Tantalizing Fruit

Tantalus was a rotten apple! An invited guest on Mt Olympus, he stole nectar and ambrosia and brought it back to impress his friends. But that wasn’t the worst. Later when the gods came to dine with him, he cut up his own son, Pelops, boiled him, and served him to his guests. The gods suspected something was off with the menu and declined to partake; but poor Demeter, distracted by the loss of her daughter, Persephone, took a bit of shoulder.

Zeus ordered that the parts of Pelops be collected and that he be put back together. Hephaestus made him an ivory shoulder, and he grew into a handsome youth, married, and had children of his own. Zeus killed Tantalus and then punished him further by making him stand waist-deep in water while overhead he was shaded by a large apple tree ripe with fruit. However, whenever Tantalus went to drink the water, it dried up; and each time he tried to pluck an apple, the wind blew the branch out of reach. He was trapped inside perpetual desire.

Orchardists desire a beautiful, abundant crop. They worry about the crop all year long. There’s no off-season. Weather can freeze the buds or the blossoms. Even the almost ripe fruit can be the unlucky destination for thirty seconds of hail. Then the apples will be pock-marked and susceptible to disease. Yet, still, growers of apples persevere. There’s something about growing fruit that challenges the soul. And the best part is that it requires hands-on attention.

How surprised I was to learn of a robotized apple picker being developed by Abundant Robotics, Inc. The picker will be drawn by a tractor with nozzles reaching out, up, and down, vacuuming the fruit off the tree. Each step of progress seems to take humans away from touching what we do, touching what we grow, automatizing our lives. Touch is a profound human experience. Think of an infant and how these two senses, touch and taste, are the foundation of her first relationships.

When I first saw the advertisement for this small farm in Harvard, MA, it said five bedrooms, a detached garage/barn, apple orchard, and a chicken coop. At that moment in my life, I was unsure about everything. I had never before contemplated owning a house, but I had to find a place to live. I wanted a place that would have rooms for my three children and a studio for making sculpture. I walked with a realtor through the kitchen where dark pine boards covered the walls and ceiling. There were no drawers or cabinets, only open shelves for plates, bowls, and glasses. Above a wood-burning cook stove hung a patchwork of blackened iron pans. This was a real work kitchen. We walked upstairs and I thought, If the house has hot water, everything will be fine. In the master bath, I turned on the hot water faucet in the 1960s avocado-colored sink. Warmth ran over my fingertips.

Maybe because I am a sculptor I trust what I feel with my hands. That touch of warmth gave me the confidence to move to the farm. But I had no idea that once I started to grow apples, I would become like Tantalus, desirous of plucking more and more fruit.

Women and Apples, Photo Credit: Carol J. Hicks

Even with extreme shifts of weather and unexpected environmental conditions, I persist. In winter, walking through the orchard, bending down the branches, pruning off what is no longer needed, and running my fingers over the frozen fruit buds, I fall again in love with the promise of fruit. And after a full day pruning in the winter cold, I sit in my favorite armchair and read the descriptions of heirloom and modern apples in my stack of saved nursery catalogues. I can’t help but be tantalized. I order a few new varieties for spring planting — a perfect Valentine's Day gift!

The Orchard in Winter

In 2006, when I was first learning about organic apple growing, I heard about a group of holistic apple growers who gather in western Massachusetts once a year for twenty-four hours of apple conversation. I signed up. Thirty men and two women besides myself, met at noon at Stumps Sprouts, a retreat center in Rowley, Massachusetts. We began with a vegetarian lunch. In the dining room an earthy energy emanated from the rugged men in Carharts, flannel shirts, and work boots. One thin man with a long grey beard had Felco pruners hanging on his belt, just in case something needed pruning. Up in the barn, to begin our first session, Michael Phillips, the organizer and author of The Holistic Orchard as well as the forthcoming, Mycorrhizal Planet, asked us to introduce our orchards. One of the men I met was Alan Suprenant who has a small orchard in Ashfield, Massachusetts. I asked Alan if he would be a guest blogger. 

The Orchard in Winter by Alan Suprenant

When we think of an orchard, we think about eating delicious fruit in the crisp, fall sunshine. We think of the wonderful fragrance of the trees in bloom, the gentle colors of the blossoms, the soft breeze that blows petals around our feet. But what of the orchard in winter, when trees seem to sleep, limbs akimbo against their bed of snow?

We can learn a lot from spending time with the orchard now, at this quiet time of year, observing what, on the surface, might at first seem unobservable. There’s a lot to learn about ourselves as well, there being many parallels between our lives and the lives of the trees.

Winter dormancy finds the orchard patiently waiting for a new year and the beginning of another growing cycle. This can be a time of patience and unfolding for us as well, as we anticipate and plan for what’s next in our lives and our lives with the trees. There’s little to do and much to be — loving, appreciative, optimistic, excited — as we wait for spring. How might we do this quietly, the way they do? Perhaps we just sit and watch them be still, as the light changes and the wind blows.

Trees in Winter, Photo: Alan Suprenant

Snow on the horizontal limbs of a well-pruned fruit tree allows us to clearly see the tree’s  bones, the structure that supports the weight of a good crop. The fruit buds have already formed last summer. They will absorb the sunlight and ripen the fruit to its utmost potential.

What does it mean for our lives to have good bones and a structure that supports us in bearing fruit? Good friends? Work we love? Self care? Balance in what we do? What feeds us in our lives, and how might we absorb it for our ripening?

A fruit tree should be pruned each year. Removing what isn’t needed helps ripen the fruit. Sometimes, looking down at a growing pile of discarded wood, it seems like I’m taking an awful lot away. But I’m paring down to what is essential for and about the tree, so it can become more of itself. It’s an art, this figuring out what to keep, and well worth it, because what grows now will be healthy, productive, and strong.

Pruning our own lives can be equally challenging, as we figure out, learning as we go  — what is essential about and for us. What might we discard that no longer serves us? An assumption? A belief? A story that limits us or people we know?  How might we prune our relationships so they grow stronger and yield the best that we and others have to offer? 

Some of the branches I cut in winter, scions, are saved for grafting onto rootstock in the spring. You make new trees this way, by gently inserting new wood into old, binding the two together until, fed by the soil and the sun, they become one. What parts of others might we take into ourselves to grow something new? And how will our new branching grow over the years? All this watching and waiting makes me better with the trees. I’m more able to understand the way they grow, what they need, how they respond to weather and light. I try something and then I pause — for a minute, a month, or a year — and see what happens, what the trees and my experience tell me. And it makes me better with my life as well. I’m more able to let things and people take their natural course. I can see more clearly what someone needs in order to feel safe or productive or loved.

Teaching people about my orchard gives me the opportunity to share not just the technical things — which limbs to take, what varieties to choose, how to hold the knife to make a good graft — but the essence of the orchard — a place of profound learning, quiet and, ultimately, delight. 

Winter Shadows, Photo:Linda Hoffman

Artistic, Botanical, and Social Diversity

In 1887, the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. hired an immigrant artist to be on its staff. Born in Germany, Wilhem Heinrich Prestele’s parents emigrated to the United States with their family in 1843 when Wilhelm was five years old. His father, Joseph Presetele, had been a head gardener for King Ludwig I of Bavaria and a painter of fruits and flowers.

In his mid-twenties, William Henry Prestele, as he was now called, was a struggling artist living on Ninth Avenue in New York City with a wife and three children to support. William had inherited his father’s abilities, and when the opportunity to make a series of nurseryman’s plates for a Bloomington, Indiana, nursery came up, he packed up his young family, moved from New York to Indiana, and started his career as a botanical illustrator. None of the plates from this time exist, but an 1869 edition of Gardener's Monthly wrote:

We have now before us a fruit piece...prepared by W. H. Prestele. We are in the habit of admiring European art in this line, and have often wished Americans could successfully compete with it. We now have it here. We never saw anything of the kind better executed from any part of the world. 

Prestele’s next position was in the USDA’s new pomological division. He painted watercolors for the National Agricultural Library’s collection, which grew to hold 7,584 watercolors of different varieties of fruits and nuts, including 3,802 paintings of apples. There were 21 artists who contributed to the collection, and nine of them were women.

Dolls Autumn Apple painted by William Henry Prestele, U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland

The watercolors and drawings of fruit by these artists are among the most beautiful of early American art, no less amazing than the landscape paintings of the same era by the likes of Thomas Cole and his student Frederic Church. Though these artists had widely divergent subjects—towering mountains and flowing water on the one hand, versus seedpods, blossoms, and fruit on the other — they shared a desire for scientific accuracy and transcendent awe for their subjects. Americans’ appreciation for wilderness seemed to have paralleled their enjoyment of the apple.

The consumer knew that some apples were better for dessert, and some for pies, while others needed to be stored for several months to develop their flavors. The public appreciated the details of their differences — one licorice, another bitter, some with hints of orange, others lemony, nutty, or cinnamon-ny. The Nomenclature of the Apple by W. H. Ragan, printed in 1905, listed the unique apples offered by nursery catalogues from 1804 to 1904 — there were 6,654! The 19th century was a heyday for apples.

In the 1920s and 30s, with more people living in cities, the industrialization of food production advanced. Longer shelf life and ease of shipping became more important than taste. It was far easier to focus on a few varieties for mass production. It was all about commerce, all about looks; and the appreciation of the unique tastes of locally picked apples vanished. By the time my mother shopped for apples in Philadelphia in the 1950s and 60s, there were only a handful of apple varieties available in the supermarket. I remember liking the tart Winesap, while my brother preferred the sweeter Red Delicious.    

I love the fact that the USDA hired artists to create extravagantly detailed renderings of fruits and nuts. We have lost a quality that comes with hand-painting, handwriting, and drawing. Sharing is a button on Facebook, and a catalogue is a collection of photographs. But more importantly, as these few varieties were crossed and re-crossed, their good taste and their health diminished. Red Delicious stayed a lovely red on the outside, but inside became mealy and boring. Unlike in a diverse orchard, where one variety might suffer insect pressure, while other varieties are ignored by pests; the insects prepared thorough, full-on attacks and feasted in these monocultures. As a result, pesticide use greatly increased. As any biological grower knows, diversity is key for healthy agriculture.

Diversity is also key to responding to climate change. A Northern apple grower might soon need to plant some Southern apples that don't require as many chill hours. Apple trees start to grow only after they receive a certain number of chill hours followed by heat. Each variety has its own ‘chill’ requirement.  To read more about chill requirements for both apples and people read The New Year 2016 blog.

Diversity is key in every aspect our lives — the food we eat, the people we interact with, the news we read. We don’t always realize how we insulate ourselves and build walls around many aspects of our lives. We need healthy ecosystems just as much as we need healthy societal systems. And we need imagination! My friend, Vico Fabris, paints beautiful imaginary botanicals.

Azumacea, Vico Fabbris

Written in Vico’s native Italian under this painting is local legend about the plant, its medicinal properties, fragrance, and source. Vico celebrates diversity in every one of his paintings. 

I doubt either of us could find support as artists in this United States government. When our President Elect asked Warhol to do a portrait of Trump Tower, Trump was “very upset that [the series] wasn’t color-coordinated,” and the deal fell through.  We’ll all just have to take down that wall brick by brick., and keep America as artistically, botanically, and socially diverse as possible.

Southern Apples, an Elephant, Monkey, Rabbit, and Bird, Two Mango Trees and a Birthday

I celebrated my 60th birthday this week. My partner, Blase, gave me a first edition of the book Old Southern Apples, written by Lee Calhoun. Southern apples might sound like an oxymoron, since not many people think of the South as an Eden of apples. But over 1300 varieties originated south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and these apples are an important part of the area’s agrarian history. Old Southerners not only talk about Bloody Butcher corn and Red Ripper peas, but the now extinct apples like Fall Ambrosia (sounds so delicious), and the still available Limbertwigs.

Old Southern Apples describes the unique features of over 1600 apple varieties (though 300 of them originated elsewhere but were grown in the South). The book divides these apples between 300 still growing or available at nurseries and 1300 now extinct Southern apples, the names and descriptions mostly taken from old nursery catalogues (a coincidence that both numbers are 300). The book also contains forty-eight plates of hand-painted apple pictures selected from the seven thousand in the collection of the National Agricultural Library. That was from the days when the United States Department of Agriculture hired artists!

Old Southern Apples, Plates 15 - 18; Photos: Jerry Markatos 

As you may know, apples grown from seed are the unique progeny of two parents, because the blossoms are cross pollinated. Most of these seeded trees crop with hard, sour, or small fruit, better for the hogs than for eating off the tree. Some apples are good for making hard cider and apple cider vinegar, but a few trees out of a thousand planted might produce unexpected, remarkable apples that would be given names and propagated. Of the 1600 apple varieties mentioned in this book, all of them grew from seed to be extraordinary apples. In the South, whether the settlers were large landowners or tenant farmers, they all planted out their orchards with seeds, they didn’t set out grafted rootstocks. It was the way it was done.

Today, it would be the rare individual who would scatter seeds to plant an orchard. After all, who would want a collection of wild apples? Large orchardists order sapling trees from wholesale nurseries in the thousands or even ten thousand. Blocks of the same variety, interspersed with another variety for pollinating, are planted. It is the researchers who cross apples and come up with new varieties for orchards to trial. A few apples become the darlings of the marketplace. This approach to apple growing is very different from the grand creativity that nature realizes with such ease. As Lao Tzu said, Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Inside my card, Blase tucked a print-out of a Buddhist tale. When King Mahajanaka, an earlier incarnation of the Buddha, was traveling through a park, he saw a monkey sitting on a branch of a mango tree. The King longed to stop and pick a few mangoes, but traveling with his large retinue, he had to continue without stopping. He decided he would sneak back alone that night to pick a few mangoes. That night, when he got to the grove, he lifted his torchlight and saw that someone had gotten there before him. The mango tree was stripped bare of fruit; its limbs were broken and its leaves lay scattered everywhere. He was saddened to think that this beautiful tree would likely not survive this ravagement. Then he saw another mango tree, one that had not been harmed. He realized that this tree avoided the carousing thieves because it had no fruit. The King returned and pondered his experience with the two mango trees. He decided he would renounce his title and give away everything he owned. He would become a tree without fruit. I love the story of the King Mahajanaka and the mango tree, but it could be taken as a teaching in renunciation. As many of you know, the orchard at Old Frog Pond Farm had no apples this year, and it was not because I renounced my title of orchardist.

The Birthday card Blase gave me was hand painted in Bhutan; he had saved it from our trip seven years ago. It is of a bird on a rabbit on a monkey’s shoulder, on an elephant (the bird and rabbit are hard to see). They are walking under a mango tree laden with fruit. It is an illustration of the “Four Harmonious Friends,” a much loved Bhutanese tale. These animals worked together; the bird planted the seed, the rabbit watered the sapling, the monkey fertilized it, and the elephant protected it until it grew into a beautiful tree with fruit for all of them.

"Four Harmonious Friends" handpainted in Bhutan

I loved my gift of so many fruit related stories. Our orchard is so much more than its acres of grafted trees. It’s a language we speak and share; a wild grove of poetry, paintings, sunsets, clouds, blossoms, and, hopefully next year, delicious fruit.