27,000 Cuts

That’s how many times I squeeze my Felco shears to snip off all the suckers and watersprouts from the 21 fruit trees we have on our property. That doesn’t include the various other trees and bushes that get shorn at this time of year, but don’t tell my elbow about that, because it’s barely recovered from the last two weekend’s arboreal activities. As a consolation, I’ve got a really good grip to shake a hand with, or grab the occasional errant chicken.
The plum trees are the first to bud out so they get pruned first. They’re lower to the ground but the forest of long narrow spires is still daunting enough to momentarily stop me in my tracks. It’s the kind of grand task you have to think about as a bunch of smaller tasks, or you could never get started. Actually, the less you think about it the better–just start cutting.
The original owners of this land built the barn in 1943, and we think the trees were planted near that time. Consequently we have mature trees which require a small fleet of ladders of varying heights, and compared to the younger or dwarf fruit trees that everyone but us seem to have around here, they are scary monsters that loom ominously looking like Fangorn Forest in The Lord of the Rings. They’re gnarly and bent, their huge arching branches shaped long ago for efficient harvesting. They’re cantankerous crusty old souls, and we’ll never cut them down. As I become an older soul myself, I choose to let the wind and gravity take them before I’d replace them with their mutant little cousins.
And I’ll continue to provide seasonal amusement to the passing neighbors as they often see me climbing onto the branch of a tree to get those last hard to reach suckers. Before we were gifted an orchard ladder, which is truly a thing of beauty and elegantly designed, I spent more time in the trees than on the ground.
But here’s the irony in all this. The purpose of pruning is to maximize fruit production by steering the energy and nutrients held within the rising sap toward the branches that produce the fruit, and not feed a bunch of hungry suckers. Every spring when the last tree is pruned I stand back and realize we will never come close to consuming the fruit we so thoroughly strive to increase the volume of.
We were bequeathed an antique cider press by our neighbors when they moved to Montana. As we were saying our good-byes in the driveway, “If we never see another apple or apple tree again, it will be too soon”, is what they said. They had over 100 trees and were done with all this apple nonsense. Our last parting gesture was to shake hands and I noted he had a really good grip.

Seasons

Spring is coming, and the first naive crocuses have emerged. You’d think they’d have learned that in late February or early March winter more often than not returns to smack them upside their little white heads and say, “hey, not so fast!” But spring will come, the Alders will turn pink with new growth, the rivers will flood with snow melt from the mountains, everything will become verdant and grow as if this was the only moment in time to do so.
But at this moment, I’m not feeling as inspired by the constancy of the seasons. Last year was a rather barren one from a fruit bearing perspective. The orchard trees which normally produce more apples, pears, plums and cherries than we could ever consume, bore no fruit to speak of, the garden struggled, and it’s indestructible forest of kale was decimated.
Time passes and we hope for the best, but the unknowable origin of these forces of nature acts as a calling card to reflect on our significance, or lack thereof as some believe. The slow transformation of mountain and tree to particles of soil offers a contrast to our hasty routines of work and play, and the consuming thoughts of how we relate to the foibles of human existence, which by comparison is very, very… short.
As I hope for more bounty this year, if it comes there will be much to do. Most of it is physical and hard work, but on a visceral level it has opened me to the rhythm and pace, the interdependancies of the forces of nature.
We all draw our own conclusions as to the how’s and why’s of our existance.