Farm trees take a lot of abuse. That’s the thought that somehow found room in my head yesterday. Somehow, amidst the uncertainty, mental rearranging and burgeoning paranoia that had occupied my thoughts for most of the day, the notion that “farm trees work hard” found purchase, if only for a brief moment. With our kids school closed, social distancing becoming the norm and empty shelves at the grocery store, finding room in my thoughts for anything but the what ifs was a challenge. But this idea got through and I latched onto it.
It was during evening chores and I was walking back down the road from feeding the little pigs. There’s a black cherry tree beside the road, along the fence line that I walk by at least twice a day, sometimes more. This tree served as a gate post for the old five strand sheep fencing that our farm’s previous occupants had installed some time in the 1980’s. When we got here the bed straw had consumed the lower two or three lines of wire and the top lines were sagging, pressed down by fallen trees, or just missing all tothere. But despite the failing nature of the overall fencing system, the gate attached to this black cherry tree stood strong. It swung open and closed and latched tight. Critters could come and go as they pleased across or under the old fence, but through this strong gate, none would pass.
When we had the old fence replaced with high tension woven wire, we decided to move the location of the gate that had been attached to the black cherry tree. As I was disassembling the gate, I had the chance to inspect this tree. It was obvious that the gate was not the first fence part to be attached to its trunk. Looking closely I found white ceramic fence insulators, black plastic insulators, a variety of nails, staples, eye bolts, gate pintels and various other bits of hardware imbedded in the wood to support farming infrastructure for the last half century.
To a farmer, a tree in the right position, is the best fence post you can ask for. It will stand a lot longer than a post driven into the ground, will only get stronger as it ages and its canopy provides shade from the sun. If a fence line is planned carefully, new fence post trees can be grown up to replace old ones, creating an almost endless succession of fencing. This black cherry has served the farmers at our place well, and today bears the scars of a lifetime of hard work. Everything here plays a part in the operation of the whole system.
This black cherry is not a perfect tree. Once it had a second leader which must have died and been cut off. Half the trunk is dead. A new leader started growing up a while back and gives the tree an unbalanced look. Add in the veritable hardware store driven into its trunk, and you get a pretty ugly tree. But it’s a survivor and so we will let it stand, a reminder of the utility of everything, a memorial to functionality and service.
