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.
When introduced to a guest at a party recently, I shared that I work in an orchard. He seemed surprised and responded, “You mean, like, picking fruit?” We chatted briefly and since that conversation I’ve been thinking about everything that leads up to the iconic, but brief, moment of picking fruit within the context of the entire growing season.
Looking back nearly 6 months to frozen ground and blankets of snow, it’s strange to think of the trees as leafless holdouts waiting for their time to shine. With comfy boots and layers of warm clothing, I embraced winter as the time for pruning and learning about all of the different growth habits and training systems for the trees. It was hard to imagine these naked branches being weighed down with clusters of fruit and trying to prune accordingly – they didn’t even have leaves yet!
But before long, the trees burst into bloom and the orchard transformed from bare-boned rows of trees into stunning blocks of pink and white flowers. With spring under way, we focused on tying and training the trees to desired shapes and growing habits: “V’s” for peaches and nectarines; central leaders and open centers for apples, pears, Asian pears, and plums.
With the time for tying and training passed, thinning continues to be the main task, especially among the Asian pears. At first, it seems terrible to snip off so many tiny fruits, but after seeing (and tasting!) the size and quality that the remaining fruit achieves, the hours devoted to thinning are definitely worthwhile.
In the middle of everything, we found time to graft dozens of different apple, pear and peach varieties, notching together rootstocks that control the size of a tree, with scion-wood of the desired tree varieties. The grafts and hundreds of apple trees grown from seed were planted in two new on-farm nurseries.
Watching them bolt into waist-high trees has been exciting sign that there are still so many new and antique varieties of fruit to grow and try – it just takes a few years. I’ve already been so impressed by the Purple Heart and Early Golden plums, Pristine and Redfree apples, Eastern Glo nectarines, and GaLa peaches that were new to me this season!
So in response to my fellow party guest’s earlier question about working in an orchard, in addition to pruning, tying, grafting, planting, weeding, thinning, tasting, and all of the surrounding tasks, my condensed answer is “Yes! – Picking fruit!”
Yes kids, today, we’re talking about everyone’s favorite topic….sex. In the orchard.
Seek no further; unlike some people, we do not post nudies of us cavorting about like these two. And quite frankly, you wouldn’t want to see pictures to that effect anyway!
But the topic of sex came up recently when a farmers’ market customer inquired, “In a large orchard what prevents different kinds of apples from cross pollinating?”
So there you have it – sex! Of course, here we’re talking more about the birds and the bees. Or more accurately in this case, the bees and the wind. And cloning.
No worries, we’re not playing God here, but rather just working naturally with the way many plants go about reproducing themselves.
You see, apple, peach, pear, nectarine (and most other fruit blossoms) do indeed cross pollinate. The wind blows, the bees buzz around, and the pollen is spread about from one tree to another. We actually want this to happen in order for those blossoms to become pollinated and produce a nice big juicy fruit. Fruit trees naturally use the rhythm method to get pregnant with fruit. Please – no condoms ’round the orchard in spring time!
So, cross pollination is a good thing.
Of course, just as in human sex, when you cross two parents you’ll get an infinite number of slightly or greatly different offspring. I know my own mother was always astounded by how different my brother and I could be, even though we came from the same parents. I’m sure you know of siblings in your own extended families who make you wonder the same thing!
Fruit works the same way. Take all of the seeds out of a Gold Rush apple, for example, and plant them. Then wait several years and see what you get. You’ll end up with a whole bunch of apple trees, each one of which produces a different (sometimes vastly different) kind of apple. Some may be sweet, some more tart. Some tiny, some huge. Some more yellow, some mostly red. It’s all in the genes that joined up during orchard sex (um, pollination) season at bloom time.
And here you thought a blooming orchard was just pretty – little did you know what kind of orgy was going on out there. Yikes (or ooooh, depending on your point of view).
Which, then, brings up the question some CSA members had just recently. “Is it true that an orchard like this is made up of clones?”
Well, certainly…but not necessarily entirely.
If we want to be SURE to have a Gold Rush tree, we must plant a grafted tree of Gold Rush. Because, as mentioned before, if we just planted Gold Rush seeds, who knows what we’d end up with!
A grafted fruit tree consists of a rootstock, (also clones, by the way) which will convey to the adult tree the final size and strength of the tree and, to a certain degree, the growth habit and size of the fruit. On top of the rootstock is grafted a wee little bud of the tree you’d like to have. So, all of our Gold Rush trees started out life as buds on an adult Gold Rush tree, which were then grafted on to the particular rootstock we wanted for our orchard.
This is not genetic modification or playing God by any means. Many plants reproduce in manners similar to this, and many plants naturally graft themselves to others, given the right growing conditions.
So, basically all orchard trees are clones of varieties which came before. And all orchard trees have sex (or rather, cross-pollinate). It’s all cool.
Farmer Ike has always dabbled in fruit and vegetable breeding projects (yep, more plant sex!). In these cases, he decides which varieties he’d like to have cross pollinate with each other (kind of like an arranged marriage??). Then he’ll choose, over time and with further selections, the best brand-new varieties which present themselves from that cross. Our apple variety, Monolith, is one such baby of ours. Current breeding projects include potatoes (we’ve got over 80 new kinds to try!), and an apple breeding project crossing Gold Rush with Florina (several hundred of those babies are growing here now).
Sex behind closed doors in many cases is a good idea. But out in the orchard, the trees merrily let it all hang out…and we all happily benefit from the delights of sex in the orchard!
Itzstedter Apfel, Kandil Sinap, and Bloody Ploughman. Cinnamon Spice, Holstein, and King Solomon. Ok – what do all of these names have in common? Other than appearing in this blog post, what these names have in common is they are all apple varieties, and they are some of the 141 new varieties added to our orchard this year.
Names are always so intriguing. Some other varieties we’ve planted this year have yummy-sounding names such as Nutmeg, Early Strawberry, and Red Butterscotch. We can imagine perhaps, what may be in store when we bite into them. But Husk Spice? What flavor might that be?
Some of the newbies will keep us wondering. What in the world might Incarnation, Black Gilliflower, Stump, Suntan, Black Twig, or Fiesta taste like? And what was in the breeder’s head when they named those varieties so? I’m not sure I want to think about the flavor of Herferdshire or the aforementioned Holstein. Cow names? Really??
Some of these new-to-us varieties were obviously named in honor of people. There’s Reverend Morgan, Father Abraham, Ingrid Marie, Crown Prince Rudolph, and, simply, Oliver.
But then there’s some whose names will cause no end to pronunciation difficulties (not to mention spelling difficulties). Red Berlepsch, Zabergau Reinette, and Junaluska, among others which I refuse to spell out more than I absolutely need to. Ooh, copy and paste; problem solved. Gotta love the initial one mentioned today – Itzstedter Apfel, Itzstedter Apfel, Itzstedter Apfel. Say that one fast three times. Oi.
We grafted these and 116 more varieties this year. Bummer is, it’ll be some time before we get a taste of them. (GRAFT FILM)
Ike selected and ordered budwood from a variety of apple collectors, and then we grafted them onto the rootstocks we like to use in this orchard. Rootstocks control the size and other characteristics of the adult apple tree. We’ve got only two itty-bitty baby trees of each variety, and we’re hoping that at least one of each will grow to maturity, although it’s likely we’ll lose a few along the way.
So why add so many more to our current stash of 76 apple varieties?
The answer was revealed very clearly last week when Ike was being interviewed for an educational documentary which was being filmed at our farm. The interviewer asked Farmer Ike what he liked best about farming. Having been married to the guy for 24 years, I figured I’d know the answer. Something along the lines of, “because I like growing things” or “I enjoy having different work to do season by season” or even “I enjoy dealing with the challenges Mother Nature gives us”. But no, his answer was “I just love the experience of trying new apple varieties; nurturing a baby tree for several years and then taking that first bite.” Not the answer I really expected, but not a surprising one either.
Ike continually studies lists of apple varieties put out by other breeders and collectors. His ‘wish list’ for this year’s planting was well over 300 varieties. Thankfully, that was cut in half, or else we’d have to buy a new farm to plant all those trees on!
The other thing coming down the pike in addition to those 141 is a breeding project Ike started last year. He crossed Gold Rush with Florina apples. We’ve got a whole bunch of interesting-looking seedlings from that cross, but it’ll be several years before we get a taste of those. And each one will be different. Hmmm….Gold Rush and Florina as parents? I can’t wait!
In the meantime, these little grafted trees will give us a taste first. There’s one out there called “Westfield Seek-No-Further”. I wonder if it’s true? Seek no further…..nah…..there will ALWAYS be new varieties out there just waiting for Ike to get his hands (and teeth) on.
Anyone have some extra land available? Somehow I think we’re going to need it…..
Change in our pockets is reassuring (unless it’s too heavy or there’s a hole in your pocket)
Living in Changes is rather routine (for the people who live there)
A lane Change can be tricky (depending who’s driving)
“Changes” is good (if you’re a David Bowie fan)
Change can trigger stress or excitement (depending if you’re suddenly be chased by a tiger or have just won the lottery)
Change in the orchard can be stressful, exciting, good, tricky, rather routine, and reassuring. Sometimes all at the same time.
Today, Ike, Brint, and Brady pulled out a number of young peach trees. Cut down in the prime of life (they were 2008 babies), they had to go in order to make room for new babies.
In any orchard, replanting is a common and necessary thing. If you don’t change out old for new, pretty soon the orchard will be old, tired, and non-productive. But why do away with young trees which only first fruited last year? Several reasons. One variety was very susceptible to bacterial spot (which both sounds and looks nasty; we’d rather avoid it if possible), one variety we just had planted too many of to begin with, and one variety just tastes…..bad. Bad. Bad.
As orchardists growing specialty varieties, we have to deal with this kind of thing all the time. It’s kind of like “As Seen on TV” products; sometimes what we get works as promoted, and sometimes it’s, well, a real let-down. You just can’t believe everything you read about (or see on TV), so you have to be prepared to take chances and make changes.
What are we replacing the trees with? Some new-to-us peach varieties which come with stellar descriptions. You’ll just have to stay tuned to this dial to see if they are all they’re cracked up to be.
While we wait, I’ll crank up the Bowie.
In the film of this name (1966), the basic plot revolves around three gunslingers competing to find a treasure of buried Confederate gold. The film is full of gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles, and prison camps; it’s a real Wild West romp.
Here in the Savage East (2010), we’ve also got our share of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We grow our fruit on three different properties (two leased, one owned), and they compete (in their own way) to develop a treasure of amazing fruit. Each property has its strengths and weaknesses, and we never know, until the suspenseful ending of harvest season, which one will prevail. Fortunately, there are not often gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles, or prison camps involved in the process.
Perhaps the analogy ends here, but The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly came to mind as Trouble (note the capital ‘T’) appeared in town on Sunday, July 25th around 3:30 PM. We’ll perhaps look at the three in reverse order:
The Ugly: Young fruits practically exploded by golf-ball sized hail. (Ok, so there are explosions in our story, if not actual gunfights). But, some fruits just had flesh wounds, and the majority of by-standing fruit got through the battle completely unscathed.
The Bad: Evil no-good hailstorms (dressed in black with face masks, no doubt) triggered by too-hot weather and the tumultuous weather patterns appeared on the scene. Fortunately, they can only be in one place at one time, so our other two orchard locations saw neither hide nor hair of them.
The Good: The (many) remaining citizen fruits of outstanding character who stood up to the onslaught are still strong and upstanding. We are thankful and awed by their bravery and fortitude. Three cheers to the brave heroes!
Ok, so we’ve seen dry dusty conditions out there this year – even a tumbleweed or two. We’ve just seen some amazing explosions. And earlier in the season, there were plenty of hangings (weighing down tree limbs to train them into the right position). What’s next? Only one thing – the amazing fortune of colors, sugars, and flavors!
How to pick a peach depends upon who’s picking it: the commercial farmer, the grocery store shopper, the local small farmer, and the farmers’ market shopper. Let’s look at all of them!
The Commercial Farmer: By this, I mean the big mega orchard grower (growing hundreds or even thousands of acres of peach trees!), who wholesales most, if not all of his production. Typically, this grower will pick on a calendar schedule, regardless how not-ripe the peaches are. His goal is to pick a peach which is hard enough to withstand not only shipping over long distances (across country or into a different country altogether) but also can hold up to bouncing around in trucks, ships, and planes for several weeks to a month before it is selected by a customer (usually at a grocery store). To make things easier for this grower, fruit breeders have bred for more and more red skin color on peaches. (By breeding, I don’t mean genetic tomfoolery but good old-fashioned sexual propagation between two peach trees). In heirloom or old traditional varieties of peaches, the little bit of red blush they developed was a sign of ripeness. So, as people grew to equate ‘red’ with ‘ripe’ on a peach, fruit breeders did their darndest to breed peaches that were as red as possible before ripening. To this end, we now have countless varieties of peaches that are practically all red, with little yellow (or white, in the case of white peaches) showing way before when they are truly ripe and ready to be picked. This suits the big mega peach farmer quite well, so he picks when the red color is there and ships them off.
The Grocery Store Shopper: This may have been you at one point or another (it was certainly me many years ago!). You go into a grocery store where they have, piled in tall pyramids of red color, heaps of lovely-looking peaches. Perhaps they’re labeled tree-ripened or local. Perhaps they’re just labeled with a price. Regardless, they look so lovely you just have to take some home. The question next is how to get those rock-hard beauties to soften up? This is where the “ripen in a paper bag” notion came in. As commercial (ie. the aforementioned red-before-they’re-ready) peaches came to the forefront, it became obvious that it was difficult to get the danged things to soften up at home. Fruit gives off ethylene gas, which is a ripening agent. So, by placing the peaches in a paper bag, the notion is the gases will be trapped in the bag and hasten ripening. Problem is, when peaches are picked way-too-early, they essentially die and cannot give off ethylene in the first place. Additionally, since they’ve been shipped and stored in refrigerators for weeks-on-end, any potential flavor components are essentially shot. So, oftentimes those grocery store peaches end up either never softening up properly or they’re mealy or end up moldy before they are eatable. As I always say, just as with grocery store tomatoes…just say NO to grocery store peaches! There’s no point in wasting your money.
The Local Small Farmer: A small farmer (like us!) who sells all (or most, depending on the farm) of their peaches directly to the customer, has a lot more work to do, actually, than the big mega-farmer, in order to pick peaches. For those like us, we want to make sure the peaches are ripe enough that they’ll develop the proper juicy texture and luscious flavors. But in order to do this, we can’t just pick based on red color. We have to look at the ‘undercolor’ of the peach, which can vary from white to brilliant orange depending on the variety. We also have to do some taste-testing (a nice perk of growing fruit, although there really can be too much of a good thing sometimes!). Each and every variety is different in appearance, ripening time, color and undercolor, and flavor, so picking at the optimal time can take several years of learning, evaluating, and note-taking. We also like to make sure that peaches don’t end up already bruised at the farmers’ market or CSA share, so we have to figure out when the optimal time is to pick them that they only have two or three days to go before they’re perfectly juicy and delicious. We have to ‘spot pick’ each tree about 3 times, picking the peaches as they mature instead of all at once. And then we have to get them into the hands of the people who will eat them in fairly short order. Whew!
The Farmers’ Market Shopper: When you shop at a farmers’ market for a peach (remember, you’ve said NO to grocery store peaches!), usually all you need to do is decide which peach to get. If you are buying from a reputable orchardist, the hard part (as mentioned above) has been done for you. Your job is to decide: white or yellow? (whites tend to be sweeter; yellows tend to be ‘peachier’) Peach or nectarine? (nectarines are essentially peaches without fuzz…so give them a try – but not from the grocery store!), large or small fruits (although size doesn’t necessarily matter. Some varieties are genetically smaller and some are larger). If there are several varieties available for sale…which to choose? Most small growers raise many kinds of peaches. Each variety ripens over 7 to 10 days and then the next variety comes into rotation. While many growers just lump them altogether as ‘peaches’, some (like us) like to keep each variety separate and named. Oftentimes, most peaches taste very similar (which is why many growers just lump them together), but sometimes there are standout varieties. So, which to choose? Just ask which one we like the best. You might often get a “well, they’re all pretty much the same and yummy”, but some weeks there will be a definite favorite. Then, just take them home and set them on the counter for a day or two or three (NOT in a bag!). Give them the ‘squeeze’ test. When soft to your liking, grab a napkin and enjoy!
I really like those in-between times of the year, when spring blossoms into summer, summer fades away into fall, when fall hardens into winter (just kidding on that last one). Seasonality is more tangible; you feel on the cusp of something new, even though you’ve experienced it every year of life so far. Perhaps it’s because my birthday falls during one of those times, but I also like that these passages are rooted in natural phenomena: the shortest day of the year, the longest, and those with equal proportions of day and night. Our cultural ideas of the seasons don’t always match up – we embraced summer weeks ago, pulled out our white linen and headed down the shore, but summer officially begins on Monday, June 21st (at 11:28 am to be precise, if you’re hanging out in Greenwich, England). And I’m always amazed (and thankful) that on the first day of winter (winter solstice, the shortest day of the year), the days actually begin to get longer. Winter’s just begun, but the sun is returning. The flip side, however, is that summer solstice signifies the days getting shorter.
Not to get too scientific or biodynamic-sounding on you (because I’m not qualified in either realm), but this seems fitting in the orchard. Spring is the time of new growth: flowering, fruit set, shoot extension. As the days get longer, the branches also elongate (about 12 to 18 inches, for example, in healthy, productive apple trees each year). Spring is now past; vegetative growth has slowed or stopped, and fruit is enlarging and ripening. As the days shorten once again, the accumulation of all that rampant sunshine, transformed by photosynthesis into carbohydrates, is expressed in the fruit. And in the garden at large, planting is almost over; we’re buckling down to reap the harvest for the next several months. The natural cycle – of growth, fruiting, harvest, storage – is of course in line with the seasons.
You’ve probably seen pictures of the bloom at North Star, and you’ve tasted the results of the harvest, but what’s going on in the orchard in that in-between time, before spring gives way to summer and that glorious six months of the year when there’s fruit to harvest? What have we been up to? Certainly not sitting around twiddling our thumbs and watching the fruit ripen on the trees. Spring is a very busy time of year in an orchard, especially in a young orchard like the three-year old orchard in Cochranville.
Unthinned Esopus Spitzenberg
Thinning and spreading. These are the key words. What exactly are we thinning and spreading? It sounds like we’re preparing to paint a house, or perhaps deal with an oil spill. Thinning is a literal thinning out of the fruit. As soon as bloom is over and pollination has taken place, you can see the tiny fruitlets forming at the base of each flower. Every flower has an ovary, and if it’s pollinated, it will form a fruit. The trees do some of their own thinning. “June drops” are the fruitlets that fall off the tree of their own accord (yes, right around June). They’re easy to spot – the fruits aren’t sizing up, and they’re a different color, often a not-so-healthy shade of yellow. Even still, the “fruit set” of a tree is, in our opinion, usually overambitious. The tree doesn’t generally thin enough to meet human standards. The fewer fruits on a tree, the bigger and juicier those fruits become. The tree has a certain amount of resources to spend, and if there are “too many” fruits left on the tree, those sugar resources will be spread awfully thin.
Thinned Gold Rush
So we come in, armed with red clippers if it’s Asian pears, or just fingers if it’s peaches or plums. We remove a lot of fruit, leaving just one every four or six or eight or twelve inches, depending on the variety of tree. As we thin, we’re also selecting for the biggest, nicest, undamaged fruits with the best position on the branch. Catch the Asian pear thinning action on YouTube. Every spring the crew spends weeks and weeks working their way through the orchard, branch by branch, tree by tree.
Spreading, one of the main strategies in tree training, is crucial for the development of young orchard trees. Training and pruning are the two main tools we have for shaping fruit trees, to guide them into the desired form and structure. Well-trained trees will need less corrective pruning later on and will develop a stronger, more fruitful framework, even producing fruit at a younger age. The goal of branch spreading is to “set” the branches at an ideal angle. Branches that grow very upright are vegetative, produce less fruit, and have weak angles. In other words, they form a sharper angle relative to the trunk of the tree, which is more likely to break under the weight of developing fruit. Branches with wider angles (30 to 60 degrees from the trunk is ideal, depending on which tree you’re talking about) are desirable because they will produce more fruit and are stronger, less likely to break. Without getting too technical, this works because there is an inverse relationship between vegetative growth and fruiting growth in trees. The more vegetative growth (i.e. leaves and branches) the tree puts its energy into, the less fruit it produces. Inside the tree, this is all controlled by hormones with fun names like auxins and gibberellins. By simply manipulating the position of a branch (up or down) you can manipulate the expression of these hormones. Pull a branch down, and it will produce more fruit sooner.
Tied plum tree
So, during that window in spring when the tree is actively growing and the branches are more pliable, we head into the orchard to do what I’ve affectionately referred to as “torturing baby trees.” The angles of very small branches can be affected by tools as small as a toothpick or clothespin. Larger branches are spread with metal spreaders of various lengths with pointy ends. One end sticks into the trunk and the other holds the branch in place at the desired angle. Another more drastic, and effective, approach is to tie branches down. A clip is inserted into the ground that holds a loop of string. Another string is then attached that connects the loop to the branch in question, holding it in place. Some of the trees (plums especially are notoriously vigorous) wind up with so many strings that it looks like some kind of Maypole celebration is happening in the orchard. By the end of the season’s growth, the tree’s new woody tissue will have hardened, and the angle we’ve chosen will become permanent.
I wish I could say that we were done thinning and spreading for the season, just in time to celebrate the solstice. But on a farm, there’s always more to be done, and, inevitably, it should have been done yesterday. I wish we were ready to simply revel in the ripe fruit coming off the trees (the first plums were harvested on Friday!), but there are more apple and peach trees to spread, more peaches and pears to be thinned. I suppose it’s also fitting that on the longest days of the year, there’s the most to be done.
It seems like just about everything nowadays is tending towards instant.
Online, of course:
-Connect to the internet, in an instant
-Order a book for your Kindle, in an instant
-Download a song (or a whole album) to your iPod, in an instant
But even in real life:
-Drive-through Starbucks; get your coffee, in an instant
-Order a refill for your prescription at the pharmacy, in an instant
-Know where you’re driving to via your GPS system, in an instant
In this day of ‘instant’, it’s nice to be aware of and appreciate things which do not take an instant:
-A long walk on the beach just prior to sunset
-The growth of your child from babe to functioning adult
-Following the cycles of the farm, from planting, to care, to harvest
I was startled one day in late winter when I received a phone call for someone looking for instant. In this case, an instant orchard. What they were looking for were adult Asian pear trees to put on their property. Not just one or two to fill a spot or two in their landscaping, as I was originally thinking, but an orchard’s worth.
The usual cycle of an orchard starts with ordering trees from a nursery. It can take anywhere from one to three years to receive the trees, depending on the nursery’s supply, how rare the variety is, etc. The trees arrive generally looking like long sticks with a few stringy roots attached. Planting, training, and waiting follows, followed by more training and waiting. And more training and waiting. Finally, several years down the road, you are (hopefully) rewarded with a fine crop of fruit to eat, share, and/or sell. Along the way, you, as an orchardist, make mistakes, learn more about how to be a better orchardist, and attempt to fix mistakes you previously made. In the end, if you haven’t made too many mistakes, the trees have grown tall and strong and pay you back in many ways for all earlier troubles.
This sounds oddly similar to parenting, actually, although we don’t get to (usually) pick out the specific variety of baby we want to raise.
So, these folks who want an instant orchard…well, it just makes me kind of cringe. First off, pulling a fully-grown tree from the ground and transplanting it elsewhere is a very delicate (and expensive) operation. The tree will be in shock. It may not survive the process, much less grow and be healthily productive. I suppose if you have enough money to throw at the project, chances of success would be better, but no matter what, it would still be hard on the tree.
And what of the heart of the orchardist? Carefully selecting and nuturing plus years of care and mistakes are all part of what makes a fulfilled orchardist. We feel great pride when our ‘children’ grow and become the best that they can be.
But an ‘instant’ orchardist? I can imagine that the only pride to be had is in the ability to stroke one’s ego. “Look, I spent $X and have an instant orchard”. Indeed; one that has been shocked through transition and struggles to survive with a caregiver who perhaps hasn’t even read a “Dummies Guide to Orcharding”. The heart and soul just wouldn’t be there, much less the knowledge how to help those struggling trees reach their full potential.
Instant is great for lattes, MP3s, and streaming videos, but for growing children, be they human or tree, I’ll take the long road any day.
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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.
When introduced to a guest at a party recently, I shared that I work in an orchard. He seemed surprised and responded, “You mean, like, picking fruit?” We chatted briefly and since that conversation I’ve been thinking about everything that leads up to the iconic, but brief, moment of picking fruit within the context of the entire growing season.
But before long, the trees burst into bloom and the orchard transformed from bare-boned rows of trees into stunning blocks of pink and white flowers. With spring under way, we focused on tying and training the trees to desired shapes and growing habits: “V’s” for peaches and nectarines; central leaders and open centers for apples, pears, Asian pears, and plums. 
And here you thought a blooming orchard was just pretty – little did you know what kind of orgy was going on out there. Yikes (or ooooh, depending on your point of view).
A grafted fruit tree consists of a rootstock, (also clones, by the way) which will convey to the adult tree the final size and strength of the tree and, to a certain degree, the growth habit and size of the fruit. On top of the rootstock is grafted a wee little bud of the tree you’d like to have. So, all of our Gold Rush trees started out life as buds on an adult Gold Rush tree, which were then grafted on to the particular rootstock we wanted for our orchard.
Farmer Ike has always dabbled in fruit and vegetable breeding projects (yep, more plant sex!). In these cases, he decides which varieties he’d like to have cross pollinate with each other (kind of like an arranged marriage??). Then he’ll choose, over time and with further selections, the best brand-new varieties which present themselves from that cross. Our apple variety, Monolith, is one such baby of ours. Current breeding projects include potatoes (we’ve got over 80 new kinds to try!), and an apple breeding project crossing Gold Rush with Florina (several hundred of those babies are growing here now). 
The answer was revealed very clearly last week when Ike was being interviewed for an educational documentary which was being filmed at our farm. The interviewer asked Farmer Ike what he liked best about farming. Having been married to the guy for 24 years, I figured I’d know the answer. Something along the lines of, “because I like growing things” or “I enjoy having different work to do season by season” or even “I enjoy dealing with the challenges Mother Nature gives us”. But no, his answer was “I just love the experience of trying new apple varieties; nurturing a baby tree for several years and then taking that first bite.” Not the answer I really expected, but not a surprising one either.
The other thing coming down the pike in addition to those 141 is a breeding project Ike started last year. He crossed Gold Rush with Florina apples. We’ve got a whole bunch of interesting-looking seedlings from that cross, but it’ll be several years before we get a taste of those. And each one will be different. Hmmm….Gold Rush and Florina as parents? I can’t wait!
The Ugly: Young fruits practically exploded by golf-ball sized hail. (Ok, so there are explosions in our story, if not actual gunfights). But, some fruits just had flesh wounds, and the majority of by-standing fruit got through the battle completely unscathed.
The Commercial Farmer: By this, I mean the big mega orchard grower (growing hundreds or even thousands of acres of peach trees!), who wholesales most, if not all of his production. Typically, this grower will pick on a calendar schedule, regardless how not-ripe the peaches are. His goal is to pick a peach which is hard enough to withstand not only shipping over long distances (across country or into a different country altogether) but also can hold up to bouncing around in trucks, ships, and planes for several weeks to a month before it is selected by a customer (usually at a grocery store). To make things easier for this grower, fruit breeders have bred for more and more red skin color on peaches. (By breeding, I don’t mean genetic tomfoolery but good old-fashioned sexual propagation between two peach trees). In heirloom or old traditional varieties of peaches, the little bit of red blush they developed was a sign of ripeness. So, as people grew to equate ‘red’ with ‘ripe’ on a peach, fruit breeders did their darndest to breed peaches that were as red as possible before ripening. To this end, we now have countless varieties of peaches that are practically all red, with little yellow (or white, in the case of white peaches) showing way before when they are truly ripe and ready to be picked. This suits the big mega peach farmer quite well, so he picks when the red color is there and ships them off.
The Grocery Store Shopper: This may have been you at one point or another (it was certainly me many years ago!). You go into a grocery store where they have, piled in tall pyramids of red color, heaps of lovely-looking peaches. Perhaps they’re labeled tree-ripened or local. Perhaps they’re just labeled with a price. Regardless, they look so lovely you just have to take some home. The question next is how to get those rock-hard beauties to soften up? This is where the “ripen in a paper bag” notion came in. As commercial (ie. the aforementioned red-before-they’re-ready) peaches came to the forefront, it became obvious that it was difficult to get the danged things to soften up at home. Fruit gives off ethylene gas, which is a ripening agent. So, by placing the peaches in a paper bag, the notion is the gases will be trapped in the bag and hasten ripening. Problem is, when peaches are picked way-too-early, they essentially die and cannot give off ethylene in the first place. Additionally, since they’ve been shipped and stored in refrigerators for weeks-on-end, any potential flavor components are essentially shot. So, oftentimes those grocery store peaches end up either never softening up properly or they’re mealy or end up moldy before they are eatable. As I always say, just as with grocery store tomatoes…just say NO to grocery store peaches! There’s no point in wasting your money.
The Local Small Farmer: A small farmer (like us!) who sells all (or most, depending on the farm) of their peaches directly to the customer, has a lot more work to do, actually, than the big mega-farmer, in order to pick peaches. For those like us, we want to make sure the peaches are ripe enough that they’ll develop the proper juicy texture and luscious flavors. But in order to do this, we can’t just pick based on red color. We have to look at the ‘undercolor’ of the peach, which can vary from white to brilliant orange depending on the variety. We also have to do some taste-testing (a nice perk of growing fruit, although there really can be too much of a good thing sometimes!). Each and every variety is different in appearance, ripening time, color and undercolor, and flavor, so picking at the optimal time can take several years of learning, evaluating, and note-taking. We also like to make sure that peaches don’t end up already bruised at the farmers’ market or CSA share, so we have to figure out when the optimal time is to pick them that they only have two or three days to go before they’re perfectly juicy and delicious. We have to ‘spot pick’ each tree about 3 times, picking the peaches as they mature instead of all at once. And then we have to get them into the hands of the people who will eat them in fairly short order. Whew!
The Farmers’ Market Shopper: When you shop at a farmers’ market for a peach (remember, you’ve said NO to grocery store peaches!), usually all you need to do is decide which peach to get. If you are buying from a reputable orchardist, the hard part (as mentioned above) has been done for you. Your job is to decide: white or yellow? (whites tend to be sweeter; yellows tend to be ‘peachier’) Peach or nectarine? (nectarines are essentially peaches without fuzz…so give them a try – but not from the grocery store!), large or small fruits (although size doesn’t necessarily matter. Some varieties are genetically smaller and some are larger). If there are several varieties available for sale…which to choose? Most small growers raise many kinds of peaches. Each variety ripens over 7 to 10 days and then the next variety comes into rotation. While many growers just lump them altogether as ‘peaches’, some (like us) like to keep each variety separate and named. Oftentimes, most peaches taste very similar (which is why many growers just lump them together), but sometimes there are standout varieties. So, which to choose? Just ask which one we like the best. You might often get a “well, they’re all pretty much the same and yummy”, but some weeks there will be a definite favorite. Then, just take them home and set them on the counter for a day or two or three (NOT in a bag!). Give them the ‘squeeze’ test. When soft to your liking, grab a napkin and enjoy!
