Category: The land

The new painting is on the wall

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Some months ago, Ken commissioned a painting of Acorn Abbey from Frank Duncan, a local artist. The painting is now hanging on the wall at the abbey. It’s a large piece — 56 inches wide. We put a lot of thought into the painting, and we chose to submerge the house into the woods and emphasize the fecundity of the setting. There are lots of little details hidden in the painting — a black cat on the front porch and lots of little animals hidden in the foliage.

I still intend to write a book about the building of Acorn Abbey, and I’ll use this painting for the book’s cover. But the sequel to Fugue in Ursa Major, now in progress, must come first.

The abbey in oil: a work in progress

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Frank at work

Several months ago, Ken commissioned a painting of Acorn Abbey from a local artist, Frank Duncan. Frank is a celebrity in these parts. He’s also a neighbor. We asked Frank to unapologetically get in touch with his inner Thomas Kinkade and do interesting things with light and imagination. The painting will go in a rather large and very empty space above the mantel. The painting is coming along nicely.

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The watercolor “sketch,” which is a kind of blueprint for the oil painting. We chose a composition that emphasizes life and exuberance by putting the garden and orchard in the foreground and letting the house risk getting lost in the woods. Lots of little animals will be hidden here and there in the painting, like Easter eggs.

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The photograph that was used to lay in the painting’s composition and perspective

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A Frank Duncan painting

Real apples, and the sorrows of orcharding

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November apples at Century Farm Orchards

Fatalities in the orchard during the last year include fig trees killed (above ground, at least) by brutally cold weather last winter, and another pear tree lost to the Black Death. Ken also found room for a couple more apple trees. Today I picked up some replacement trees.

I know I’ve harped on this theme before, but happy is the household with an established orchard. Rearing young apple trees is like rearing children in the Dark Ages — lots of them die, plagued with all sorts of pests, hazards, and diseases. The abbey’s orchard is six years old now, and it’s coming along. There was almost no apple yield this year, though, because last winter all the trees got a major pruning. This was probably the most important pruning of the trees’ lives, because it will pretty much determine the shape of the adult apple trees. Pruners say you should prune so that a bird can fly through the tree. That doesn’t leave a lot of buds for producing fruit the following season. But, during the 2015 season, with luck, the abbey should get its first serious apple harvest. That will be the orchard’s seventh year.

One thing I got right: Avoiding low-quality trees from mass-production nurseries, the kind of trees that are sold at box-store garden departments. I had bought a few such trees as replacements, and they just didn’t do well. Almost all the abbey’s trees came from Century Farm Orchards in Caswell County, North Carolina. They specialize in old Southern varieties of apple trees. These trees are very hardy and well-suited to the local climate, though like all young fruit trees they need a lot of care and attention to reach adulthood. Century Farm Orchards is not really a storefront operation. One orders trees early in the year. You get an invoice in October, and you pick up the trees at open house events in November.

Today’s new trees included two mammoth blacktwig apple trees, two kieffer pear trees, a brown turkey fig, and a celeste fig.

Another nice thing about the abbey’s modest-size orchard is that it’s on a fenced slope, nicely turfed, fed on organic fertilizer and lots of chicken droppings. The grass and clover in the orchard are incredibly lush, and of course all that organic nutrition and earthworm activity works down into the soil and benefits the apple trees. We use only natural pesticides. The poor trees pretty much have to fend for themselves, like 9th Century peasant children.

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I picked up two new blacktwig trees today.

Ragweed and other saints of nature

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Ragweed. Note the brown grass behind it. The wildflower patches did poorly this year, but water-frugal species grew valiantly.

One of the good things about living in a place like the abbey is that, instead of fighting with nature, one gradually begins to cooperate with nature and to learn from nature’s experience. This summer has been miserably dry, the driest summer since a La Niña summer a few years ago. I haven’t cut the grass for a month, because the grass isn’t growing, and much of it has turned brown. The clover shriveled up, and rabbits that were young enough to squeeze through the garden fence ate the tops off young sweet potatoes. I forgave them. They have to eat.

Drought is hard on everyone. The day lily bank usually makes an extravagant show. This year, because of the drought, the blooms were scant, and a doe and her fawn ate most of the bloom buds, returning nightly. I put up with it. They have to eat. Last year’s 70 inches of rain produced a huge crop of rabbits and deer. This year, I’m sure, the populations will be way down.

Ragwood is one of the most hated of weeds, not least because its pollen is a powerful allergen. But this year I saw the virtues of ragweed. Where the grass was brown, ragweed sprang up. I would not dare to cut it until we’ve had some good rain and the grass is growing again. Roots in the soil and green leaves in the sun are always a good thing. In a drought, one can’t be choosy.

The chickens had done a lot of damage to the orchard during the winter, scratching bare spots in the grass. With good rain, the grass would have quickly recovered. But this year, it was only ragweed that could step in to defend the soil. The ragweed completely covered the worst of the bare spots. The chickens left it alone. Not only was it roots in the ground, it also was dense enough to shade the soil and keep the soil a little cooler.

Driving around the foothills, one frequently passes plots of land that were timbered during the winter, leaving a Mordor-like plain of barrenness and disruption. But who shows up to hold the soil and get life going again? Weeds, the tried-and-true native species who have had a million years and more to learn their job.

I haven’t been here that long. What do I know? One learns to let things live and seek their own balance — weeds, rabbits, deer, even the snakes. The abbey has a no-kill rule. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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The chicken is standing in a patch of ragweed. A couple of months ago, the area was bare dirt, scratched clean by the chickens during the winter.

Old-fashioned shrubs

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A neighbor has given us some shoots from her old-fashioned shrubs. I’m pretty sure this is English dogwood, also known as “mock orange,” or Philadelphus coronarius. If that indeed is what it is, it’s a native of Southern Europe. A hundred years ago, it was very popular, and it can sometimes be found around old homesteads. It has gone out of fashion. Time for a revival.

The griefs of starting an orchard

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This apple tree looks spare and lanky because it was pruned heavily last winter. It won’t produce much fruit this year and instead will put all its 2014 effort into the growth of the tree. But, next year and in future years, the pruning will pay off.

Lucky is the man who has a mature, productive orchard. Starting an orchard is like trying to raise children in the Dark Ages — the investment is enormous, and the mortality and accompanying heartbreak run high. The oldest trees in the abbey’s orchard will be six years old this fall. The other trees vary in age, as trees that have been lost have been replaced. This process of death and replacement continues.

Among the lessons learned, a couple of things stand out. For one (as with dogs), know your breeder. Fruit trees that come from fruit-tree puppy mills may look nice when you see them at the big-box hardware store. But they may have come from nurseries far away, and they may be of stock and varieties that are not hardy and not suitable for your area.

The abbey’s strongest trees are all old Southern varieties of antique or heirloom apple trees from a nursery two counties to the east that specializes in such trees — Century Farm Orchards. Though I lost (and replaced) two of those twelve six-year-old trees, that mortality rate is good compared with the mortality rate of other fruit trees. We’ve almost given up on cherry trees. Insects defoliate them. We were on our second or third attempt at growing fig trees, and things were looking good, until the near-zero temperatures last winter killed the figs. So while the cherry trees, figs, and even the pears die of the whooping coughs, smallpoxes and scarlet fevers that afflict young fruit trees, the hardy old apple trees and peach trees carry on. Getting fruit trees to maturity is not a small challenge.

We were tempted to attempt olives. But we pretty quickly decided against it, because olives are not truly suited to this area, and the risk of mortality in any given year would be high. Even figs are a big risk. But we love figs so much that we soldier on.

If (at least in this area) you want maximum fruit and minimum grief in your young orchard, stick with apples and peaches, of old and proven varieties, from known nurseries with a track record and a nurseryman who will answer your emails (as David Vernon from Century Farm Orchards always does).

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A baby peach

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Baby apples

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A fig stalk, killed by the cold winter, though its roots may still be alive