Orchard Dreams

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods." (Wendell Berry)

I've commented here before that I'd like to plant an orchard on The Farm. Nothing grandiose or industrial in scale: perhaps five or six apple trees, as many cherry trees and perhaps some pears. Planting an orchard is a sign of hope, an act of confidence and optimism about a future unseen. He who plants an orchard makes a long-term commitment to a specific piece of ground. He gives a gift to his children and his children's children.

The Farm--this Farm--is a little patch of rolling hills, where the natural state of the landscape is a patchwork of woods and grassland. To plant an orchard would woo the nature of that particular place, cultivation most in harmony with the character of the land itself, and therefore holds the promise of being both fruitful and happy. No sense trying to grow what the land doesn't want to bear, or planting against the grain of the soil.

Besides, I like apples, and almost everything made from apples. Ditto cherries. Less wild about pears, but one needs variety, right? I dream of getting a cider press and bottling fresh juices on a crisp October day. As a dabbling homebrewer, this could put me in touch with cultures around the world where cider fills the culinary niche occupied by beer in other places. Brittany, Normandy, and southwestern England, in particular, cherish the venerable art of cider making, as do the Basques and the hill tribes of Rhineland-Pfalz.

Getting from here to there is another matter. Choosing, buying, and planting trees is the easy part. The little saplings won't survive long if we don't protect them somehow from the ravenous local whitetail population.

My first thought was to fence the whole orchard area with 7- or 8-foot deer fencing. Nice idea -- until a little research put a pricetag on that project. It turns out it's pretty easy to spend over a thousand dollars to protect a dozen fruit trees, and that is just too much (unless we're aiming at commercial production, of course; then we could recoup the investment over several years of profits).

I think we'll have to settle for improvised solutions, using whatever old fencing and posts we can find around The Farm. And this does not diminish the pleasure of dreaming hopefully toward my orchard. The art of cultivating with the nature of the land instead of against it involves compromise between what we want and what the land can provide. And there is another kind of compromise to learn: between a theoretical ideal and the affordable.

The Farm in The City

I saw this column while very far from The Farm, on a plane from Philadelphia to Zurich to be exact. It's not that often that my agricultural leanings are fed from the venerable pages of The Gray Lady. This may be another sign of something -- I'm not sure what! -- or a clue to the puzzle of this thing we call popular culture. It might mean something like this:

The line between urban and rural is not sharp and clear. Because we live on the earth, even in those densely packed, overbuilt, and artificial environments we call cities, the earth has away of breaking through and re-asserting itself. Our technology and our architecture lay a thin crust over the ground, and given the chhance, the ground will do what the ground does best: send seedlings up through cracks in the pavement.

I suppose someone will quibble that the New York Times piece on tomatoes in Brooklyn is not really about farming but about "gardening," as if the two are clearly distinguishable. But what is a city garden but a farm painted on a very small canvas, and what is a farm but a garden that got out of hand? Both share the same media, the same instincts, the same struggles, the same culture. My favorite little magazine Hobby Farms is launching a new publication called Urban Farm, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is really just another clue in this puzzle i'm trying to work out.

I remember sitting in a classroom in western Kenya while my students scribbled away on their final exams. Looking out the window I savored the sight of the lush Kisii hill country in the distance and the bountiful vegetation surrounding the building. Vines had found their way in through one of the windows, and seemed to be flourishing happily inside the room. I got the impression that, in Africa at least, all our development and building amounts to little more than a temporary clearing of the natural growth on the hills. As soon as we turn our backs, the vines are in at the windows and start their work of reclaiming this little patch of earth.

Yes, You Can

"The only rules that really matter," said Captain Jack Sparrow, "are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do."

Until recently, I would have thought that one of the things a man can do is drive an ATV pretty much anywhere through mud and brush. Surely, I thought, one of the things a man can't do is get a 40-hp, six-wheel-drive Polaris Ranger stuck. Turns out I was wrong about that.

I had learned from the hard soils lesson with my brother's Jeep (see previous post!). We waited several days after the rains to give the place a chance to dry out. There was just one little creek-bed to cross, through a bramble of brush and vines, to get to the place I've started calling the Lost Acre. There was some water in the creek, but not much. It was steep, and steepest at the very bottom, so that the Polaris pitched forward at a thrilling angle as I drove down. I stopped to check for hidden holes or logs, and to check my exit route on the other side of the creek. Confident that this was doable, I drove powerfully through the ditch. No problem!

The Lost Acre isn't really lost and it actually measures 1.77 acres. It's bounded by two steep, densely brush-filled drainage creeks and a tight, gateless barbed wire fence between The Farm and our neighbor's manicured pasture. The steep, tricky spot where I drove the Polaris through the creek is the only way to get any kind of vehicle in or out of this particular patch of tall grass and volunteer cedars. It's not part of our CRP contract, so I dream of ways to make it productive. But if we can't drive the ATV in and out, it's going to be hard to put the Lost Acre to good use.

So, as I said, driving in was not such a problem. Driving out of the Lost Acre was another story. The alarming angles were just a little different coming from the other side. The trail took a turn to the right on the way out of the creek. Maybe I hesitated just slightly at just the wrong moment. Whatever it was, the game was over. Six wheels spinning in the muddy, wet weeds were suddenly but definitely worthless. The Polaris spent that night in the creek-bed, sheltered with a blue plastic tarp in case it rained. We pulled it out the next day with a borrowed 4wd pickup.

Captain Jack Sparrow was right. What a man can do, and what a man can't do are rules that matter. You certainly can get that 6x6 40hp Polaris stuck. We don't move at will through the world. Even on our own small patch of ground, the land itself sets boundaries and limits which we cannot cross, even when we wield all our horsepower and technology. Living with and caring for this land means accepting limits rather than fighting against them. Wendell Berry, a wise man who knows a thing or two about living with the land, said "A man with a machine and inadequate culture . . . is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold."

"Know Your Soils"

The soil on The Farm ranges from Armstrong clay loam to Gorim silt loam. If that doesn't mean much to you, don't worry. It's a foreign language to me, too.

Everything I know about our soils comes from two sources. The first is the detailed conservation management report prepared for us by the local NRCS office. Each field--and even the distinct parts of each field--is carefully described and analyzed. Turns out we do not have any Menfro, which is the Missouri state soil. (I bet you didn't even know Missouri had a state soil!)

My second source of soil knowledge is first-hand. A couple of weeks ago, my brother and his overweight Labrador named Hagrid came for a weekend visit in their Jeep. When the drizzle on Saturday morning ruled out golf, we decided to head for The Farm (which he hadn't yet seen).

We had only been there about 30 minutes when our combined supply of good sense -- which is never as great when we're together as either of us can manage on our own -- ran out completely. I opened the wire gate to the pasture across the road from the house, and he drove the Jeep in. To get a better view, I opened the next gate, too, and he drove through that.

And then he was stuck. The drizzle-saturated clay suddenly seemed the consistency of pancake batter, and all four wheels of the Jeep were spinning uselessly. No matter which direction the Jeep was pointed, or which direction we spun the wheels, the vehicle only moved one direction: downhill. And downhill was not helpful, since at the bottom of the hill was a soggy creek and cow-trodden mud.

We took turns pushing and driving. We chopped branches to stuff under the wheels in an effort to grab some traction. We rocked the Jeep back and forth. We dragged big scraps of old carpet from the trash heap across the road, and stuck them under the wheels of the Jeep. That last one actually kind of worked, until the carpet was soaked with water and slimy clay mud; after that the carpet gave as much traction as shaving cream, and weighed about a hundred pounds a square yard.

The story has a long, sad ending, which involves cold wind and sleet, a tow-truck which got stuck worse than we were, and a drive home in the wee hours of the morning. Only Hagrid seemed to be enjoying himself: wind and freezing drizzle is a Labrador's natural habitat. We consoled ourselves next day with breakfast at Denny's. My brother's email when he got home summed it up pretty well: "had a great time. Hope we never do it again."

The NRCS soils report appeals to me in a kind of techy, cerebral way. I've always enjoyed learning foreign languages. But getting my brother's Jeep profoundly stuck in that wet patch of "Bevier silty clay loam" just north of the road was my real education about our soil.

What Do You Do There? (The Farm as Hobby)

Now that you have a "farm," what do you really do with it?

I said before that we weren't really interested in becoming working farmers: we didn't really want to plow, plant, cultivate, harvest, and market fields of hay or beans or corn. We didn't want to commit ourselves to the constant demands of a commercial livestock operation (and don't be naive: five cows are nearly as much trouble as fifty, and much less profitable!).

The fact is, I am mostly interested in hunting on the place. Whitetail deer, wild turkeys, and bobwhite quail are the crops I really look forward to harvesting. I have reason to believe that they are already there, to some extent.

And with some management of the land, they should thrive. We will put in some sunflowers and millet to provide a little food and cover for the birds. We'll avoid thinning out the woods too much, and make sure the creeks and drainage areas have plenty of cover for shy deer. Starting in 2010, we'll start a rotation of controlled burning to improve the CRP grasslands for quail habitat. We'll shoot coyotes and bobcats that put pressure on the small game.

There should be plenty of room on the property for a nice big garden, without bothering the game. In fact, I'm a little worried that the game will eat the garden: we'll see! A very tall fence might be in our near future.

If we want to get more serious about things, there is room for up to 6 acres (!!) of garden area, which would keep us all busy most of the summer, and might supply vegetables, herbs, and flowers to sell at area farmers markets. There is a growing movement of "community supported agriculture" that encourages people to buy and consume local produce, and this tends to favor small, family operations more than large, industrial farms. It is entirely realistic to imagine a one- or two-acre garden that could produce a couple of thousand dollars a year

Across the road from the house is a long pasture, about 4.5 acres, along a ridgetop. It is sheltered on the North by the oaks and hickories of our woods. It has a nice southern exposure for full sun. It looks like a beautiful place to plant an orchard. Apples, pears, cherries, and maybe hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts -- wouldn't that be nice? With a small pump we can water them from the spring-fed pond to tide them over the hot dry spells of a Missouri summer. Most of the pruning and harvesting can be done during family work-weekends. There is probably room there for a couple of hundred trees. This sounds like the sort of thing that could quickly get out of hand.

If we have a big garden, and we start planting fruit trees, we're going to want some honey bees. In fact, given the global problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, and the tremendous importance of bees as pollinators for all kinds of plants (wild and domestic), I consider it our duty to the future of civilization to encourage a hive or two on the place. A good spot would be over at the east end of that area north of the road where I want to put the orchard; from there they can also pollinate the garden next to the house, without the bother of a swarm of bees right next to the house.

Somewhere in this plan there should be a patch of hops. Hops grow on bines (which are different from "vines" -- look it up!). The aromatic flowers are harvested in the fall and used for -- you guessed it! -- beer. It turns out there's also a sort of world-wide hops shortage, so growing our own makes sense, and might be a money-maker, too.

The worrying collapse of honey bee colonies, and the looming shortage of hops are two terrible signs of the fast-approaching collapse of Western Civilization as we know it. It's our duty to humanity, to our children's children's children, to cultivate a little pocket of these precious resources.