Several of the young people around here have been getting up at five am to do a workout called, “Insanity” Having seen several of the moves, I think the moniker “Insanity” is an understatement.

Today, some of us at the farm upgraded from “Insanity” to a new workout regime, one that requires more strength, more endurance, and more dexterity than “Insanity” as well as the ability to dodge sharp objects while using a pair of pliers.

We call it, “Insanity with Quills.”

Here is an action shot.

Frightening, yes?

Not to puff ourselves up or anything, but Elizabeth (who is no stranger to the original “Insanity’) and I have practiced “Insanity with Quills” twice in the last week. Our workouts have been a two person, one dog experience, but we could definitely get the same workout with a third person involved. Maybe a fourth.

Like all good workout regimes, we were sucked in by the beginner lesson. The first time, it was a modest four quill removal experience. It was no picnic, but no one was left bloody. We proudly showed everyone who came to the farm the four quills we had pulled from young Reina’s nose.

Today, in blizzard conditions, Reina decided to test our mettle by engaging with another porcupine on another mountain top far far away from the first porcupine encounter last week. Because much as we loved “Insanity with Quills” we were taking our lunchtime walks a long long way away from where the first porcupine did his damage.

Nonetheless, Reina came back from a momentary dash off the trail and into the woods with 45 quills sticking out of her.

Like a novice skier who wanders from bunny slope to black diamond run without noticing the change in terrains, we were suddenly in over our heads.

“Insanity with Quills,” part two.

Here Reina is, after we have wrestled for half an hour to remove the quills in her legs, chest, and between her toes. OUCH! She looks relaxed, a bit wary, but nothing near as disheveled as the people she has left in her wake (that would be me and Elizabeth).

Yes, yes, we got all the quills out. More hours of fun wrestling. And now, it is officially time to retire, “Insanity With Quills.”

Do you hear me Reina? NO MORE PORCUPINES!

Reina’s comment. “This workout goes better with Anxiety, Animal Emergency Care, and Recovery Flower Essences given to all participants.”

Its that mud ugly time of year here.

I greet this weather with complete joy since it means that maple sugaring will begin soon, followed by a parade of spring FLOWERS!!!!!!

Ben however, needs to greet this weather with a hat on, or risk getting a chill.

It’s time to prune the fruit trees again. As our small orchard and I get older, I get bolder in my pruning. I know each tree well after twenty plus years together and I hear the unique music each tree wants to express better with each passing year. I also am braver about doing the cutting necessary to give voice to this song. I actually LIKE the pruning I used to feel was the scary stuff, the radical lopping off of big limbs.

A lot of the pruning process is practical. I need to rein in each tree’s growth because a limb out of human reach is a limb whose fruit can’t be picked. The trees in any orchard understand that in a cooperative effort with humans, pruning for harvest is going to drive the process.

But to me, the core of pruning is about helping each tree express its essential self. This self is something both wild yet also reflective of its desire to cooperate with humanity. Each tree in an orchard, even when the same variety as another tree, has its own unique energy. And as the years go by, I grow more confident and enthusiastic about pruning out what interferes with each tree’s expression of this energy. I understand that my pruning is necessary for the tree to be true to itself.

When I was about ten, I watched an ancient Japanese gardener prune a crab apple tree in my parent’s garden. The tree was a fairly unattractive ball before this man began his work. The pruning that it had previously experienced was just to keep it small enough for the space it inhabited. There had been little thought given to what the tree wanted to express.

After the japanese gardener was finished with his pruning, the voice of the tree was so clear. Each limb spoke a line of poetry that had not been visible before. This pruning showed me what heights could be reached when nature and man worked together. One tree could be a garden in an of itself and a wonderful one at that.

Often when I prune I think of this experience and wish I could see this scene unfold again. How I would love to see how each cut conveyed what this wise man knew about living and what he knew about how to release this tree to be its truest self.

But not to worry. I may not have this wise gardener at my side, but I have what is most important in this dynamic. I have the intention to help the tree express itself, I have an ever improving listening ear, and now that I am older and less afraid to make the cuts, I have the will to do what is called for.

Most of our fruit trees have gotten big enough and the listening work is complex enough that I usually only prune one tree in any session. As you know, I do most jobs with 19th century equipment so I have clippers, a small hand held saw, and a long pole with a rachet pruner on the end, but no chain saws. This makes the process slower than in a commercial orchard but for me this slow quiet pace is necessary. I do not know if I could hear the voice of each tree if I held a buzzing chain saw in my hand.

Before I start, I ask to be guided by the tree. And then I try to listen as I prune. At first, there are a lot of very easy cuts. The runners have to go. These are the branches that stand up straight from the tree, all new growth from the last season. They are easy to find and easy to cut.

In addition to cutting them off, I always work get the branches of each tree to grow further and further out along a near horizontal plane. I work to layer these horizontal planes so that the fruit on each branch gets a maximum amount of sunlight. Before recent hybridization, you could tell how much sun a peach got by how rosy it was. Now the rosiness is not always an indication of sunlight on the fruit. But in my small orchard, any rosy glow reflects the sun and the pruning.

To get the branches to spread out, I cut the outer branches right above a bud that points downwards and outwards so as the branches continue to grow, they grow on a bud that goes straight away from the tree. I also work to cut out branches that cross in conflict with other branches. Most of these cuts are obvious no brainers though sometimes it is hard to decide which crossed branch should remain and which should go. There is a bit of listening involved here.

When this obvious work is done, there is the big picture stuff. The big pruning of the bones of the tree. This is where pruning becomes a soulful art and why it takes decades of practice listening to trees to do what that japanese gardener did.

When one of you asks me for Flower Essence suggestions, I run the energy of the Flower Essences through my electrical system while contemplating you and your situation. This is more of a physical process than a mental one, but I think of it as an inner listening. I don’t know why, but I can feel when an Essence is right. This is what I do with the trees. When I am contemplating a big cut, I feel how the cut will affect the energy of the tree. I listen energetically. The right radical cuts move a lot of energy and release the tree into a greater expression of itself. The wrong cut can do a lot of energetic damage even if the tree comes back with more growth. The listening is important.

I wish I had taken a picture of the tree I worked on this past weekend before the cuts. I think the different energy before and after would have translated to the photos. After the easy pruning, I decided to make a very big cut. Right at the center of the tree, I felt a big section of branches needed to go. After cutting it from the tree, I could feel the tree breathe so very differently. It was a reminder that pruning in all of life is often hard but often right too.

I just went out to take this photo of the tree post pruning and this turns out to be quite an interesting photo because the nature spirit of the tree is visible in the photo- look to the center of the tree, straight up from the trunk about 2/3rds of the way up, then slide your eyes a bit right and you can see a sort of fuzzy area which is the nature spirit. They often appear in photos this way.

The spot where the nature spirit has revealed itself is near where the big cut happened. The large limb (see below) seemed to be crowding the insides of the tree. After it was removed, there was a feeling of release and also a feeling of the tree being more of the chalice it wanted to be. I find it wonderful that the nature spirit is visible inside the chalice of the tree.

On a more prosaic note, if you wondered what I meant by runners, you can see behind and above this tree on the left a lot of runners on the top of the next tree on my docket, a wonderful robust pear tree.

Here’s the big branch that got cut.

One more thing set to be pruned this week is Ben’s exuberant head of hair. He agreed to have his head shaved in an all school assembly if the kids at his school raised $10,000 for Haiti. The number was reached and tomorrow Ben will be shorn by one of his students. I am not sure it will be as contemplative a pruning as this apple tree received, but it certainly will be dramatic. I am in awe of Ben’s willingness to be pruned for this cause.

He has a bit of a crazy gleam in his eye here doesn’t he? Probably the last time we will see his head without a baseball cap for quite some time!

In my ongoing search to find the balance of doing for God and giving it to God, I loved hearing this true story from a friend.

A week or so ago, a young man of my friend’s acquaintance went to an art show where he ran into an old high school classmate. The conversation between this young man and his high school classmate went deep and the young man shared his concerns with her about an addictive pattern he was struggling with.

Several days later, my friend and this young man were in a local bookstore browsing through the self help section. The young man pulled a book off the shelf about the addiction problem he had discussed with his classmate. As he settled into a chair to leaf through the book, a card fluttered out with his full name written on it. He opened the card to find a message from the classmate whom he had run into at the art show. It said, “Buy this book” and beneath these words was a gift card to cover the cost of the book.

At the art show, this young man and his classmate had had no discussion about this book.

What a magic balance of effort and grace the card writer found. How I admire her clarity about what part was hers to play and what she was to leave to God.

I hope this story gives you the same chills up your spine that it gave me!