Moving on from the Haverkamps' orchard
We picked the last apples from the orchard I have been leasing for the last five years today. A year ago, I let the owners Klaus and Liz know I would be resigning after this harvest. Closing the gate for the last time was a bittersweet experience. I guess letting go of something familiar always is.
Five years ago I knew next to nothing about managing an orchard. I had no experience beyond having picked apples as a teenager. I had never even driven a tractor. That didn’t dissuade Klaus and Liz from taking a chance on me, though they must have held misgivings. At the time, Klaus, a retired diesel mechanic who moved to Canada from his native Germany in the late 1960’s, had owned and run the orchard himself for nearly 40 years. He had either planted or grafted every one of the trees, now grown into a graceful, shady oasis. Sandwiched between modern, trellised, high-density orchards, it is an artifact from a different era.
When I started, Klaus had just turned 78 and was ready to do a little less of the grunt labour. My own orchard had just been planted and the trees were little more than bare toothpicks; we needed a source of apples until they began bearing fruit. Luckily for me it was a non-traditional lease and more of a mentorship. I followed the practices Klaus had established over the years without question. Straying from the established path was never considered. If I wasn’t on hand to complete a task when Klaus thought it should be done I would hear about it. German trains run on time for a reason.
It mostly worked out very well. In the beginning I wasn’t ready to take something that big on myself, and Klaus wasn’t ready to let it go completely either. Over time, I built trust as my skills and experience grew but the guiding hand of the master was never far away. I began to chafe under the restriction and wanted to experiment with different, lower-intervention ways of farming I had read about, despite Klaus’s dim view of them. I wanted to face the full consequences of my actions or inactions. Having Klaus constantly watching over me surely prevented me from making certain mistakes, but it also meant I couldn't learn from them either. I think I just wanted the successes and failures to be mine.
Five years ago when I first planted the orchard at our property, the trees needed little except watering. I felt like I was managing pretty well. Time has a habit of moving forward when we are not looking and I should have realized that wouldn’t last. Each year, the orchard began to demand greater and greater amounts of care. Over the same period, the cidery operation expanded 10x, and my wife and I had two kids. Suddenly there was no longer any time. Last year, I felt like I was constantly letting someone down as I ran around trying to put out whatever daily fire was burning the hottest. I was tired and burning out and being a jerk to everyone around me. Something had to change. I had to let something go.
This past year since I gave Klaus and Liz my notice hasn’t been much easier, but somehow knowing it will be the last time made it more manageable. I am grateful to Klaus and Liz for the opportunity to steward their orchard and grow and learn as a new orchardist. It pains me to say goodbye. At the same time, I know I need to do more on my own. As we start a new chapter and I focus more intently on farming our own property, it feels also like a chance at a new beginning.
