Figs

A few weeks ago, a friend gave me a New Yorker article: “Love the Fig” by Ben Crair from August 10, 2016. In the autumn issue of my favorite literary journal, Orion, the last essay was on the subject of figs. Why are all these figs coming into my life? Is it because I’m feeling naked as my memoir, The Artist and the Orchard, begins national distribution? Like Adam and Eve, I need to cover myself with fig leaves.

Adam and Eve, 2015 Sculpture by Madeleine Lord

We grow two fig trees at the farm. Right now they are outside my studio in clay pots, shedding their leaves and becoming naked themselves. Once we get consistent freezing temperatures, they will go into an unheated garage space. They’re not cold hardy; they can’t stay out all winter like all the other fruit trees.

Meanwhile, I have been reading about figs. As the fruit grower at the farm, I care for the figs. But I have learned that a fig is not a fruit, it is a flower. A flower that doesn’t strut its stuff like most flowers but hides its blossoms inside its fruit. The fig is an inside-out flower. And because of its uniqueness, it requires a unique insect for pollination.

The fig lives symbiotically with one insect, the only one that pollinates its unusual flower: a fig wasp. There are over 750 varieties of fig trees, and most of these have a unique fig wasp to pollinate their flowers.

The female wasp enters the fig through a tiny opening at the base of the unripe fruit. On her way in through this narrow opening her wings are clipped off. She will never fly again. Once inside the fig, she lays her eggs, and then dies all within a couple of days. When the eggs hatch, the males hasten over to the newly hatched females and fertilize them. Then the males tunnel out of the fruit and die shortly after. The young females follow these tunnels and fly out into the world to look for their own fig tree where they can lay their eggs. Of course, and importantly for the fig tree, they carry pollen from their birth flowers to the new flowers. And from these pollinated flowers grow the seeds of new fig trees.

Biologists say that the fig and fig wasp have been courting each other for more than 60 million years. And for almost as long, a broad range of animals have depended on figs as a food source. Figs in temperate climates fruit all year round, ensuring a steady food supply. They are loaded with minerals and vitamins, and have received the designation ‘superfood’ from humans. Of course, the animals knew this without our branding.

Foresters consider figs to be an important tree for deforested areas. With their quick growth, and attraction to many different species of animals: trees shrews, monkeys, bats, birds, hornbills, squirrels, to name a few, the pollinated seeds deposited from these foraging animals help to quickly create a diversified forest.

We had a small crop of figs this year. I wondered if there had been a fig wasp in the area. But then I checked, and the Chicago fig is one of a few varieties of figs that are self-pollinating. A few apples are also self-pollinating, but they produce a better crop with cross-pollination. We all do better with cross-pollination.

Two Figures on Cherry Wood, Sculpture LH Private Collection

Join me for the book launch for The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir next Saturday, October 30 at 2 pm at Sanctuary in Maynard, Massachusetts. Proof of vaccination is required. For more information: https://www.sanctuarymaynard.com/.

If you can’t attend the launch, the book is available at your favorite bookstore, online, and at Loom Press. I am also happy to send you a signed copy.

Happy Fall!

The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir

I now hold the book in my hands. I’m surprised by its slight weight, it’s smooth surface. The cover painting is a detail from a watercolor of the orchard and inside are the rows of trees: training in the Noh Theater in Kyoto, raising my children in the old Baptist church in Groton, Massachusetts, moving to Old Frog Pond Farm in nearby Harvard, restoring an abandoned orchard, Zen Buddhist training, and the important personal relationships that have shaped my life.

The book leaning against the wall sculpture, Repetition of Days, from “The Agricultural Tool Series.”

Like a sapling, this writing has taken years to bear fruit. I have written mostly in winter. However, soon after settling into a writing schedule, the first warmth fills the air and the farming season begins. The doing takes over—the weeding, the planting, the tending. I’ve had to learn patience. While the apple trees have had to withstand a freak October ice storm, vole attacks, and the confusion of spring coming far too early, I’ve also lived through challenging events. The hope, of course, is that I am a little stronger. After all, like the trees, we can learn to be resilient and generous despite the inevitable setbacks the wild beasts leave at our door.

Now the published book is here and I hope many of you will celebrate with me on Saturday, October  30th at 2 pm. We’ll meet at Sanctuary, a recently restored large church in the center of Maynard, Massachusetts. In keeping with the community of individuals of who have contributed to the becoming of the book, a few musicians and poets will share the stage with me. Seating will be around small tables and make it possible to maintain social distances. We’ll wear masks and vaccination certificates will be checked at the door (or a PCR test within three days.)

Copies of The Artist the Orchard: A Memoir will be for sale. If you have already bought one, come anyway and I’ll sign your book. If you live far away, the memoir is now available from the publisher, Loom Press, local bookstores as well as at bookstore.org and other online sites.

Enjoy the new season, and I look forward to sharing this event with you.

Red-Fleshed Apples

Update from a 2017 blog post.

When I moved to Old Frog Pond Farm, rows of Red Delicious apples grew in the back of orchard. An apple mentor told me our pick-your-own customers would not be interested in these apples. I could either pull the trees and replant—a lot of work, or topwork these trees—keep the trunk and roots and grow another variety on top. I preferred the latter.

To topwork an apple tree, you need scion wood—small twigs of first-year growth cut in winter from a dormant apple tree. I attended a scion wood exchange where I grabbed a twig of the Almata apple along with several other varieties that were spread across an old pool table. I chose Almata because it was named after one of the largest cities in Kazakhstan. Almaty means “full of apples” and sits against the foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains, the forests that are the birthplace of the apple we eat today. Returning home with my scion wood I grafted a number of Red Delicious tree. On one of them I grafted the Almata wood.

Scion wood in Red Delicious Trunk

The scion wood inserted all around the trunk grew, and three years later, this tree developed its first flower buds. Apple blossom buds are usually enrobed in a pink sheath, which then open to pale white flower petals. The Almata buds weren’t pink, but dark red, like the scarlet letter stitched on Hester Prynne’s chest in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel. Four days later, when the orchard was a cloud of white petals, this tree’s blossoms opened to a lovely pink. When the leaves came in, they were not green but a bronzy color similar to some crab apples. After pollination, its dime-sized apples were dark red, not green, like every other apple in the orchard. 

Reddish Leaves on the Almata

All summer long I kept my eye on this tree. Friends walking with me through the orchard would remark, “What’s that?” pointing to the Almata. It was easy to see that this tree was marked. The apples were quite small, but perfectly formed and deep red. In mid-August, I stopped by the Almata to taste one of its fruits. My large bite of apple exposed red-colored flesh. It was crazy and wonderful, and all wrong. It didn’t look like an apple at all, but more like a plum. It was hard and sour, not yet ripe.

Charmed, I hurried back to the house to share my discovery with my family. I looked up Almata and learned that this red-fleshed apple was developed by Dr. Nels Hansen at the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station. Dr. Hansen was inspired to breed a red-fleshed eating apple after seeing a red-fleshed wild apple on an 1897 trip to Russia. The Almata is the cross he made between a Russian apple, the Beautiful Arcade and Fluke 38, a crabapple.

Almata apple cut open on August 6, 2021

When I showed this apple to my partner, Blase, he said, “It looks like a mandala.”

Yesterday I noticed that a root stock I had let grow without grafting a variety on it had fruited. To my surprise, when I took a bite, it, too, was red-fleshed, and bitter!

Apple from Bud 9 rootstock

I’ve cooked Almatas in an apple galette. The Almata wove lovely red ribbons through the mound of white apples—it held its color even when cooked. When I made a Russian apple cake, I was again delighted by the flowing red slices of the Almata. Although some people say that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was actually a pomegranate, I disagree. I can imagine the serpent winding around a branch, tempting Eve with a ripe, red-fleshed apple. With only one tree, we don’t have a lot Almata apples, but if you can’t resist cutting one open for yourself, our limited crop is available at the farm stand.

Castor Beans—Who Knew?

Last fall I saved some seeds in a plastic container in our mud room and promptly forgot about them. A week ago, I remembered. I soaked the seeds for two days before planting them in a large clay pot to see if they would germinate. Then I placed the pot on the porch where I would see them and be sure to remember to give them water twice a day. I didn’t want the sprouting beans to dry out. When I returned later that afternoon to water, the pot was gone. That seemed odd. Where did it go?

For the last few years, we’ve grown a singular plant in the garden outside our kitchen door. It’s odd looking, and almost always unfamiliar to visitors to the farm.

           “What’s that growing?” we are asked.
           “It’s a castor bean plant, Ricinus Communis.”

While it can grow as a perennial tree in temperate climates, here in New England, we grow it outdoors in a sunny spot as an annual. This red-leafed variety grows quickly, in one season easily touching eight feet, and it isn’t finicky about its soil. The plant has very large leaves—you wouldn’t be wrong to think a child-sized umbrella—shaped like a giant Japanese maple leaf with deep lobes. We have been buying one plant each spring from Applefield Farm in Stow each year.

Young Castor Bean Plant with flowers and small seed pods.

The small clusters of pale flowers are barely noticeable, though they have a sweet scent. It’s the seed pods that attract attention. Red clusters of spiky balls, a little smaller than horse chestnuts, vie for room along thick stalks. Then, once the pod dries and the seeds within are mature, the pod splits open, and literarily shoots forth its smooth, oval-shaped, brown-red seeds. I can only guess that since it is self-sowing, the plant doesn’t want too much competition at its roots from its own offspring. And with the seeds protected in their spiky pods, birds aren’t helpful with dispersal. And then, there’s the poison, which I’ll get to soon. But first, let’s solve the mystery of the disappearing pot.

            When I saw Blase I asked, “Did you move my pot of castor beans?”
“Oh, I planted a cutting from the Fiddle-leaf Fig in that pot,” he said.

Blase had seen the pot sitting in the corner of the porch, and in need of a pot, he took it, plunging the fig cutting into the center, and setting it on the plant bench in the sun room. He had no way of knowing it was filled with castor beans.

A week later, the castor bean seeds began to germinate. Thick pink bean stalks poked out from the now white lima-bean-size seeds. I dug the seedlings out from around the fig and planted them in individual pots.

And what about the poison?  Well, yes. The plant is considered poisonous because the seeds contain ricin, a serious toxin, especially when injected into the body. Eating enough raw seeds will also make you ill with diarrhea and vomiting. The gritty facts about how it is used as a poison can be found here. Earlier this year a man who worked for a biotech company in Massachusetts was arrested for buying 800 castor beans with the intention of extracting the poison. I didn’t know anything about the dark side of castor beans before writing this blog.

And what about the oil? The oil is not poisonous. It is most often sold as a laxative, but it has lots of other uses: lamp oil, soap, candles, plastics, linoleum, paints, inks, ointments and coolants. The seeds contain close to fifty percent of their weight in oil. When I was waiting for the birth of my second child, my midwife told me she was going away so I needed to get this birth moving. She suggested castor oil. It was disgusting. And I don’t think my teaspoonful had any bearing on Nick’s precipitous arrival a day later.

I did learn that in ancient Egypt castor oil was often used for lamps as well as medicinally. Castor bean seeds have been found inside tombs. I can imagine the seeds were buried to keep the lamps lit while the dried apples strung inside the tomb provided food for the deceased’s journey home. I have lots of castor bean plants growing on our side porch. If they do well, I’ll put them out at the farm stand and you too can pick up one of these show-stopping annuals.