The Statement in the Planting

There is an old Chinese proverb that asks:
“What's the best time to plant a tree?
100 years ago.
What's the second best time?
Today.”

One of the authors I read early in the gestational stage of our new beginning -- I think it was Joel Salatin -- encouraged wannabe farmers, new to the land, to plant fruit and trees before anything else.  Before unpacking the dishes, before hanging pictures, before ordering seeds for the garden, plant trees.  Perhaps he, too, had learned from the Chinese.  And so we did.  Through the initial generosity of the kids and their birthday gift of 6 fruit trees, later augmented by our own hunger with three more fruit trees (along with 6 raspberry bushes, 2 blackberry bushes and 50 asparagus plants) we began our life here with the far horizon on our minds.

There is, to be sure, a time frame involved.  Unlike peas or salad greens, fruit production is measured in years not days.  Even the long-suffering tomato moves from blossom to ripeness in a single summer -- a virtual instant by comparison.  I haven't studied nuts, but I'm guessing that they, too, take years to mature.  It makes sense, then, to plant them -- if not “100 years ago”, which poses an obvious problem -- at least as soon as possible; the “today” to which the Chinese proverb calls secondary attention.


But there is, I sense, something deeper in the wisdom of planting trees than the mere pragmatism of protracted growth.  There is, to be sure, a kind of generosity about the act -- a downpayment on shade, as another sage voice characterized it, under which you'll not likely live long enough to sit.  But with fruit trees there is a more personal intent -- an intrinsic statement of settlement.  The planter, in digging the hole and lowering the root ball, is announcing to himself, to her neighbors, or merely to God above that migratory days are past; that he or she is in some important sense "home"; has found a sense of place where he or she intends to stay.  Whether or not the planter lives long enough to enjoy its shade, he or she fully intends to hang around long enough to taste its fruit.


At least that message is quietly embedded in our several acts of planting for the long-term.  We aren't, as with the stock market, living for the next quarterly report; we are investing in a life spreading out as far as we can see.  Every bit as much as this land becoming a part of us, we intend to become a part of this land -- not merely for a season, but for...well...whatever time we have left. 

I've cheated a little.  As per the horticulturist's instructions, I pruned off this year's early showing fruit in deference to sturdy roots over immediate gratification.  But it so happens that I "missed" one pear.  I know it's foolish whimsey.  Between the birds, the winds, the bugs and the blights, the chances that we will taste its ripeness are microscopic.  Still it will grow there at least for a time -- a reminder, and with any luck at all a foretaste, of the feast to come.