A Raspberry Dilemma

I came in the other night, kissed Blase, and said, “All I see is raspberries.” I had been picking every last raspberry in the patch, using my deepest concentration to find every single hidden berry that was ripe, or beyond ripe, or too small, or for whatever reason would not ripen into a desirable fruit. It’s not even the beginning of the season for us, but the precocious canes are fruiting. And there are enough berries to attract the Asian Fruit Fly, the Spotted Winged Drosophila (SWD)— the Dragon of small fruit producers!

Spotted wing drosophila female (E. Beers, August 2010) Washington State Univeristy

Rotting fruit attracts fruit flies. A bruised pear or peach left on the kitchen counter in summer appears to gather flies from thin air. The SWD, however, is different. The female lays eggs in unripe fruit. She has a curved saw attached to her lower abdomen, which she unfolds and uses to slice into the hard fruit. Therein she deposits one to three eggs. Several females can lay eggs in the same fruit. The larvae hatch in a few days, and the cycle from pupae to egg-laying female is complete in two weeks.

In 2011, midway through the raspberry harvest season, a customer called early on Sunday morning. She had picked twelve pints of raspberries for jam the day before and, while she was cooking them, noticed small white worms floating to the top of the pot. After putting the phone down, I raced out to the patch and picked a few berries. Opening one of the soft berries in the palm of my hand, I peered into the center and saw white larvae squirming inside the soft juicy berry. Disgusting!

The SWD came from Japan to California in 2008 and ravaged fruit growers all along the Pacific coast. The loss for California growers in the first year was over 500 million dollars. In the next two years, SWDs traveled across the country, damaging blueberries in the Midwest and, a year later, arrived on the East coast. It’s still here! Soft-skinned fruit like raspberries and blueberries are at the greatest risk, though SWD will also lay eggs in peaches.

Now, six years later, Old Frog Pond Farm is one of only a few fall raspberry patches in the area. Most everyone else I know has slashed their canes to the ground. If you look up the insect, you will see that university research labs across the country are trying to find a biological way to combat it. Chemical pesticides work, but you need to apply them often and production costs increase for the grower. Organic growers have two choices of sprays – one is a spinosad, a natural bacterium that is used as an organic insecticide, and the other is PyGanic, a natural insecticide derived from chrysanthemum flowers. The latter is labeled as ‘poor’ as far as its effectiveness. A formulation with spinosad works well, but it can’t be sprayed more than six times a season, and it is effective for only five days.  

In the last few years, I have been trying to get our canes super healthy so they generate resistance on their own and have experienced some success. Last year, the weather was dry and this kept the SWD numbers down. This year, the SWD arrived two weeks early, and the rains have increased their numbers the way water breeds mosquitoes. I am concerned. We have worked so hard to weed the patch twice, to thin the canes, to give this field all the love and attention possible. For our precocious canes, we now go out every day and pick both ripe and any old fruit. Sanitation is key to keeping SWD in check. 

Unlike the old days when the fruit would be on the bushes ripening during the week and the weekend pickers would pick the patch clean, we will need to pick ripe berries every day once the season begins. Silferleaf Farm in Concord, the only other local raspberry grower, started making raspberry vinegar with their daily picked berries. We have not yet developed a secondary market, but I am planning to contact regional ice cream makers. I’m open to suggestions — and volunteer pickers. It’s enjoyable and the ‘take home’ will be berries of course!

Now when I wake in the middle of the night with farm anxiety I see raspberries. Yet this will soon pass — for the next three weeks I will be in the orchard thinning apples, removing blemished fruit and doing summer pruning. We have some beautiful apples, but we also have some serious problem varieties due to the wet season. Soon when I wake in the middle of the night I will be seeing apples — the blemished scabby ones and the cascading, out-of-control trees with branches so loaded with perfect fruit they are in danger of breaking. It is a world of ricocheting extremes even on this small farm.

Cascading Freedom Apples with comfrey and mountain mint, July 26, 2017

Consider the Miracle

My son, Alex, sent a family text.

Here she is! Born 7.13.17 6 lbs 5 oz! We are calling her Lui or Lou (short for Lucia). I was a little worried I wouldn’t love her as much as Vita but the heart has this amazing capacity to open wider than you ever thought possible.

Alex, Connie, Vita, and Lucia Matisse minutes after Lucia's birth.

We have all been waiting for this birth. Connie, Alex’s wife, was certain the baby would arrive early, like her sister Vita two years ago. But no, Lucia was almost a week late! 

I know what it is to carry around a baby, well past the due date, in the heat of summer, getting bigger and rounder, the skin stretching tighter around the massive tummy. Then there is only the waiting for the body to begin the birthing process . . . the light contractions, the practice before the hard work, then the pushing with maelstrom force to ease the new being out into the world, the mother directing total allegiance to each hard push until the final slipping out, and the moment of relief and delirious happiness.

Women remember their births. I once spoke with an eighty-three-year-old woman who could distinctly recall each one of her five children’s. There is no other experience that requires such perseverance and fortitude, such complete giving away of one’s self for another.  I remember hearing of a woman about to undergo an emergency Caesarian who was asked if she wanted to live, or if she wanted her child to live. It was one or the other, and she had to decide in that instant. She chose the child. “Take Chad out,” she said, making the choice without hesitation.

I am beyond words with gratitude that Connie and Lucia are both doing so well. Lucia already knows the heartbeat and smells of her mother, and she is easily held and comforted by others’ arms. I imagine that Lucia already knows the rhythms of her family’s waking and sleeping and even the sound of words that are repeated often with emphasis, like ‘Alex,’ ‘Connie,’ ‘Vita’; the way in our house, our parrot learned to say ‘Ariel,’ because I called my daughter’s name so loudly each morning urging her to hurry downstairs for school.

I wonder about the sounds one hears in utero. I can remember when I was three or four and already familiar with language, amusing myself with my own made up sounds. I would say nonsensical syllables with intonation, as if I completely understood the content and context. What was so satisfying was not that I had my own language, but that this language was familiar, as if it was the language I had heard in the womb or when I was an infant. It was a comforting language for me to speak. It had emphasis and cadence, but the sounds were always soft and round, nothing harsh, like hearing a conversation among ocean waves.

Now, this little being, Lucia, hears the comforting voice she has heard in utero as she gazes into her mother’s eyes. Connie speaks to her with warmth, love, and kindness. Lucia is learning to connect the language of deep comfort to a face she will come to trust and adore.

Lucia's Birthday!

She hears the deeper voice of her dada and a new heartbeat when she sleeps on his breast. She begins to trust the other. She is learning the voice and antics of her older sister.

Lucia was only 6 pounds 5 ounces at birth, the size of Vita’s favorite doll baby. I look at all the adults around me, and I know that Lucia will grow up to be one of us. But for now she is a miracle, one of those miracles that happens every day, all over the world. One day she will feel her own heart beat. She will discover language and her own voice in the world.  

Lucia Marcel Matisse, may you find the courage and wisdom to sow love in this world. For surely, then, the world will reflect only love back to you. Congratulations to your family! We can’t wait to get to know you better!

                                    With love, Ama & Baba

Meeting Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is a genre of writing about a work of art. Homer’s lengthy and vivid description of Achilles' shield in The Iliad is one of the oldest examples, though Keat’s Ode to a Grecian Urn is more quoted, especially its enigmatic last lines.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
          Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The writer, and most often a poet, explores a work of art, responds to it, even adds elements from his or her own life. The Poetry Foundation defines an ekphrastic poem as follows: “Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the ‘action’ of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.” I love this description and thought about it when I sat down to write a statement about a new sculpture I am exhibiting at 6 Bridges Gallery in Maynard, Massachusetts (July 11 – August 12).

Meeting in the studio. sculpture, 2017

To write about, Meeting, I started by considering its materials — rope and wood. Rope is used to connect one object to another, a canoe to a tree or a skiff to a dock. A rope hammock connects two trees. What intrigued me when I placed the thick rope into the walnut trunk was that it connected back to itself. There was no connecting of two objects but a unifying of the whole. The ends disappeared as if there were no ends.

This section of a tug-of-war-size rope has been in my studio for six years ago. Back then, I suspended it, tied it, uncoiled part of it, and wove it back into itself. When I hung up the heavy coil, it made me think of a Japanese Enso, the circle that is an expression of enlightenment, the ultimate connection with everything because there is nothing inside or outside, nothing separate or divided, nothing to connect, no beginning and no ending.

I then wrapped a thin white twine around the rope, the way a snake coils around a stick. It reminded me of a painting I saw in a small church in Florence. Christ was nailed to the cross alone up on Calvary Hill. There was a simple white cloth wrapped around his pelvis, the cloth painted as if being blown by a gentle breeze. The body was dead, but life stirred in the simplicity of the white threads. The painter may have been suggesting that life is never completely extinguished.

The wood component of the sculpture, a walnut trunk, sawn twice to reveal its two hollow sections, has also been in my studio for a number of years. A bronze sculpture I made of Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, sat on it for a while, but I removed her knowing the wood had something else to reveal.

One day I took the tug-of-war rope and threaded it through and around the wood. I was intrigued by what I saw, but also by what I didn’t see. In Meeting, we don’t actually see whether the two ends of the rope meet. It’s a question that is unanswered. The rope, in its serpentine path around and into the trunk reveals only part of itself. It is like happening upon a snake, though the head and tail are hidden.

Meeting is the word for the worship practice of the Quakers. I went to a Quaker elementary school where we had ‘meeting for worship’ on Wednesday mornings. We sat in silence unless someone was moved to speak. In a Quaker Meeting, we meet ourselves, we meet God, we meet each other.

Art is a form of meeting. We meet the work, its materials, colors, and forms, the artist and ourselves. Ekphrasis writing is a form of meeting. When I write about my own work, I discover connections that I had never considered while making the piece. And when I read the writing of others who have been inspired my art, I encounter the work differently.

At another summer exhibit where I have a sculpture, Art on the Trails: Finding Solace in the Woods at the Beal Preserve in Southborough, MA (June 7 – September 24), there will be a reading of ekphrastic poems written about the works of the exhibiting artists. I have a new casting of Tree Harp in the exhibit and hope there will be a poem written about it. I much prefer to hear what others write about my sculpture. An ekphrastic poem that I treasure was written by Joanne Reynolds about my sculpture Ordinary Pine when it was installed at the Jackson Homestead in Newton, Massachusetts.

Ordinary Pine, partial view, installed at Jackson Homestead, Newton, MA

       Ordinary Pine         

What happened? That is to say, what happened
To us? Or between us? What
Will become of us now?

True, you were older. Suffered
The deluge. Cast a shadow
More borrowed than your own.

I came shortly after. Not so much a part
As a go-between - a link.

I remember the way you reached out
To the youngest - your great hands - how well they played!

Facing away from you now, each of us
Cut down, I long to see you.
Both of you.

Such a hole in each of us.

                        —Joanne Reynolds

Ripening Fruit

We have been coming to this little cabin near the beach in Wellfleet for the last ten years. We have the opportunity to rent it in late June and though our minds say, no, you can’t leave the farm, we rent it anyway. Otherwise, we might lose the opportunity.

And farmer Blase clearly needed the rest!

Then I received an email from an orchard consultant, Kathleen Leahy. ‘Bad weather’ the subject line said:

Hi all,

Looks like a bunch more hail came along today and knocked out more of the crop – not all precincts have been heard from but quite a few orchards seem to have been affected. . .

This consultant reminded growers to spray strep, streptomycin that is, within twenty-four hours.  “And of course, call your insurer ASAP.” Hail pierces the skin of the apple and leaves an opening for the fire blight bacteria to enter. Fire blight can be a horrendous problem for growers. It enters the fruit and then the tree, and can also spread to other trees, killing them in a season. For the organic grower, there is little to do. Early season, we spray copper to clean any residual fire blight; but we do not spray streptomycin. We can only look for the telltale blackening of the leaves and a shepherd’s crook bend to the end of the twig, signaling that it is time to get out the loppers and remove the branch before the bacteria moves into the rest of the tree.  Damage from hail on the fruit amplifies the danger fifty-fold. I had to go home and check on the fruit.  

It’s already been a difficult season for some apple growers. Too much rain makes spraying difficult and scab (Venturia inaequalis), one of New England’s most challenging apple diseases, has been especially difficult for me to control. The scab fungus overwinters in the orchard floor under the trees. After a warm, rainy period, millions of spores float upwards into the tree like dust motes in sunlight. Landing on the young wet leaves, the scab begins to grow, first showing up as innocuous-looking dark spots on the leaves. Gradually, these black cloudy patches grow darker and spread over the leaf surface. Unchecked, the fungus becomes rampant and jumps from leaf to fruit. The apples will develop brown crusty scabs, be misshapen, and eventually crack.

This year, every time I thought about spraying for scab, it was either raining, going to rain, or too windy.  I didn’t get enough sulfur on the trees, and when I did spray, it was immediately washed off. Sulfur is, at best, only a mediocre material to use compared to modern chemical fungicides. Sulfur works by changing the pH of the leaf surface, making it inhospitable to the scab fungus. I could use lime sulfur; it’s stronger and burns the fungus on the leaves. It’s the harshest material I have in our arsenal, but I haven’t used it in many years. Four years ago, I opened the jug, and its contents had thickened into crystals. I tried to pour off some of the amber-red liquid, but the color reminded me of the chemo drugs I've taken and every pore in my being rebeled at the idea of spraying it.

Macintosh apples are scab magnets.Our Macs are among the oldest trees in the orchard; they are large and densely planted. Even spraying in an ‘easy’ year, I have a difficult time controlling scab on them. Every year I vow to do better. But this year, our Macs look terrible. It’s doubly sad because they are in the first few rows – we have lots of beautiful and healthy fruit farther back in the orchard.

Morning dew on Williams Pride, one of our early apples.

Arriving home from the Cape, I pulled into the driveway, let the dog out of the car, and immediately went on rounds to inspect the fruit. Blase had returned a day earlier to hill potatoes and had already told me that he hadn’t seen any hail. I started in the raspberry patch; all looked fine there. I pulled some weeds, found a little of the troublesome dodder, and noted that it looked like we would have quite a lot of early raspberries. The blueberries, heavy with fruit, were still a week away from the beginning of harvest. The Macs with their scab hadn’t improved; no amount of wishful thinking would do that. But I was relieved — no hail damage!

The next morning, one of the meditators who sits regularly in our meditation hut behind the orchard told me she had hail and that her neighbor’s garden flowers were completely ravaged. Then an inquiry came in from our local paper. Joan Eliyesil writes about farms and farming in Harvard and she had heard from Frank Carlson of Carlson’s Orchards that the crop on their Bolton Road apple trees was decimated, likely only good for juice. Libby Levinson, another apple grower in Harvard, told me that Bolton and Sterling got hit badly. She wanted to know about our orchard.

We were lucky this time. But there are still two months for the apples to ripen before harvest. Fruit growing is a long season of perpetual concern, like that first year your teenager drives at night and you don’t sleep until you hear the car door close. Fruit growers experience this anxiety every year. Maybe that’s why a good fruit harvest is such a cause for celebration.  Fingers crossed!