My first job ever was at a strawberry farm. At the age of fifteen I had no idea that this endeavor would be the beginning of a career in agriculture. At the time I didn’t really think I was cut out for it. I hated how my hands got so cold planting muddy strawberry plants on a frigid spring day, I was terrible with a hoe, my arms ached at the end of the day. But then again, I got to eat all the strawberries I wanted for free, and I never got sick of them. So maybe I should have seen this coming…

But what I started out to say was that when I closed my eyes at night after strawberry-picking, all I could see was red on green, as my mind’s eye continued the search for ripe berries. Nowadays, when I close my eyes to fall asleep, I see tree branches and potential pruning cuts. While I’m long done in the orchard for the day, my subconscious apparently hasn’t stopped looking for the right branches to remove from its imaginary trees.

On a good day, pruning fruit trees is the best kind of farm chore – repetitive enough that you get into a rhythm, stimulating enough that it keeps your mind active. It’s just you and the trees, the sun is shining, there’s the promise of spring in the air as the buds on the trees start to swell. You can feel your whole winterized self starting to thaw out. A pair of hawks soars and screams overhead, and time flies by as well.

On a bad day, you’re freezing, you can no longer feel your toes in your soaked-through insulated boots (good to -40°, ha!). You’ve had twigs up your nose, in your ears, and almost gouged out your eyes a few times. You’ve been whiplashed by branches in the face, and your brain has turned to mush. You stare at the trees, and while an hour ago you knew just what to do, the branches now have morphed into utter chaos. You’re tromping around, tripping over prunings, weighed down with at least ten extra pounds of warm clothing and hassled by the saw hanging from your belt. And if you were still picturing something too Zen, too romantic, add in the diesel roar of the Brownie (the hydraulic lift used for orchard tasks), the stench of the mushroom farm wafting over from next door, the slog through the rotting pears that have frozen and thawed a hundred times over.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying my first full season of winter pruning. I especially like having a solid answer to that perennial question all farmers face: “So what do you do all winter?” Working on the website, ordering seeds, and generally getting ready for the season doesn’t seem to cut it as an answer. No, I know all you non-farmers still picture us eating bon bons by the fire or lounging on a beach somewhere warm reading trashy novels. The idea of seasonal work is rather novel in our office cubicle culture, and I know it can sound pretty inviting when viewed from that nine-to-five perspective. People are curious what it’s actually like on the ground and hope their romantic suspicions are confirmed.

But I’ve learned that “pruning” is not a sufficient answer for the curious. Pruning is a bit mysterious to most people. Everyone can picture what weeding is like, but what exactly are we doing out in the orchard on a winter’s day armed with saws and loppers? Pruning is a task that needs to be done to some degree in a managed orchard every winter. You prune while the trees are dormant (“winter pruning” is also called “dormant pruning”), and while you can better see the form of tree without its leaves. Though you’re removing wood from the tree, winter pruning is invigorating. In other words, it stimulates growth, so we hope to encourage that growth to go in a desirable direction and fit the chosen form for the tree.

One of our main goals is to manipulate the vegetative and fruiting balance of the trees. The tree only has so much energy stored up, and that energy is going to be divided between vegetative growth (roots and shoots) and fruiting growth (pears, apples, and peaches!). As farmers and eaters, we’re hoping for a steady supply of high-quality fruit. If you’ll think all the way back to junior high life science and remember that lesson on photosynthesis, you can extrapolate that sunlight = fruit. One of the most important things we do when we prune is to “let light into the tree” so that sunlight can reach the fruiting wood. When summer pruning, you can see immediate results – take away a branch with all its leaves and sunlight streams into places that were previously shaded. In the winter, you have to use your imagination a bit. You also have to be able to look into the future of the tree… what will that branch look like after a season’s growth and with the weight of fruit hanging on it?

We’re also looking to correct any problems that have arisen since last year’s pruning (a beginner’s mnemonic I learned is “The 3 D’s”: damaged, diseased and disoriented). Last season was a rough year for fire blight – a bacterial disease that thrives in warm, wet weather and can wreak havoc in apples and pears – so we’re always on the lookout for fire blight “strikes” where individual branches (or worse) have died from fire blight.

Each variety of tree requires different attention, as do young trees and older trees. Just as you master one variety and get lulled into the rhythm of the cuts, it’s time to reset your brain for the next. This is not easy work, taxing on the brain as well as on the arms. Lunch is a welcome break, as is the end of the day, which often comes a little early on pruning days. Throughout the day I balance all the calories burned with steady doses of chocolate. Not quite like eating fresh strawberries all day long, but at some point I usually pull out a Gold Rush apple, stored away for winter, still firm and sweet after four months in the cooler and a fine reminder of the fruits of our labors yet to come.

(For more of Erin’s musings on food and farming read her blog, Fruits Unheard Of)