Tree Wisdom

Over the weekend I was sitting on the back porch with my grandfather. He is a farmer and teacher, a wonderful combination. He was looking at the trees around us and pointed to a group of pear trees behind the neighbor’s fence. The trees were inferior, he explained because the branches don’t grow from the trunk of the tree…they grow out of any notch. As a result, they break off easily. The tree has no integrity.

He also told me a story once about a man who came to him for advice about his apple trees. The man was no farmer and he’d inherited a small orchard. He took my grandfather out to the orchard to look at one particular tree that was not fruiting. It was healthy and big, bigger than some of the others. But, no fruit. Grandfather took a look at the tree and asked the man if he had a chainsaw. He did. Seeing an opportunity for humor, he brandished the chainsaw threateningly at the tree. “Now, you’re going to fruit or we’re going to take you down!” he called out as he whacked off several branches. The man stood there astonished. Several weeks later, fruit. The tree had needed pruning.

Lessons from trees: Make sure new growth happens from your trunk, not increasingly distant branches. And recognize the importance of pruning to keeping the whole organism healthy and bearing fruit.