Planning the Homestead Orchard

by Ed Mashburn     

 For most folks just moving to the country, there are many choices to be made concerning their new lifestyle.  These choices can seem overwhelming sometimes. For instance, many new homesteaders think that having home grown fruit must be a pretty good thing, and so they jump right in, order trees, plant them, and hope for the best.  Sometimes the trees grow, and sometime they don't.  Sometimes the fruit makes, and sometimes it doesn't.  Newcomers and, I must admit, older folks like me, too, need to do some homework before planting. It really doesn't matter where in the country the farm is.  Up north, in the midwest, or down south, there are just lots of things to study and be sure of before the shovel hits the sod. 

            Homesteaders must remember always that planting fruit trees is a very labor intensive effort. Fruit trees are even more time intensive.  Think about this:  Plant the wrong peas, and you've made a three month mistake.  You lose a planting season. Plant the wrong fruit trees, or plant them in the wrong place,  and it may be a ten year mistake, and you may never really get to make it right.

Through the years, my family has lived in the country in a number of places, from the northern parts of the Ozarks to the very southernmost parts of Alabama, Wherever we've lived, we've grown our own fruit.  We have made our share of mistakes, and we've had our fair share of successes too.  There must  be something about seeing fruit trees grow, bloom, set fruit, mature fruit, and then yield  fruit up  when ripe for our eating that keeps us coming back.  We just keep planting fruit trees.  Although we've lived in lots of places, we've always found that wherever we have lived,  fruit can be home produced, and very often be much better than anything store-bought.

            There are a few things that we've discovered that we'd like to share. 

            A long time ago when we first moved from the city to the northern Arkansas Ozarks, planting fruit trees for our home use was one of our first priorities.  We were very fortunate at this time, because my father-in-law lived close by, and he was a first rate orchard-man who kept a ten acre mixed orchard  and had years of experience growing fruit.  We had good guidance from him when we started selecting varieties of apple trees, plum trees, pear trees, and pie cherry trees.  He had learned much about the climate and trees which he passed along to us. From him, we learned which trees would work together to produce fruit for our family's use.

            Before we obtained our first old homestead, I spent long summer days and even longer fall days (and nights in some cases) helping my father-in-law prune, spray, pick, grade, polish, and sell many, many bushels of apples.  It was a pretty full education I received.  However, even my father-in-law's judgment was not perfect.  You see, in addition to his apples, plums, and cherries, he wanted to grow peaches, and that was a problem.  On the west and north facing hillsides of his multi-acre orchard, his peach trees grew well, bloomed vigorously, and almost every year had their infant peaches frozen by late spring freezes.  In all the time I was there-about fifteen years- he got two partial crops of peaches.  These were wonderful crops and we enjoyed the fresh peaches,  but two out of fifteen crops successful just won't work. For a homesteader who has plans of selling fruit for profit as well as home use, it can't even be considered.

What I saw and learned from my father-in-law's peaches was this.  Even though the fruit tree catalogs informed us that peaches would grow in our Ozark climate, the specialized micro-climate of his orchard made growing peaches practically impossible.  The home grower must realize that this sort of thing happens.  No matter where a homestead happens to be located, the new grower must be cautious in selecting fruit trees, and make sure that an investment of money, effort and time will actually produce. Another thing.  No matter how much we may want a particular fruit, that won't make it grow if it can't prosper where we live.  We couldn't grow oranges in Arkansas, and we have learned that we can't grow apples in south Alabama.

Continued

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