The worst farmer in the world
Ihave been nominated to receive the coveted “Worst Farmer in the World” award. It is usually presented on an annual basis, but was nominated as a “Lifetime Achievement” recipient. My principal area of focus has been growing fruit trees, for which I have a special talent. My real specialty is peaches.
A few years ago I doubled my peach orchard and now have two trees. When I bought my house, the first tree was included, and at the time was a sturdy, thriving specimen of the clingstone variety. Over the ensuing years I have learned to care for it, and it now survives as a brokendown, heartless hulk that should have been dead for years. One seeing it would wonder why it was not chopped down and thrown away long ago. The simple answer is that it refuses to die and still produces hundreds of pounds of sweet peaches every year despite the abuse it has taken. Even though termites have eaten out the dead wood in its heart, it struggles on. It has now been joined by a freestone variety.
To grow peaches one must know how to prune the tree in the winter. Every January I pull out my pruning manual, loppers and saw and go about pruning the tree into a vase shape. This allows the center of the tree to receive sufficient sunlight to produce an abundant crop. I know what it is supposed to look like when I am finished, and I carefully follow the directions in the manual.
The problem is that my trees refuse to grow limbs where they are supposed to be located according to the diagram in the book. Despite my careful attention and following the instructions to the letter, when I am finished the trees always end up looking like a tornado blew through limbs sticking out at odd angles, bearing no relationship to vases. I know that my neighbor, who is a big-time professional fruit grower, snickers derisively every time he drives out of his driveway. He is too nice to admit it, but I know that he does. I can see him trying to suppress a smirk as he drives by.
The next important step after pruning is thinning. A peach tree will try to produce thousands of peaches. If you don’t thin them they will all be the size of a grape. One must catch them at the right time when they are small and knock most of them off the branches. This will allow the others to grow to a good size.
The problem is that years ago when we were thinning our lone peach tree my wife said she felt like she was aborting babies. This placed a very unpleasant image in my brain and now I have great difficulty motivating myself to do it. How would you feel about literally killing hundreds of little babies? I can hardly bring myself to do it, and wait as long as I can.
I watch and wait, and when I come home to find several branches splintered and broken off the tree, laying on the ground with hundreds of little bitty peaches, I know that it is time to thin the tree - a month ago. So instead of aborting little pea-sized babies, I now have to abort golf-ball sized infant peaches. Each one cries as I tear it off the limb, saying, “I was going to grow up to be a luscious peach! What are you doing?”
Once the tree is thinned, the rest of the crop can grow up and mature. But by then it is too late for them to really grow, so I end up with hundreds of billiard-ball sized peaches instead of thousands of golf-ball sized peaches. At least they are still on the tree instead of attached to broken limbs on the ground. When they are ripe they are very good - for the birds to eat. I would not mind if they ate their fill, if they would just eat one at a time. Instead, they take a bite out of each one, ruining about 80% of the crop.
But no matter, the rest are sweet and juicy and make a great snack. You just have to cut out the bird-pecked parts. And eat about 15 of them to feel satisfied. Every year I look at my poor, shredded, broken-down trees and swear to do better the next year. I never have, so far. You don’t even want to know about my nectarine trees.
Remember me when the ballots come out for Worst Farmer in the World. I would appreciate your vote. I certainly deserve it.