field note
First fruit, May 2023
The apple trees set fruit for the first time in May 2023. Small green clusters, no larger than marbles. The wooden staff belonged to the local farmer who showed us around that day.
· Sameer Jain · 1 min read
The apples were the size of marbles when this was taken — tight clusters of green just visible through the leaf cover. The sun was coming through from behind.
The wooden staff in the frame belonged to the farmer who walked the land with us that day. He knew which trees had been neglected for years and which had been tended. His reading of the orchard was faster than anything we could have learned from a soil report.
By August these would be full-sized. That first season we did not intervene — no thinning, no spray. Just watched to see what the trees would do on their own.