Hello, Subscriber First NameWe’ve got trees! Come plant with us on October 29th at 2 pm. There will be a warm fire, hot drinks, and an early chili and cornbread dinner around the outside fire. Friday looks to be beautiful weather, but please dress warmly and bring gloves. Shovels and other tools for the job at hand will be provided. Please let me know if you plan to attend. Thank you to those who have already let me know they’ll be there; we are excited to work together! Bundled up, we excitedly went to our favorite nursery, searching for “nativey” and fruit trees. Mike Sheets of Mike’s Tree Farm in Terrebonne had to laugh at me. He gets calls daily inquiring about fruit trees. They’ve called everywhere, and Mike has nothing different to tell them; he sold out of fruit trees since he got them in April. The pandemic has an exponential amount of people thinking a fruit tree will add stability to their pantries. Our ranch will have to wait until Springtime to begin our buzzing orchard filled with apples, Asian pears, peaches, plums, and maybe even cherries. I thought it might be hard to find fruit trees, but I still felt deflated. So we perused, wondering what we may find. Lo, and behold, we found a stash of overlooked Serviceberry bushes! Brilliant spring blooms, incredible fall color, ‘nativey’ and best of all… edible berries! These berries are blueberry-like in shape and flavor with apparently almond-flavored tiny seeds. Their berries are rich in manganese, magnesium, and iron. I excitedly picked out five beautifully colored and branched fruit-bearing bushes. Nathaniel is adding two more aspens to our little grove at the North pond. Are you wondering at my use of ‘nativey’ and what I mean? Native is a nuanced term. Mike asked me if I wanted native trees from five years ago, fifty, or five hundred years ago. This is the complexity and the nuance of a term like native. Once upon one hundred years ago, there was over 95% less juniper trees in Central Oregon. Some view them as an invasive weeds while others view them as native. Misuse and overgrazing of cattle consumed the high desert grasses, exposing bare earth. Precipitation increased which caused the junipers to thrive. A surprising reason for the juniper boom is the increase of carbon dioxide globally thanks to industrialization, trees dig it. See this resource if you want to read more about the impact settlement has had on juniper tree growth in Oregon. I’ve been apprehensive to plant just anything, I want to honor our ranch with trees that are true to the regions history. But dicherphing what that means is just that, there is no clearcut answer. Maples, elms, cottonwoods, alders, and so many more have been planted at homesteads over the last century that there is what is native to the landscape and what is native to our history. We hope to walk somewhere along those lines, replicating the feel one has when they stumble upon an abandoned spring fed orchard in a draw of rolling sage and juniper covered hills, except we want it to feel active and productive. To feel nourishing and fulfilling.
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