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

The Sermon of the Blue Heron

I walked out of the house early yesterday morning and saw a blue heron preaching from the roof peak of the little hut at the waterfall next to the dam. I feigned disinterest and sauntered quietly down the hill towards a new garden bed, hoping the heron wouldn’t fly away. It turned its head 180 degrees, but didn’t fly off.

This garden was planted last week, watered well, but not since—and we’ve had no rain. We’ve had no rain all summer, not a full day of soaking down wetness, not since too much rain in early May when we lost half our apple crop from poor pollination. We water the crop plants and the fruit trees and a few gardens pumping water from the pond, but much else is dry, parched, and crunches underfoot. 

We’re lost without water, like we’re lost without a road map. Plants genetically receive all kinds of direction. Grow towards the sun, make your leaves larger because you are in the shade and need more photosynthesis, switch to ‘dry’ mode and pull in so that you can survive this drought. I think about where my inner direction comes from, how can I be sure I am hearing it. Sometimes my deepest yearnings feel like quicksand, holding me in inactivity without a guiding star. I was relieved to see the garden was alive, the transplants had survived the hot week.

I walked back up the hill and over to my studio. A few minutes later, I was upstairs at my desk with my morning tea when the heron flew by and landed near the pond. I thought it might be preaching to turtles, water snakes, maybe even the water lilies opening from their tightly closed night to better hear the heron’s wisdom. Herons know water; for they are fishermen and spend long hours watching water. 

The heron, however, surely didn’t know it was standing halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox, on the pagan holiday, Lughnasad. This holiday is celebrated on the first of August and marks the beginning of the wheat harvest and the sun’s slow descent towards winter. For us at the farm, early August is when we harvest the first tree fruits, peaches, plums, and early season apples. It’s also the last time to get seeds into the ground for late fall crops. In the midst of a global pandemic, while areas of the world suffer extreme drought and other places experience massive and destructive floods, the heron stands at the boundary of earth and water with equipoise, catching its food, a guardian of the old ways.

As we shift to this new season, maybe it’s a time for us to reassess our ways. Make some choices of what we are carrying into the next phase. Spring flowers are a distant memory, while yarrow is in bloom, Queen Anne’s lace is at its peak, and goldenrod is opening to yellow. The night insects have begun their incantations. What to take with us and what to let go?

What do you want to put energy into? Energy flows where intention goes. What’s driving you? What brings you joy? We can’t do it all, not in one season. But we can be part of it all.

At the farm we now have fewer bluebirds, the orioles have migrated, and only one pair of barn swallows are still sitting on eggs. But the heron remains—majestic, otherworldly, its squawks coming from deep in the earth, a wisdom that calls out, “Take heed. What are you doing with this one precious life?”

What's the Buzz?

Our bees had a productive spring, and our beekeeper, Don Rota, presented us with seven pounds of ravishing, golden, lucid, liquid gold. On Thursday afternoon, we bottled the honey in six- and twelve-ounce glass jars in the farmhouse kitchen.

But what exactly is honey? When bees gather nectar from the flowers, they receive a jolt of energy in the form of carbohydrates (sugars) to keep them going in the hot sun from flower to flower, but the excess is stored in their nectar stomachs. When they return to the hive, they regurgitate the nectar and offer it to another bee. As this nectar is passed from bee to bee, an enzyme in the bees’ stomachs begins the process of turning it into honey. Then the consolidated nectar is put into cells in the hive. Fanning completes the water evaporation process and what’s left is honey. Bees make honey so they can survive the winter.

Bees have been on the planet for 120,000,000 years. A bee was found preserved in amber from Myanmar dating back 100,000,000 years. Despite the longevity of the species, individual worker bees, all female, only live a month in the summer. It’s hard work to be a worker bee, but then they do have the glory of visiting flower after flower, and gorging on lovely nectar. In winter, however, their physiology changes and worker bees live up to three months.

Drones, the male bees, live longer, do no work, just laze around the hive waiting for a queen to be born. After her birth, the virgin makes a maiden voyage outside the hive, sending out a pheromone to attract the opposite sex. The drones mate with the nubile queen and then die soon after, completely spent after such their lovemaking. She stores this lifetime supply of sperm to use as needed, controlling fertilization of her eggs by releasing sperm as the egg passes through her oviduct. Come fall, any drones still hanging around are booted out of the hive, and left to starve to death.

Queens can live for five years. If the hive’s queen is old or ill, the new queen may fight her and possibly take over. Sometimes worker bees bring a new queen into a hive because it is large and needs a queen so part of the hive can swarm. It’s the decision of the workers to feed royal jelly to larvae bees to make new queens. The worker bees democratically decide about everything that happens in the hive. Depending on the size of the cells the worker bees create, the queen lays unfertilized eggs to become drones (male) or fertilized ones to become worker bees (female).

Some people consider bees to be mammals. They view the hive as an animal without its ‘skin bag.’ The different kinds of bees are like cells in a body with different functions. The ‘swarm’ is the offspring. I like this notion because the hive becomes a larger system, one creature, one body, one ecosystem. 

In summer the hive may grow to over 30,000 bees, but in the winter they drop down to a thousand bees as they conserve resources to survive the winter. The life of the honey bee is one deep and abiding concern for their food supply. Surely this is why they have survived on the planet for so long. In comparison, our ancestors have occupied the planet for only six million years, and we have become dangerously complacent about our food supply.

Humans have a long desired honey. A drawing on a rock face in Spain dating back to 6000 BCE shows two people climbing a rope ladder to get to a hive high up on a flat rock wall. Another drawing found in Zimbabwe from 8000 BCE shows the wavy lines of natural honeycomb with a person approaching it holding some kind of smoker. People in remote areas of Nepal and Macedonia still ‘hunt’ for hives, sometimes climbing steep rock faces to gather prized honey. In Romania, bee hive trucks follow the flowering from the South to the North, parking for a few weeks off highways, giving their bees lots of wild forage. I imagine the colors and shapes help the bees return to their own hives.

Bee hive truck near Vitri, Romania, 2016

The Egyptians described keeping bees for the medicinal properties of the honey in paintings and writing. They used honey for all sorts of sicknesses from diabetes to contraception. There are even paintings depicting ritual circumcisions with the wound being dressed with honey. Today we know there are high levels of antimicrobial activity in raw honey.

Beekeepers are dedicated to their hives. They also are enthusiastic to share information and help each other. Melissa Ljosa used to keep two top bar hives here until she moved to Vermont a few months ago.

Don Rota is the one without the bee suit. Melissa (left), is checking a top bar hive. We miss her!

Don now takes care of ten hives at Old Frog Pond Farm. He loves to keep them here because we are committed to organic practices, and the farm grows healthy forage all season long for the bees. Don told me one spoon of honey takes twelve bees their entire lives to gather. I think of them each morning with my dollop of honey in my morning tea.

A few of Don’s more colorful hives at the farm. Yellow for the sun and blue for the dome above.

And what’s the buzz? As the bee beats its wings, we hear the vibration as buzzing. But the flower feels the buzzing as movement. Pollen may fall off the flower and onto the bee’s body. Some is carried to the next flower the bee visits; the rest is stashed in the bee’s pollen baskets on its hind legs. It will travel back to the hive for the nurse workers who stay in the hive to feed the young.

Pollen Baskets are Full

There’s so much more I could write about bees—but perhaps best to stop here and invite you to stop by our farm stand for a taste of local, raw honey. Its truest secrets are only conveyed by the spoonful on the tongue.

Raw honey for sale at our self-serve farm stand.

Stinging Nettles: Gifts from the Great Mother

LH, photo: Ariel Matisse

Squatting in a patch of stinging nettles with my foraging basket, and rubber gloves, I was snipping young stalks to sauté for dinner. Some people react with alarm when I mention eating stinging nettles, but the truth is nettles are beloved by wild foragers and herbalists. Mother Earth offers this gift packed with vitamins, minerals, and protein. Richio Cech in his book, Making Plant Medicine, summarizes the uses of nettles: “Practical Uses: Legion.” The Greeks and Romans cultivated fields of nettles more than any other crop.

Nettles sting because they have hairs on the stems and undersides of leaves that break off when touched, exposing the tiniest sharp needles that pierce the skin and inject a toxin that causes a burning rash. Fierce protection! For nettles are so nutritious, animals would devour them before they grew large enough to flower and bear seeds, the driving force in a plant’s life.

 An old adage says, “When in doubt, use nettles!” Their beneficial uses include: a natural detoxifier, an anti-inflammatory, a treatment for gout, anemia, joint pain, diabetes, hay fever, urinary tract issues, and prostate issues. Flogging with stinging nettles for arthritis, joint pain, and to increase blood circulation is the one recommendation I am nervous about trying. But when I am without energy and need a dose of friendliness, I reach for the jar of dry nettles and make a cup of tea. It’s magical how this plant restores my balance.

Arrangement with Nettles, watercolor, LH 2020

 And, of course, what’s good for me is good for the orchard. Part of being a good orchardist is learning how to take care of the trees with kindness. In late spring, when I want to boost the trees’ immune systems and help provide an extra boost of minerals, I turn towards nettles. When the plants are about eighteen inches tall, I cut a wheelbarrow-full, enough to fill a 50-gallon barrel. Then I add water and let the nettles sit for a few days. Sometimes, I add comfrey leaves for added minerals, horsetail for its silica, and garlicscapes, if I feel the trees need insect protection. After a few hot days, I drain out the liquid and fill my 300-gallon sprayer. The gooey remains of the nettle plants go onto the compost pile, and I set out for my tractor tour of the orchard pulling the airblast sprayer with its peacock’s tail of spray fanning out to touch every leaf.

Nettles reduce heavy metals in soils, in fact I remember hearing that if you plant a rusty agricultural tool, it will attract nettles to grow there. Mostly I find nettles pop up where they choose. At the farm, they don’t seem to care whether it’s a dry berm in full sun, against the peeling paint of the old chicken coop, or in the dappled light of the streambed. When Nettles have finished what they came to do, they pack up and move on. Wild plants are like that.

Now is the season to gather and cook young nettles (they will regrow for fall harvesting.) Try steaming them and adding a little lemon juice and olive oil, and some parmesan or other favorite cheese. Or sauté them with onions or shallots, add some garlic powder, and a bit of cream. For nettle pesto, most people suggest you boil the nettles and dry them with a towel. Then fill your food processor with the nettles, walnuts, pecans or other nut, lemon juice, salt, a couple of peeled garlic cloves, and some hard cheese like asiago or parmesan. Once it becomes the consistency of a paste dribble in olive oil till it is smooth and the consistency you’d like. If you make a lot, freeze some for the middle of next winter to serve over fresh linguine and bring spring back into your life. Don’t be alarmed: nettle pesto is iridescent green.

 In midsummer, I cut some of the tall nettles, tie them bundles, and hang them in my studio. Once they are dry, I take a cardboard box or large paper bag, and with gloves on, run my hands along the stem to remove the leaves. The dry leaves can be stored whole, but I put them all through the food processor and store them in a couple of gallon jars. We sell small packs of dried nettles at the farm stand along with bags of freshly picked.

Out of the soil of friendliness grows the beautiful bloom of compassion,

Watered by the tears of joy,

Sheltered beneath the cool shade of the tree of equanimity.

                                    —Longchenpa, 14th century Tibetan Buddhist teacher

 Nettles are a curious teacher. They sting! But when we appreciate them, we receive nothing but gifts.

                         Happy Mother’s Day!

Nettle Bouquet, watercolor and pencil, LH 2020