Autumn Labyrinth

The Joy of a Slow Harvest

It is harvest time again here on Dancing TreePeople Farm.

When I first arrived at this “nut farm” nearly twenty years ago, I approached the harvest as I approached anything with zeal and a get-er-done energy.

Mostly this was because I felt I should do what other walnut farmers did. I hired someone with the right machine to shake the trees and then worked fast to get the walnuts off the ground before the rains. This created a high-pressure situation all around. First, the shaking seemed violent for the trees (video). To even begin, we needed to get on the tree-shaker's schedule--and as a small orchard, we were not first on the list, plus he required a minimum which meant shaking every single tree, even the unproductive ones. Shaking meant all walnuts fell to the ground, even those that were not ready, so the endeavor required the services of a huller and dryer, and definitely affected the flavor. Plus, we then needed to hire a crew who could get the walnuts off the ground in a day or two, or do it ourselves which meant working every daylight hour for a month and slogging through leaves and mud at the end.

Years later, the trees do not produce much, so the economics, not to mention our aging bodies, have encouraged us to rethink our approach. Some orchards in this situation abandon the trees--or pull them out. We, instead, allow the walnuts in the winds or as they wish, to fall and then we collect them, dry them in a rack, weigh each nut to make sure it isn't hollow, and sell to a small set of customers who keep coming back year after year because the walnuts taste so good.

This sometimes means the leaves fall first, or we end up sifting through leaves like an egg hunt, to find the little treasures.

The advantage of time is this: after many years of observation, I notice that even the hand-harvest method results in too much pressure if I work in a time-intensive off-farm job. Harvesting under pressure sucks the joy right out of the annual walnut harvest. Yes, the joy of harvest feels elusive that way. It only comes when I accept the rhythm of the season and am open to the rhythm of each day.

What does a joyful rhythm feel like? If the leaves fall first, or fall simultaneously with the nuts, I enter into the peace of creating labyrinths in the leaves. This gives me time to contemplate as I work, and I often wonder if our ancestors left us with these patterns so we would know how to harvest walnuts in the years the leaves fall first.

The labyrinth method... goes like this:

Start at the edge of the tree canopy and work straight into the trunk, brushing the leaves to each side. When you reach the trunk, work around it, pushing aside leaves with your toes, feeling for walnuts. In concentric rings, work around the tree, from the trunk outward, until you reach your starting point.

No doubt, I can still find ways to add pressure to the process. For example, I can easily slip into see a daily "beat the squirrels to the nuts" approach each morning. But, if I can find my way to letting this thought go, the gentleness of the breeze, the gradual transformation of the orchard to bright yellow, sparks joy.

Even with squirrels as my companions, bouncing about, I can say this: I love autumn here.