The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

The Orchard

Workmen arrived this morning and started cutting down trees in the orchard.

The orchard is over a hundred years old and is surrounded in three sides by a neat

stone wall. The wall is three feet high and a foot and a half wide. It is completely free

standing and made without mortar and yet every the stone fits neatly into place. The

wall was made by an itinerant stone mason who traveled around the county building

walls to pay for his supper.

This Spring, we are losing seven trees to old age and blight. They are along the

East wall which is the oldest part of the orchard. It’s hard to lose one tree, much less

seven. They are like grandparents, or old members of the community. They were here

before we arrived and we assumed that they would be here forever.

Sometimes, I guess, we ignore their steadfastness until it is threatened, or

gone. But we looked after our trees. Why us? Why are they gone? It feels like

ponderous mortality. Seems like the tree just reaches its full productive maturity, and

then it is gone. Like people. We work and grow and learn all we can to be productive

mature members of our community, then we too, are gone and others take our place.

Tree sentimentality seems to be an attitude I brought from a city childhood.

Perhaps because in the city there are so few trees, and we are so removed from them

and green, growing life. We long for trees like missing relatives and desperately hold

on to the pathetic concrete shrouded survivors ondowntown streets. Here in the country

where trees and green life abound there is a different perspective. Rather than a

maudlin sentimentality, there is a simple respect for life, and its ebb and flowing nature.

In the nursery, saplings are thinned to make room for healthy full sized plants. Not every

plant will survive, if they all try to. A fruit tree must be pruned to make healthier growth

next year. In the orchard, an old diseased tree is removed so that it doesn’t infect the

others. In the light and space it leaves behind, a new young and vigorous tree is

planted, ensuring another generation will grow up and continue to be a productive

orchard. And the remaining old trees shade the young trees from the heat of Summer

and the cold winds of Winter until they are strong enough to stand alone. The myriad

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Country Cooking