Our Trees are in Bloom

As an apple orchardist I pay attention to the buds. Will they be strong? Are they healthy? How will I take care of them, because I know—left alone, an orchard in New England will become a massive tangle of brambles, invasive vines, and diseased fruit.

We’ve already sprayed the apple trees with fish fertilizer, seaweed, a little copper, and two different biological fungicides to make sure our buds are protected from the spring diseases. Microscopic fungal spores will rise from the soil beneath the tree in a light rain and land on the leaves. There they find purchase and grow. Once the fruit develops, the fungus jumps to the fruit, ultimately making scab-like forms covering over the developing fruit. Once infection begins, it’s hard to reverse. Spores are released over the four-to-six-week period until we reach 100% release.

Every year I have to be prepared for scab, the nickname orchardists use for the fungus, Venturia inaequalis, one of the early apple diseases and one of the worst problems for organic orchardists in New England. I remember when I first learned to spray. Suited up in protective gear, spray tank filled with 300 gallons of water and the spray materials, the tractor settings in low speed, 3rd gear, at 1700 rpms, I was told that the spray for scab needed to renewed before every wetting period. It seemed an overwhelming proposition. If it rained one day, and then four days later, I needed to spray again because the material would have washed off the trees.

First Spray

Since that time, I’ve learned to time our sprays to most effective for the maximum spore release. I’ve planted many new scab-resistant varieties in our orchard, and removed some of the scab magnet trees like Macintosh. And since 2006 when Old Frog Pond Farm received organic certification, new bio-fungicides are available for organic orchards.

Orchardists have their own language to describe the stages from bud to blossom. Dormant describes the trees in winter, when the buds are gray-brown and tightly closed. They wait for the right combination of temperature and length of daylight to awaken. The outer sheath on the bud is a winter quilt protecting the folded blossom inside. When the apple bud breaks dormancy, the covering of the fruit bud opens slightly to reveal light gray tissue, silver tip.

Then comes green tip. The buds plump in response to warmth and light. The bud opens further to reveal a green plant tissue. The next stage, half-inch green or mouse ears, is an apt description as two tiny oblong-shaped leaves appear. Tight cluster follows with a rosette of green leaves around a tightly packed flower bud. Pink stage is next, as this singular flower bud separates into five or six individual pink-sheathed blossom buds.

This is the most exciting moment in the orchard, for each of these flower buds, if pollinated, will become an apple. In the center the king blossom opens first. It’s the strongest and largest bud. The others follow; reserves for the tree in case something happens to the King. Full bloom is when all blossoms are open. Pollinators arrive from far and wide to drink sweet apple nectar and unknowingly pollinate the trees.

Our trees are in full bloom, and I won’t spray again until the petals fall. Bloom is the time when I walk through the orchard rows and feel overwhelming gratitude to be part of such fragile beauty.

May 4, 2021 Old Frog Pond Farm

Hooray!

I received an email from an apple grower colleague asking if I’d mind if he read a poem I had shared with our holistic apple growers group. He will be speaking at the UU Church in Lincoln, Massachusetts on Sunday, April 25th.  I imagine he is speaking for their Earth Day service because of his long history of caring about apples and in particular, the heirloom apples of Maine. John Bunker is not only an apple grower, he is an apple sleuther. He has made it his life’s work to identify as many old apples in Maine as possible. People bring him apples, send him apples, email him photos of apples, and stop him on the street to tell him of old trees they know of and want to identify. John published a book in 2019, Apples and the Art of Detection: Tracking Down, Identifying, and Preserving Rare Apples.

The poem he was referring to in his email was one by the great 14th century Persian poet, Hafez.  

An Apple Tree Was Concerned

An apple tree was concerned 
about a late frost and losing its gifts 
that would help feed a poor family close by. 
Can't the clouds be generous with what falls from them? 
Can't the sun ration itself with precision? 

They can speak, trees, 
they can say the sweetest things
but it takes special ears to hear them,
ears that have listened to people
with great care. 

Indeed, this poem feels quite timely given wintry weather we experienced here in New England on Friday. 

I wrote back to John saying, “Of course! I think Hafez would be delighted.” And I was grateful to be reminded of it, because I, too, will be speaking on that same Sunday at our UU Church in Harvard with good friends, Piali De and her mother-in-law, Marion Stoddart.

Marion Stoddart is well known to many because of her groundbreaking work to inspire and lead the restoration of the Nashua River, at one time one of most polluted rivers in America. Piali De is a brilliant scientist and the CEO of Sensio Systems, an innovative company leading the way to support healthcare at home. We’ll be speaking about lessons learned from restoring the Nashua River, bringing back an abandoned orchard, and raising questions about ownership of land and the importance of ‘common’ land. You can go to the website for the UU Church in the Town of Harvard if you would like to join us next Sunday.

Cultivating Love is part of my new installation for Studios Without Walls exhibit, The Light Gets In, opening on May 28, 2021

Though the Apples, Art, and Spirit blog has been silent in recent months, things are changing. My family has gone through their share of both life and Covid challenges. But we’re coming out on the other side. We’re turning our attention to reopening the farm, taking care of the perennial crops, and planting annual vegetables and flowers.

While weeding the rhubarb I grabbed this fellow. But it did not glide away!

Now we need some cooperation from the weather gods.

Apricots are the earliest blossoming of our fruit trees.

Our apricot tree is in full bloom as are early peaches. It’s likely that we have lost the fruit from these trees. We hope the apples are fine. I’ll be checking on them, and definitely listen to what they have to say.

At the end of my note to John Bunker, I wrote, “Thanks for the reminder. We need each other!”

John quickly wrote back, “Not only do we need each other... we HAVE each other! Hooray!

Yes, we need each other! And we have each other! 

Wassailing, virtually!

Come with me out to the orchard. Carry your bread crusts tied with soft yarn to hang on the branches. Stomp your feet, feel the cold. Enjoy the warm cup of cider just handed to you. With that first taste the hot liquid pours through your body. Take another long sip, then walk to the trunk of a nearby tree and offer it back a little of its own.

It’s wassailing time for the orchard. Wassailing is an old English winter tradition when farmers gathered around one of the largest apple trees in their orchards. They poured cider libations on the roots and hung bits of bread dipped in cider on the limbs for the robins, good spirits who would protect the trees. The farmers would of course drink the cider too, and then circling around the tree they would sing:

Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
 And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! Caps-full!
 Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
 And my pockets full, too! Hurra!

Wassailing celebrates the gifts from the trees by returning a portion of what they have given. The ritual acknowledges nature’s generosity and our dependence on her. 

Virtual singing doesn’t work well, so let’s read The Apple Orchard by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows.)

Come now as the sun goes down.
See how evening greens the grasses.
Is it not as though we had already gathered it
And saved it up inside us,

So that now, from feelings and memories,
From new hope and old pleasures,
All mixed with inner darkness,
We fling it before us under the trees.

The trees, like those of Durer,
Bear the weight of a hundred days of labor
In their heavy, ripening fruit.
They serve with endless patience to teach

How even that which exceeds all measure
Must be taken up and given away,
As we, through long years,
Quietly grow toward the one thing we cannot be.

Rilke invites us to walk with him through the orchard. It’s evening, the light is fading as the sun sinks lower. The sharp slanting light makes the moment more intense. The grass is greener, brighter. There’s something he wants to say, to share with us. But it’s not outside, not in the orchard, not in the fallen fruits under the trees. It’s inside each of us, inside our heart bodies.

What does he do next? He turns us around and makes us not the receiver but the giver. All our yearnings and desires, our memories, the dark searchings of our spiritual seeking, even our optimistic hopes of repair, he has us cast them out to the trees. 

These are ‘real’ apple trees, old and gnarly, with peeling bark, and bends, and borer holes, knots, and thick calloused trunks. They’ve suffered. They’ve lived and encountered the hardships and pain of learning how to grow and ripen fruit.

They teach whatever expectations we carry of the way things should be, it doesn’t matter. The early frost, the too many days of rain, the dryness of summer, and even the perfect season with bushels of bright apples are soon over. For we are here but for a short time. And we carry nothing with us when we go. Everything that we grow is to be given away.   

 ******

I was looking for poems written by friends of the farm but couldn't find the Wassailing file. If you are a poet who was here and wrote a poem, or have a favorite apple poem you’d share with me, please do. I’d love to gather a collection of apple orchard poems. Next January, we’ll Wassail in person in the orchard. If you’re inspired, come visit the trees and start your poem now!

Sitting

Dear Friends,

The week between Christmas and the New Year when the world quiets and the light imperceptibly returns has always been one of my favorites. I chose to sit in silence this week along with my Dharma brothers and sisters at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt Temper, New York. Using Livestream, we sat together from morning darkness into the night, adding more hours as the week progressed, sitting deeper into the stillness, until last night’s midnight hour when the turning of the earth was complete, and our Great Mother began her new journey around her favorite sun.

Wishing you all more ease and comfort, peace and health in the new year.
May it bring us the opportunity to hug each other!

In the meanwhile, “Fear Not. Even the Coldest, Darkest Winters Bear Fruit,” was recently published by WBUR’s Cognoscenti. The apple trees understand quiet time. You can read it here.

With love, Linda

Susan’s Sitting Figure, 2020