SEASONS WITH THE APPLE TREES: AWAKENING TO THE WONDER

This year, in Flagstaff, we were fortunate to enjoy a long, lingering autumn. I drank in the last warm days surrounded by the ripeness of the world, just as it is at its peak, before yielding to the natural cycle of rest. I relished the shock of gilded leaves falling to the ground and the pungent perfume of summer decomposing into the Earth. I appreciate this reminder from the plant world of the endless cycle of death, decay, and dormancy that preambles growth.

I am a manic mess in the days leading up to imminent hard consecutive frosts. The apple trees around town produced a bumper crop and I could not stop myself from harvesting the bounty from random neighborhoods and parking lots. I had collected a few boxes of these apples in my basement with no concrete plan for them. These apples from untended trees were so small that cider was the best way to handle them. I heard about a man who built a cider press and set it up on weekends at the Market of Dreams on Fourth Street. I had to check this guy out. I found a smiling, gray-haired man operating a handmade cider press, surrounded by giant plastic tubs and laundry baskets full of all varieties of apples. This man, Ward, a retired engineer from Wisconsin, worked most of his career in the oil refinery industry. A few years ago he received “a call,” as he described it, when he witnessed an abundance of apples going to waste on the trees around Flagstaff. This inspired him to build a cider press from scrap wood, an old bed frame, and a car jack to make sweet cider for whoever desires it. He looked a little worn out, as he had been at it for almost two solid months; not just pressing, but picking from his favorite neighborhood trees as well.

Ward’s DIY rack and cloth apple press travels to harvest festivals around Flagstaff

I understand what Ward means when he describes the call he received to devote his free time to all things apples. I got a call like that last year during my apprenticeship at the University of Santa Cruz. Whoever is working the switchboard for the apple world found my direct line and I answered. I fell deeply in love with the 130 plus varieties of apple trees at the Farm and Garden. Orin Martin, our fruit tree guru, began our first pruning lesson with the poem by Pablo Neruda “Ode to the Apple:” “When we bite/Round your innocence/We return/for a moment/To be also newly created creatures: Then we have something of the apple.” I didn’t want to ever return from that place.

Ode to the Macintosh apple

Apples are tasty, as are all the things you can make with them, but fruit trees are wondrous and mysterious. The care of these trees involves a series of interventions and a relationship between you and a complex living organism. This is a world rich in metaphors and Orin is well versed in them. The buds are arrows, and when you cut to an outward facing bud the branch will grow further in the direction it is pointing. He encourages us to create alleys of light between the whorls of branches because you need sun to make fruit. It is the lateral branches bear fruit, so you are always looking for ways to generate more “fruit hooks,” the perennial flower buds where fruit is a possibility. Orin compares pruning to gospel music, as it is a call and response between you and the tree. Sometimes I am the caller and sometimes the responder, but always I am searching for the harmony and with hands clapping together in praise.

I watched Orin’s fluid and precise movements with awe during our summer pruning sessions. He’s been at it for more than thirty years, and I’m beginning to understand that it will take me that long to get the hang of this. That means I’ll be in my seventies by the time I’m proficient. The first time I lifted my Felco hand pruners to thin a branch from a young Cox orange pippin, I felt certain the tree could sense my hesitation and cowardice, the way horses do. How could I make such a bold decision about this tree’s growth? The moment I felt the resistance of my pruners against the young wood and the resolve when it fell to the ground I was hooked. Light filtered into the greenery, dappling leaves that had been previously shaded. I could see the shape of the tree more clearly, a cup that was rapidly filling with sunlight so it could become more fruitful. Pruning is like sculpting, but with tangible, good tasting rewards if you do it right.

I’ve been making the trek through winding switchbacks of Oak Creek Canyon’s fall foliage display to help with the last of the apple harvesting, sorting and cider pressing at Garland’s Lodge. Rob Lautze, my Arizona fruit tree guru, has managed the three-acre orchard for the last thirty years. This winter I worked part-time on the pruning crew, and this is my first season seeing the result of those cuts.

Rob never gets tired of apple cider pressing

As the Macintosh apples roll through the spinning horsehair brushes of the apple polisher and come out shiny, I consider all the effort, every decision on behalf of Rob and others that it took to grow this fruit. The trees bloomed three weeks earlier due to a warm spring and Rob fretted nightly that flowers would be pollinated, set fruit, and grow big enough to survive the occasional late spring frosty nights. They weathered a summer hailstorm, but you can still see pockmarks from the bruising on the young fruit. Then there is always pressure from codling moths, a serious insect pest, which can destroy the crop.

Old-time apple sorting at Orchard Canyon on Oak Creek (formerly Garland's Lodge)

The fruit is crisp, fresh and tart; it’s sweet too, but the sour notes play the melody in my mouth. There is nothing like this available in any grocery store. I am grateful for the call to awaken to this world that exists underground and in the branches of the apple trees.

Published in Flaglive on November 10, 2016

SEX IN THE ORCHARD: ANOTHER VOTE FOR SCIENCE

Spring is the most intoxicating season, even more so in the company of fruit trees. I descend the switchbacks of Oak Creek Canyon in the morning quiet before the tourist cars crowd the road. They are still waking up at their campgrounds, the smoke from their fires signaling a vacation day ahead with coffee and bacon. I stop at Sterling Spring and fill my bottles with the cold, rushing power of water that has just emerged from the Earth. Rarely do I find myself there alone, more often I meet others filling jugs and we exchange pleasantries while we share the awe and gratitude of this gift. I study the riparian trees bearing tiny, bright green fists of spring buds, their uncurling fingers forming a lacy canopy that grows more leafy and exuberant the deeper I descend and with each passing day.

When I get to Garland’s (now re-named Orchard Canyon Lodge) there are fruit trees to observe and tend as they greet the spring and start the seasonal process of growing a crop of fruit. The blossoms unfurl three weeks earlier than normal in response to the unseasonably warm days and then have to hang tough through the sporadic cold nights. The breeze carries their delicate fragrance, and the blushing pink and white flowers stir the honeybees from their slumber. The bees must perform the critical work to transfer the pollen as they buzz between flowers. Most apple varieties are self-unfruitful, which means they need the pollen from a different variety that blooms at the same time. The ovary in an apple flower has five chambers, each of which has two ovules, and most need to successfully be fertilized. If not, the fruit is misshapen or small. Many of the apricots, plums and peaches are self-fertile, meaning they don’t require pollen from another variety and are starting to show that pollination was indeed successful. Thumb-sized fuzzy fruits swell below where the petals have fallen and only shriveled stamens remain.

Bees visiting peach blossoms

While I admire the apple blossoms and the steady humming of the bees, I start working on pest control. The coddling moth, our main insect predator, has recently been detected in the orchard on the lookout for a mate. Unfortunately for the moths, I am trying to stop them from having sex. The female lays her eggs on the leaves and tiny fruits and when they hatch, the larvae crawl inside the developing apples and feed on the growing fruit. My job is to install mating disruption dispensers every ten feet throughout the three-acre orchard. The red rings exude the female sex pheromone, which confuses male moths, hopefully preventing them from impregnating the females. I feel like such a prude intervening in this way; and the plastic tags that affix the red pheromone-loaded rings to a tree branch bear an ironic heart-shape. However, the alternatives are worse—wormy apples or the more detrimental spraying of a broad-spectrum insecticide that kills everything, the target pest and the beneficial insects that help balance the entire ecosystem.

Pheromone dispenser hanging below developing apple fruits will hopefully distract male moths from finding females and give us wormless apples!

Mating disruption technology is relatively new for orchard pest control; it was developed only 25 years ago. Scientists studied pheromones for several decades before a product like this could be released on the market. I am grateful for this and so many other scientific advances that have deepened my understanding of ecology and can help me become a better farmer. This past weekend I marched for science down Aspen Avenue with close to 1,000 Flagstaff residents, to lend my voice to this global movement of citizens calling for evidence based decision making by our politicians. My sign quoted Simone Weil, the French philosopher, labor union activist and mystic: “Science is the study of beauty in the world.” I also want people to remember that we need to celebrate science with art, poetry, dance, song and the written word.

Every day we live on this planet we reap the benefits of scientific knowledge. It is because of science that I can drink clean spring water flowing from the ground in Oak Creek, that we have choices for organic pest control, and therefore less exposure to harmful pesticides in our food. There are so many factors influencing something we consider so commonplace, such as how an apple makes it into our hands. We need healthy and abundant pollinator communities and scientists who have the support and freedom to do research that advances our understanding of the world, especially as the climate changes, and a society that creates policies informed by science.

Ode to Apple Pollination, a collage I created in celebration of this miraculous act

Meanwhile the seedlings in the greenhouse are emerging each day from their little soil cells. Each time a seed I planted emerges from the darkness and starts curling towards the light, wanting to become something, I am filled with joy and a deep sense of fulfillment. It doesn’t matter how many times I witness this simple miracle, I am still filled with wonder. I feel like a proud mother, like I did something right, like there is still magic and hope in the world despite all the terrible news. I feel fortunate to be connected to the rhythms of the Earth and the beauty and complexity of nature every single day.