Avoiding Apples

Last week I got an email from our local Harvard weekly newspaper asking about the crop this year.

Hi Linda,

I’m doing a piece this week on this year’s apple crop damage. Frank Carlson is estimating a crop that will be about 50 to 75 percent of an average year’s crop. Are you seeing that kind of damage to your crop? He said his Cortlands were hit the hardest, but Macs are also off. 

Are your raspberries ok?

Let me know, sad year for the orchards, especially those who grow peaches.

Thanks,

 Joan

Frank Carlson is the patriarch of the orchard world in Harvard. When I first decided to bring back our trees, I called him. I felt shy about disturbing the man who was running the largest orchard in town, but I needed to make a connection with someone who knew about apples. Frank told me to come by, but when I arrived, I wasn’t really sure why I was there. It was harvest time, and there were towers of wooden crates filled with freshly picked apples. Frank was a mini-cyclone, answering his pager, cell phone, and loudspeaker calls, but he still took the time to chat with me in between answering questions that came at him from all sides.

Nodding, he said, “I’m familiar with A & M Orchards.” I told him that its new name was Old Frog Pond Farm and that I wanted to grow organic apples. “A small operation that is organic might work,” he continued. I sensed a sympathetic familiarity among anyone growing apples. I appreciated Frank’s openness and drove away with a glimmer of hope.  This year is a different story.

 I wrote back to the Harvard Press reporter,

 Dear Joan,

Yes - a sad year!

Our apples are certainly down 50 percent. It is variety dependent. The late flowering ones are all right, but varieties that flowered early were killed off by the frost.

Raspberries are doing well and it seems like a bumper crop of blueberries.

We have a few peaches…enough for us to eat; but indeed a very sad year for peach growers.

I think climate change is wreaking havoc with our perennial fruit crops. They suffer from these wild temperature fluctuations early in the season when the buds and blossoms are so vulnerable.

Linda

Climate change is the biggest factor affecting all of us. Plants don’t evolve as quickly as climate change is happening. Some good news is that one approach to lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to store more carbon in the soil. The soil benefits, the plants benefit, and the earth becomes healthier. 

Much of the carbon originally came from the soil and was released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. We have agreed that we need to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere but where can it go? Water covers 70 percent of our planet and when carbon combines with water it forms carbonic acid raising the acidity of the water and killing off plant life. Soil can take back and store carbon if we change our approach to industrial agriculture and land use.

One of the most important practices is to cover every square foot of soil with plants. Erosion is a number one cause of the loss of carbon. The second practice is to avoid tilling the soiling or minimally till. Tilling exposes soil to the air and releases carbon. Plants do the opposite through photosynthesis. Even if our fruit trees aren’t producing peaches and apples, they are removing carbon from the atmosphere.

The French government recently put forward an initiative, 4p1000.org with the goal of mitigating climate change effects through agriculture. Already 28 countries have signed on including France, Mexico, Japan — no, not the United States. The benefit of carbon rich soils is that the plants become more resilient. When we eat the food produced by these healthier plants, human health also improves.

While this year we may not have a good apple crop, hopefully by continuing to support our trees and encouraging their growth, they will become stronger and be able to adjust better to the fluctuations in temperatures that are certainly going to be part of our lives for the next decades. Climate Change Boston has just released their projections for Boston that include 90 days of summer over 90 degrees, which is essentially all of summer.  

Still, it’s a sad year for fruit growers and the reason I have been avoiding writing about apples. The trees may be luscious with leaves, but there is really very little fruit. Truthfully, my estimate is far less than 50 percent, but I hate to say it.  It’s so disappointing, and then I think that maybe I did something wrong, or that I could have done something differently.

Frank Carlson said that people are already calling for peaches. Their annual peach festival attracts a large following every year. It won’t happen this year, but they will be celebrating their 80th anniversary this summer. When the fruit is not as plentiful, your orchards need your support even more. Even if our apples aren’t plentiful, we hope you will come for raspberry picking, vegetables, workshops, our Plein Air Poetry Walk, and Outdoor Sculpture exhibits. This year we  celebrate our 15th anniversary!

Taste the Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture

On March 31st and April 1st,  I had the honor of presenting a paper at the Spirit of Sustainable Agriculture Conference at the Harvard Divinity School. My talk was “Feed the Body, Feed the Spirit: Agriculture, Art, and Community at Old Frog Pond Farm.” Farmers, spiritual leaders and academics from all over the country and a few from distant continents gathered. One of the many presentations I attended was about Vedic Agriculture, something I knew nothing about.

The Vedas are ancient Hindu texts of prayers, philosophy, and practices written down about 5000 years ago. Dr. Appachanda Thimmaiah, the presenter, said quoting from one of the Vedas, “The whole of existence is an interplay of matter and spirit.” I felt instantly in tune with this way of talking about the world. I believe that spiritual practice has to be grounded in the physical world. And like our approach on the farm — respect for the earth and an appreciation of life — we have to put this into practice with healthy agricultural practices.

In the Vedas there are very specific daily practices for individuals, like asking forgiveness when you wake before putting your feet on the ground of mother earth, and rubbing your hands together to evoke the seven sacred rivers of India. Three times a day, at the transitions — midday, late day (dinner time), and before going to bed — there are specific prayers to express one’s gratitude and reverence for the earth. I know how often I am swept up with the workings of daily life. I know that stopping for a few moments of conscious reflection throughout the day would be helpful.

Many Vedas also speak directly to agriculture. There is specific timing information — what to plant, when and where — and how to create rhythms on the farm for health, balance, and integration not only for plants but for livestock. There are performances to enliven the creative intelligence of both the plant and the farmer. I thought of our mid-January Wassailing of the apple trees when poets and friends of the farm gathered to ‘toast’ the trees and encourage the new crop. We weren’t reenacting a traditional ritual, but with our own new words and songs we were awakening joy.  

Lynn Horsky reading her wassail poem.

We know that food provides joy as well as nutrition. In the Vedic tradition food is our life force. Dr. Thimmaiah said that food grown following Vedic practices will nourish every level of life — body, mind, heart, and consciousness. He added that he is certain that by growing our food in the violent ways of industrial agriculture, we create the conflicts and wars that are happening around the planet. If he is right, we need to nurture the earth and make sure that all beings have good food, and only then will we create a world of peace. Our relationship with food affects the social, political, and environmental future of the earth.

Attending the conference made me more certain that this ancient knowledge can’t be lost or forgotten. It’s in our bodies and in our bones. We are of the earth. We eat from the earth. We return to the earth. It’s not necessarily about specific practices, it’s about appreciating all of life, and most importantly, our own. “When one’s food is pure, one becomes pure.” (Chandogya Upanishad 7.26.2) It’s not so different from the slogan, “You are what you eat.” What if we unconsciously absorb the emotions behind the growing and preparation of our food?  Mega tractors rip through dry, chemically destroyed soil . . . the underpaid, bitter factory worker. . .

This week, I spent Thursday and Friday in New York City. I stayed overnight near Columbia University and in the morning went inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This great church has a long history of political and artistic activism. To my amazement, their exhibit, The Value of Food, had just closed, but some of the works were still up. The curators’ statement on a panel at the entrance to this glorious cathedral’s central nave said, “ The Value of Food explores the dynamic and organic materiality of food and its integral role in sustaining life. . . Pull up a seat and join us at the table. Food becomes a meal when it is shared.”

Food Altar at St John the Divine, New York, NY.