Nowadays, with the availability of dwarf and semi dwarf trees, we think nothing of setting out a small orchard and expect fruit within a few years.
This wasn’t the case for The Heirloom Orchardist. To him, an orchard was an investment. The site was chosen wisely, and the trees were planted carefully. Of course The Heirloom Orchardist wanted to benefit from his efforts, but he was also thinking of the many generations of Orchardists that would follow. His trees took a while to get to a bearing age.
Does this mean that an elderly Orchardist might have thought twice about investing his limited time to planting a new fruit grove? Perhaps. Thomas Close, of Port Chester, NY felt strongly against that sort of thinking. So strongly, that he wrote to the editor of The Cultivator, on January 3rd, 1846. His comments were published in April of that year:
“Nothing is more common than to hear a man at the very period of his life when he is best capable of doing the thing well - from 50 to 60 - excusing himself from putting out fruit trees upon the plea that he is too old to be benefited by it. The two following instances will show at how late a period of life a fondness for the cultivation of fruit has been practically manifested, and at how much later a period of life has been prolonged, as if in reward of the deed.”
“An aged lady, in the adjoining town of Greenwich, not many years ago, planted a peach in her one hundredth year, and lived to eat the first fruit the tree produced. The Rev. Mr. Cobb, of Braintree, Mass., set out an orchard at the advanced age of 77, and was laughed at by his neighbors, who were much too wise to plant frees for posterity - he lived thirty years afterwards. These it will be admitted are extreme cases, and yet many not very dissimilar ones could easily be collected, were due justice done to the scattered individual enterprise of the nation.”
Indeed. Thomas Close was right! Plant a fruit tree! If not for your descendants, than do it for yourself!