Coming to Fruition
/It's become a bit of a running joke around here. Over the past few seasons when people have asked us what we grow, we'll crack a half smile and say, "we mostly cultivate patience." Our forest garden orchard is an evolving entity with a cast of characters that move where the wind blows, and change shape and size with every season. In the meantime imagination is essential. In 2013 looking over a patchwork of nearly empty raised beds we'd tell friends, it's an orchard! Do you see that tall stake, one day that will be a tall hickory! Look down there, do you see that baby pawpaw seedling, in just ten years that little one is going to bare pounds and pounds of fruit! Nearly two years later the shape has started to meet the form. In the spring a friend who had spent a summer helping us early on returned for visit and glared at us wide eyed, "when did the elders get so big?!" It felt like he was talking about a baby who had suddenly become a teenager. I gestured into the air, I don't know... they just grew up. The changing of seasons and the relentless onward march of time are certainties. All good things take patience, and when they finally come to fruition, it's time to savor the sweetness.
A selection of fruit we harvested this season (some for the first time!); garden strawberries, wild alpine strawberries, pink champagne currants, gooseberries, yellow black raspberries & black raspberries, raspberry, serviceberry, seaberry, lemony quince, elderberry, beach plum, autumn olive ; missing photos of figs, blackberries, aronia, native persimmon, and wineberries. Most of fruit went to our friends at EAT THIS! who whipped up some incredible preserves for their newly launched organic line.
