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As a young wife on a family farm, I had some organic knowledge about nature. My in-laws somehow did not have this information. At the time of our marriage the farm had been in my in-law’s family for one hundred and thirty-seven years. The homestead we lived on was considered a heritage farm.

My former husband’s ancestors had been among the first to settle in the area. They had brought their love of the land, hard work and pioneer spirit with them from Sweden. Britta was the fifth generation great grandmother to my own daughter Britta, and was the midwife of the area. She was a small stout woman who could haul a hundred pound sack of dry goods all the way home from town (a ten mile hike) carrying it on her back. She is a legend in the family. Likely she was the one in her senior years to have adorned the farm homestead area with the now ancient fragrant lilac trees, persistent lilies and tulips, and an old apple tree.

The apple tree had been ignored for so many years it was considered a nuisance. After a spring and summer season of not being watered or cared for it would drop almost a hundred wormy apples on the ground, and then in alternate years no apples would come at all.

No Demand Produced No Supply

I had this strong ‘knowing’ that the reason the tree did not produce was because it knew on some level that it was not needed. No-one was eating the apples. My in-laws and husband discouraged my notion that we could get usable apples from this rotten hundred year-old tree. As a matter of fact, they told me, we should cut it down. We were not going to do that.  However, because of the stump and root system that would require days of work to remove. With a hundred and sixty acres there were already too many undone tasks to think of adding to the list. This tree removal was not going to happen.

I decided that I could make a difference, but I needed to perform my apple tree resurrection project with stealth. I watered it with the garden hose several times weekly during the heat of summer and spoke to it lovingly when I was around it. For some unknown reason the tree that was on its barren year produced a big harvest of ‘wormy fruit’.

Actually hundreds of apples adorned the tree that year. When they were ripe they started to fall to the ground. I would go out to the back yard where the tree stood and pick up every single fallen apple. Whether they were wormy, rotten or usable they were all removed from under the tree.

Into the old farmhouse kitchen I brought my treasures for cleaning. As a newlywed I painted the kitchen a lime green. There were sizeable radiators (heaters) and ancient century-old glass paned windows. The kitchen had high ceilings and an antique linoleum floor that routinely required me to go to hands and knees for scrubbing and waxing.

The dining room displayed colorful textured glass in smaller windowpanes, similar to stained glass. The colorful windows were a lovely reminder of the home in Sweden the family had left behind for this new life. There was a simplistic elegance to the rustic saltbox farmstead. Each Sunday the entire family (all wearing smart, clean clothes) would gather for dinner, sitting at a beautifully dressed oak table, with silver and fine china.

It is at that same old, round table that I sat with my bucket of apples. The same table where thousands of meals had been prepared for hungry field hands and hard-working family members.

Apple in hand I cut around the worms, core, seeds and stem. Buckets of the cut away produce went to the pigs; who enjoyed a heyday in ‘hog heaven’ when the pail arrived. From what was left I cooked up some super yummy applesauce. I used a First Lutheran Church cookbook recipe for a cinnamon enhanced apple butter to spread on home-baked bread for my babies. There were beautiful apple slices deposited in my grandmother Grace’s incredible piecrust recipe producing the best ever award-winning apple pies! (I won a blue ribbon at the Nobles County Fair for my baked goods, the pie among my entries.) There were ample pies for the farm hands and for church functions.

As the apples were cut, the Johnny Appleseed Song had to be sung!

Apples, Apples, Apples are fun to eat

Apples, Apples, Apples a real good treat

Harlems and Jonathons and by gosh

Golden Delicious Applesauce

UMMM Ummm Ummm

Apples, Apples, Apples are fun to EAT!

By the end of the season I had so many apples I had made-up many bags of pie apples for the freezer and umpteen jars of applesauce, enough to carry us through the winter and have some to give away.

As the weather turned chilly, I went out to the ageless apple tree to clean her up. As I removed the last of the hanging wormy apples I sang to her. My baby girl, Britta Carrie played under the tree laughing and singing with mommy, as I filled the final bucket. I used a ladder to get every last one.

She was cleaned properly. I knew if there were no apples left on the tree or on the ground she would have a reason to produce more.

When I first started cleaning apples my relatives said ‘oh just throw them away, they’re no good.’ But I could see there were small parts of the apple that were actually delicious and unaffected by worms so heck no, I cleaned those apples up and used them.

Did the tree know her apples were being used to feed children and farm workers?

Definitely, yes.

Years later I read the brilliant book by author Cleve Backster who is best known for his experiments with bio-communication in plant and animal cells using a polygraph machine back in the sixties. He began his careers as an interrogation specialist with the CIA. Plants are amazingly tuned in and connected. The truth is they stay connected with their parts.

Fruit itself is an offering or the giving back of the tree. For our beloved tree the apples become the blessing, the gift of the tree. It is what she has to offer and nurture those with whom she shares mother earth.

At that time I was about nineteen years old and I was a terrible housekeeper. I had moved into a large four-bedroom farmhouse filled with my in-law’s stuff, and we basically lived in a nest. But it was truly a mess. I hardly ever washed the dishes, there just was way too much living that needed to happen. I can understand why my in-laws might not have thought they should encourage me to spend hours cleaning wormy apples.

After this amazing result, however, I was told, “Well that’s that, because the tree produced fruit this year, there will be no apples next year.” I am sure they believed it. However I did not. I felt like ancient apple tree now knew she was needed and would respond appropriately

I asked my husband to prune her and he was sweet enough to comply. He dutifully butchered the branches, which freaked me out a bit. But you know, mother tree didn’t mind at all. She was happy to provide new limbs and in the Spring we had a wondrous surprise!

The tree produced a bloom like it had not produced for eighty years. Honestly there were thousands of blossoms the following spring, and many healthy apples grew from the renewed tree to the chagrin and total surprise of the meme (group mind) dominating the homestead. I continued to care for her and other living beings on the farm in the same way.

If you would like to get back to a life in balance with the natural world I suggest you check out Balance your Life Now, a guide to helping you get back into your flow with grace and ease.