Grit and Hard Work

Driving the muddy road over a small hill and through a wall of poplar columns, Gary Morford and I move further into Green Acre’s pear orchard.  While the blue sky was more than welcome, the melt was considerable, leaving the road thick with mud.  Luckily the muck was no match for the tractors.  We pull to the side as we approach a trailer loaded with branches.  Looks like it’s time to cut out some fire blight.

If you happen to not be fluent in fruit tree diseases, fire blight is a bacteria that affects apple and pear orchards.  Branches wither and blacken and look as if they’ve been burned (hence the name).  If it’s not controlled, whole orchards can be lost as it’s terribly contagious to other trees.  Luckily, affected areas can be cut out.  Winter is a great time to do it with the cold temperatures inactivating the bacteria.

Today, the orchard is still packed with snow.  While men can get through, machinery cannot.  We watch as the cut branches are dragged by the men to the row ends for pick up by the tractors on the muddy pathway for disposal.  Gary checks in with a foreman to see how things are progressing.

Such a contrast on such a beautiful day.  With the shining sun and the wide blue sky overhead, the valley view tumbling out below us, it seems criminal that the task at hand is to mitigate the risk presented by a brutal pathogen like fire blight.  But a farm is by nature, always at the card table.  Things are dealt with as they come, some pleasant, some not.  Grit and hard work being as important as risk taking and perseverance.

Today this is what needs to be done, and so it is.  Tomorrow it will be something else and after that there will be pears.  And so it will go as long as the orchard stands.