We moved into our home in 2015. I planted an Shinseiki Asian Pear tree in our quarter-acre backyard the following Spring. I pruned the limbs and suckers diligently each winter, and fertilized it with my own compost produced from our kitchen scraps, leaves and grass clippings. It took a few years to mature, but eventually it began producing fruit.
Every year for the past eight years, it has produced a bounty--fifty to seventy-five--of golf ball sized Asian pears, my favorite fruit.
And for the past eight years I have not tasted a single one. The squirrel gets every last one. Year after year. He waits until late July, when I think to myself "maybe this is my year. This is my year!" I go to bed with fifty fat pears on the tree, and wake up the next morning and there are none. Stripped clean. And I just can't take it anymore.
I have done everything I could think of to preserve the harvest--I netted the entire tree one year. Another year I put plastic cupcake holders on each and every pear. This year I put plastic sleeves and a chloroplast skirt on the trunk to try to keep the squirrel from being able to climb up.
Everything I did failed. Nature has defeated me so thoroughly it is enough to drive a man to nihilism.
During those early years, I removed a 20'x20' plot of grass, covered with cardboard and compost (20 years of grass clippings and leaves dumped behind the shed by the previous owner; a rich, black, airy humus-like compost) and horse manure and topped with wood chips from a recently taken down maple tree. I set 8 foot stakes in the ground, wound chicken wire around the lower perimeter and fishing wire around the top. Planted eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, turnips and beets, lettuce and spinach and bok choi. Living out the little suburban homestead fantasy. Cute. So full of hope and promise.
First year I got a few things; most of the "crops" grew well. At least in the first year. But the compost ran out and the soil over the years became harder to nourish without amenities like animal manure and a steady supply of compost. Increasingly I was fighting a war on multiple fronts--woodchuck, deer, fox, squirrels, voles--anything and everything that could work against me did. Even the five chickens I picked up one year got picked off one by one.
I got worn down. Those pilfering animals didn't deserve the fruit of my labor, for the "laborer is worth his wages" (Lk 10:7). It was heartbreak after heartbreak. The futility of fighting nature. The garden has returned to grass now. I'm considering cutting down the tree as well. "Why should it deplete the ground?" (Lk 13:7). It's flaming white blossoms each Spring mock me with hopeful beauty, though. A spiteful testament. "Maybe this year will be different." But it never is.
Homesteads are a nice Pinterest fantasy. Or maybe yours produces enough so you're not running a deficit of time, money, and labor. I give farmers so much credit--what they have to deal with, the risks, the unpredictability, the stress. For $9.62/hour (average wage for a farmer here in PA). God bless them. No farms no food.
Homesteaders are not farmers. They are playing in the sandbox. It's great. It's an honest minimum wage hobby work to produce that $64 tomato. Just a different league is all. So many things to manage as well. So many things to go wrong. Homesteading does not save you money (not that that's everyone's motivation). I guess it's a "labor of love." Your self-sufficiency is a fantasy.
Is there a Christian lesson here? I imagine working for the Church, perhaps, could be akin to the homesteader. You would think working for the Church as a Music Director or Campus Minister would enable a living wage, to be able to support a large family for those living by the Church's teaching. But instead it is high expectations with low compensation. Long hours. Burn out. Squeezing employees for all they're worth "for the sake of the Kingdom." I don't know. I think I dodged a bullet having applied for so many diocesan and Church jobs and never getting hired for one. I'm not surprised Catholic schools are closing or are sub-par with regards to their academic standards unless they are elite prep-schools. Parents are getting squeezed by tuition, infrastructure bills still need to paid, and you're trying to retain good teachers at forty grand a year. Fighting nature. Entropy. Having the fruit stripped from the tree. Year after year.
God bless our farmers. No farms, no food. God bless our priests. No priests, no Church. God bless our religious and those on mission and those who have given up all to follow Christ and proclaim the Gospel. God bless those who volunteer their time, talent and treasure (even when the Church squanders it viz a viz lawsuits, settlements, etc all while simply "managing the decline"). God bless the FOCUS and NET college students on fire for the Faith, evangelizing good will. May they never burn out, but retain the fire of the Holy Spirit all their lives and fertilize the fields of their soul with caritas and charity. May they never give up and give in when they stop feeling like fools for Christ and instead feel more simply like just fools. May their faith be infectious, infectious like the powdery mildew that spreads over the zucchini vines, but let it give life and not choke it out. God bless the laborers in the vineyard who do not give up hope for a harvest.
God forgive me.
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