|
|
|
Eulogy For A Much-Loved Orchard |
|
|
|
What is the future of a once fruitful industry?
Springtime in the Okanagan used to be radiant with blossoming fruit trees, but the scene before me is one of carnage. I have danced at two weddings in this orchard, but today I am a mourner at its funeral, and I hide my eyes from the sight of a thousand apple trees uprooted, lying on their sides and blackening, like soldiers defeated on a battle ground.
The owners are going through a divorce and need to sell their house. But although the real estate market has been superheated, a year passed with no offer on this orchard home. And so the healthy, productive trees have been pulled out, as if they were a cancer that threatened the property’s salability. An orchard doesn’t generate much money in return for the work required, and few buyers seem interested in taking one on.
One thousand healthy, fruit-bearing trees, apparently more trouble than they’re worth: this is a perplexing lesson in economics. If a productive orchard is more liability than asset, are BC’s tree fruits endangered species? And does anyone care? A grower’s worries have always included harmful insects and destructive weather, but farmers now face a new challenge: apathy from consumers who believe that peaches and pears come from supermarkets and not from the land, who do not connect the fruit they eat with the season, the soil, the community, or the farmer who produced it.
With every orchard that disappears we lose so much more than fruit alone. The trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, protect the soil from erosion, and provide habitat for wildlife. I pity the child or adult who has never witnessed the surreal spring blizzard of petals adrift on the wind: nature’s dreamy promise that in a couple of months our lips will be stained with cherry juice and our bellies will be full of pie.
I can’t help wondering how much longer Okanagan fruit will be the source of that juice and those pies. The machines that came in to break these tree limbs and pull the roots from the soil are no longer an uncommon sight here. It’s difficult to hire someone with the skills to prune your orchard these days, but it’s easy to find people to rip out the trees, or advise you to grow grapes for the wineries as a more lucrative alternative.
I grew up in this valley, amidst apple, peach, pear and cherry orchards. Most of them are only a memory now, replaced by residential developments that climb high into the hills. The Agricultural Land Reserve areas are home to winery after winery. My mother, descended from a family of ranchers, says that at least when nobody in the Okanagan is growing food anymore, we’ll all be too tipsy to care.
The sight of uprooted trees is distressing, yet it is not always the sign of an abandoned way of life. Every year about 500 acres are replanted with smaller, high-yield trees that grow cheek by jowl. Like me, my city friends are shocked by the destruction of the original, healthy trees. But like me, they do not know what it means to care for an orchard. We are not prepared to commit to the farmer’s demanding lifestyle, although we hope with all our hearts that others will continue to provide us with fresh, locally-grown food.
The new high-yield trees are less tree-like, and harder for this idealistic urbanite to love. They don’t look much like the orchards of my childhood, but they produce approximately twice as much fruit on the same amount of land. Their heroic productivity allows a shrinking number of BC orchards to produce more than double the number of apples that British Columbians consume each year.
Productivity, viability and innovation are words that farmers must live by, and the high-yield trees are just one example of science at work in the orchards. BC growers know there’s little point in competing with the cheap but flavourless commodity fruit that has traveled an exhausting journey to reach our supermarkets. Instead, their competitive edge is in hard-to-find heritage apples, or new varieties bred for superior texture, juiciness and flavour.
These innovations are the work of the Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre (PARC) in Summerland, one of the world’s very best breeding facilities for cherries and apples. Their new varieties are making ripples in the food world, intriguing the palates of chefs and specialty produce buyers. They have also extended the harvest; the Okanagan cherry season used to last for about three weeks in July, but new breeds produce cherries from June through late August.
I’ll continue to grieve for every healthy tree pulled out of the soil in the name of progress, but my orchard-love is worth little to the grower, who can’t use it to pay the mortgage or send the kids to college. And if replacing the trees of my youth with these new varieties is the only way to save BC’s orchards, I thank the farmers for their pragmatism and their courage.
**
Debbra Mikaelsen lives in Vancouver now, with a single ornery pear tree and a too-tall cherry that provides a summer banquet for birds and raccoons.
|
|
|
