A Tree of Hope

Photo Provided by Becky Nelson
The farm has been a hub of activity of late. Picking berries, store management, picking veggies, growing apples and veggies, planting, monitoring for insects and diseases in the growing stuff, trying to keep weeds down, haying, tending the animals, mowing lawns and orchards and berry patches…the list seems endless and the days too short.

Wrap into this mix the business side of the farm and throwing working toward ownership transfer to our children and (semi-) retirement into the soup and the mixture gets even murkier and more turbulent at times. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. I try to make myself step back (often) to enjoy a moment or two to look around me and become re-rooted. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to really see what is around me, however.

We have had several visitors come and walk through the operation with us to see what we do, how we do what we do, and how we can improve the methods we use to do what we do. We had one of these visitors walking with us and asking questions this week. He was very honest that he really knew very little about farming and was full of questions and observations.

On the tour, I pointed out a huge maple tree at the edge of the road in front of the tractor garage at the farm. It is a monster, with lots of foliage and it towers above and shades a couple of our hoop houses. I mentioned that I have observed improvements in the health of the old tree since the Town uses less salt in their sand mix that they spread on the ice in the winter and took a nostalgic turn as I told how we used to install a couple of sap buckets on the tree, mostly for show. My late mother took many school groups to the tree to tell her maple syrup origin story, and I don’t want anything to interfere with that tree in my lifetime as it holds such vivid and important memories to me.

As we turned around in the yard and faced the apple orchard, another of my favorite trees caught my eye. We have a large, “multi-stemmed” elm tree in the corner of the barnyard. It is rare to find a living elm, as most succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease. Streets in small New England towns were once lined with these majestic trees. A favorite of some birds, Baltimore Orioles in particular, the trees often hosted the hanging basket style nests of birds. Every few years, we still have a pair of orioles take up residence in the tree.

My late father’s theory of why the tree remains alive is that an old copper maple syrup pan was abandoned at the bottom of the tree at one time. Remains of the pan are still in the soil. Copper was used as an experimental treatment to control the fungus that causes elm disease back in the 1940s and 1950s and he thought the tree may be taking copper up in its roots and protecting itself from the disease. I told this theory to our visitor, who thought it might be so, that the tree, poisoned itself by the copper, in turn poisoned the bark beetles that spread the fungus or even the fungus itself. We talked about the near extinction of elm trees and the interesting native on our farm and his next statement made a huge impact on me. He called it our “tree of hope.”

I loved this moniker, and now hold it dear. This single tree, against all odds, was surviving. I liken it to our efforts on the farm. Over the last century, lots of outside impacts have made farming a real chore and some turns have seemed almost insurmountable. But we have made it, we keep adapting, we keep trying to get better at what we do, and we are so firmly rooted that we keep finding ways to keep

hosting those visitors to tell our stories of success, like our tree that hosts the orioles. Everyone has a tree of hope somewhere. It sometimes takes an outsider to help find it.

Becky Nelson is owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, eighth generation in a multi-generational farm that was established in 1780. She can be reached at [email protected].