just think about that for a moment. What a delightful change and improvement from twenty years ago!

Our “hope” now, in 2012, as we plant this brand-new orchard is that we’ll see more positive changes growing right along with them. As per with our original planting, we have no market for this new fruit. Just how does one market literally hundreds of varieties of apples? Seventy varieties was one thing, but 300 or more? I think they’ll be well accepted, however. Those aforementioned positive changes, including the new ‘normal’ some of our children are experiencing, will make it easy for people to want more: more connection to real food, more focus on sustainable living, more desire to connect with people and the planet.

I look forward very much to the next twenty years of North Star Orchard. Looking back, I see only amazing and positive changes with regards to that original planting. Going forward, this new planting of antique and oddball varieties will surely do the same.

My grandfather once said, “How drab this world would be if all flowers were the same color, or if all trees bore the same fruit, or if all the fish of the sea looked alike. How tiresome and dull it would be also if people looked alike, dressed alike, and thought alike.” Indeed. I look forward to the next twenty years with anticipation. Meeting new people, exploring new ideas, learning new skills, and tasting new flavors will be a grand adventure. Then I’ll be able to reflect on all the positive things which have happened since now.

Writer Bryce Nelson said, “People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people.”

Indeed this is true. But this writer would prefer to put it in a more positive light, so here it is: “People who sustain trees live in a world which sustains people.” I like that one much better. Thank you, everyone, for sharing the journey with us! (You can help flavor the future by sponsoring one of these special trees. Click here for more information.)

PS. Now maybe you can see why the title of this post is limited to “20 Years of….” Fill in the blank as desired: trees, the farm, fruit, changes, a local foods movement, variety, hope, love.

One of my favorite things about going to market is answering (or trying to answer) the questions people ask as they walk up to the table. With so many beautiful but uncommon varieties of apples, postures range from hesitant interest, to unbridled curiosity. Common questions include: Which are the sweetest? Which are the most tart? What should I use for baking? What’s with this brown apple? Which is your favorite?

Some questions are easier to answer than others: Usually, the apples are arranged from sweetest to most tart, with a few varieties in the middle, to make things easier for everyone. The best apple for baking depends largely on personal preference. The brown apples are Asian pears…just kidding. Russeted apples like Hudson’s Golden Gem and Razor Russet have great textures that are different from all the others, usually with a less noticeable skin. My favorite apples seem to change each week, with Spitzenburg topping the list currently and Golden Russet following closely behind.

My favorite question at market always starts the same way, “I had this one apple…can you tell me what it is?”, and a wild goose chase of apple identification begins. If North Star had it recently and clues include the flavor, color, or some part of the name, a proper I.D. is fairly easy to come by. If the apple was from last year, or much earlier this season and the details are hazier, it gets a little tough.

Understandably, we have the desire to find out which varieties we enjoy, but talking with people about their recently-discovered-yet-unnamed-favorite apple brings up a deeper topic of what most of us have come to expect with food. Often, we want the same thing again and again throughout the year, and that’s not what you get from locally-grown fruit. There is this tension between seeing the same few varieties of apples in any supermarket no matter what time of year, compared with a wider variety from the orchard that changes weekly. The Summer Blaze apples picked in August won’t be around with the Emperors picked this week – and that’s a good thing.

There is something about stepping away from the regular handful of apples that you can find anywhere at any time, and enjoying new flavors from a freshly picked apple that you’ve never tried before, even if it means waiting a whole year to taste it again. There are so many incredible varieties to try in the meantime, that even if you forget the name, you can grab someone at the farm or market and explain, “I had this one apple…can you tell me what it is?”

I came to work last Monday morning unsure of what to expect in the wake of Hurricane Irene. I didn’t bother asking the obvious questions about the state of the orchard – Is there any fruit left on the trees? How many trees blew over? Can we straighten them back into place?

As the morning unfolded, we tackled one task at a time, feeling the pressure of a full schedule and growing to-do list. Stepping away from the normal work of picking and sorting, we added work we had to allot time for: Clearing downed trees from the driveway and the orchard – 12 hours; hammering stakes and pulling fruit trees back into position – 15 hours; straightening hundreds of blown-over young trees in the nursery – 5 hours; and still so much more to do.

Rows of Asian pears became most noticeable by the fruit covering the ground, rather than hanging from the trees. A stretch of large plum trees looks pretty good, until you begin asking if they were all leaning slightly before the storm. Toppled-over peaches and apples are much more obviously affected; lying down with roots straining in the soil or snapped beyond survival.

Yet, in the midst of visible signs of the weather’s unpredictability and the time spent repairing what was damaged, the regular work moves forward. Crimson Crisp and huge Royalty apples turn glowing reds and deep purples that signal they are ready to be picked. Fantasia nectarines ripen and get picked for their third time. Hosui Asian pears move from green to tan as the flavor goes from good to exceptional, and the trees yield dozens of bushels of ripe fruit.

While a lot of work still remains to clean up after the storm, I’m seeing the practical merit of growing such a wide variety of trees on different training systems in the orchard. When you see how the damage from last weekend affected those varieties closest to being picked, but didn’t devastate the orchard entirely, growing dozens of varieties that ripen at different times not only keeps the orchard exciting, but makes sense in a business so deeply affected by the weather. So as we keep working to straighten trees back into position and get the orchard back into order, there is more than enough fruit to keep busy picking as we continue moving forward through the season.

There’s something about working in the tree nursery that’s really exciting.

Witnessing trees in their earliest stages and growing so quickly provides a perfect complement for the more consistent work of picking.

Earlier this spring, we grafted hundreds of pieces of scion wood from desirable varieties to rootstocks that determine tree size, and since then I’ve been intrigued by the whole process of raising young fruit trees.

Maybe it’s the rows of fluttering nametags for all of the pears, peaches and apples that I’ve never heard of before, but which have stories behind them. (The picture here shows apple trees on the right and peaches on the left in the nursery)

Or, it could be the different types of grafting, like T-Bud grafting, where next year’s flower buds are placed under the bark of peach rootstocks which were previously planted and already looked like small trees.

Even weeding seems so rewarding when you expose the contrast between rows of young vigorous trees stretching toward the sky and the dark and crumbly soil in which they are anchored.

As we dealt with weeks of hot and dry weather earlier this summer, a lot of the newly grafted trees did not make the sensitive union to begin growing together, and several withered.

However, some of the grafts which looked snapped or bent way beyond hope have taken hold and are growing to heights over my head, even with a 90-degree bend where they were grafted! The 5-foot tall bamboo stakes that support the trees seemed like overkill at first, when the trees were a knee-high, but are now steadily being outgrown.

While it takes a lot of time to work with so many tiny trees, grafting is often the only means for accessing a lot of different varieties.

Many of the varieties of scion wood selected come from smaller orchards and nurseries during the spring, so when they don’t graft successfully, it can be a frustrating wait until new wood can be ordered for another try the following year. Still, for every tree that didn’t make it, a bunch did, which means we are well on our way in an exciting several-year journey to taste even more untried (for us) fruit varieties and flavors.

Really…just look at them. With nifty patterns of variegated brown symmetrically arranged on its back, it could be the model for a new variation on hunters’ camouflage gear or other apparel dye patterns. It’s really pretty neat….beautiful in fact, if you don’t think too much about what the patterns and colors are attached to.

And the smell of the stinkbugs? Well, scratch and sniff. For some folks, the smell is downright revolting. For others (like me) it smells kind of like paper. Some people smell cilantro. So it’s weird, but not always completely offensive (unless you think about it).

The brown marmorated stinkbug (BMSB), as you may have heard, is wreaking havoc all over the midAtlantic states, and is spreading further. Florida is very worried about its arrival.

BMSBs are an invasive pest which are native to the Japan and China. They were first discovered in Pennsylvania in the late 90s, and have multiplied in such numbers that they’re invading homes and destroying crops. Their native predators, alas, did not travel with them, so they are pretty much on their own here and having a grand feasting party.

BMSBs love all kinds of fruits and veggies. Fruits like peaches, nectarines, apples, and Asian pears are very tasty to them (and hey, why not?). Their favorite vegetable around here seems to be edamame soybeans and sweet corn, but they’ll dabble in other veggies as well. They literally suck on the fruit in question, and leave a dimpled area. Sometimes (like if their dinner was interrupted), that’s all you’ll see is a dimple. Other times (when they can feast uninterrupted) the interior flesh may be discolored a bit or even a little ‘corky’. It’s not harmful to eat it or eat around it, thankfully.

For large commercial farms which sell to wholesale markets, any amount of BMSB damage on the crop makes it completely unsaleable. Some reports show that $37 million in crop sales were lost last year due to BMSB nibbling. Ouch. And it’s only going to be worse this year. Since the wholesale (ie. grocery store) market demands perfect, farms which rely on wholesaling are getting hammered.

Meanwhile, lots of studies are being conducted looking for ways to control the problem. Importing the BMSB’s natural predator is being considered, new chemical sprays are being studied and developed, and other less invasive means are being considered. Here at the farm, we are currently talking with a company which is trying to develop a solar-powered BMSB trapping system for commercial application. We’ll keep you posted on developments!

In the meantime….what is the beauty of stinkbugs?
1. They do look kind of neat (if you don’t mind antennae and creepy-crawly legs)
2. We’re all in the same boat here: you’ve got them in your houses and I have them on my farm. So, we can commiserate together (the ties that bind and all).
3. A little dimpling is just that….a little dimpling. Adds character perhaps?? We’ll keep the fruits the BMSBs really feasted on (like those pictured here) at home, but we trust that the occasional dimple in your fruit will be tolerated.

We’re all in the same boat on this one, and until a (hopefully non-toxic) solution is found, the BMSB will just bring us closer together. Complaints about them can continue now!