Driven Nuts by Walnuts

Our property has 150 walnut trees. Before we purchased the property, the previous owner claimed that these trees brought in a substantial amount of money each year. I guess that if he had told us the trees brought in 20 Euros a year that would have technically been a huge amount of money in comparison to the ridiculously huge amounts of money the trees have lost us each year since we acquired them.

They say a boat is a hole into which you throw lots of money into the water. I often think that for all the money we pour into useless things like walnut trees, the tiled roofs of ugly out-buildings, cleaning canals, fighting lawsuits over canals, we could have bought a fancy yacht, based it out of the St. Tropez port, and we’d be living the highlife. However, I don’t tan to I need to spend my summers sitting under expensive trees.

The first year we owned the farm, and at our point of maximum naivety and vulnerability, the ex-owner/now caretaker talked my husband into purchasing an expensive machine to pick up the nuts. He told us that you can’t find workers any more to pick up the nuts, and that it would be impossible for the three of us to pick up the nuts by hand.

The first week of the harvest, we had heavy rains. And lo and behold, this super duper nut machine doesn't function in the mud. So I, went out every morning with a canteen of tea and picked up nuts by hand. My husband and the caretaker would comment on how amusing I looked in my pajamas at six in the morning while they stood around and lamented the fact that they couldn’t use the incredibly expensive nut machine while the nuts rotted on the ground.

The caretaker was kind enough to go over to Roger’s and borrow a contraption that Roger made from a plastic jug, a wooden pole, and some rubber. It was quite ingenious, very much like a manual tennis ball picker-upper. It was slower than picking by hand but it did provide relief for my screaming back. When the caretaker was handing me the device, he explained that Roger harvested sixty trees by himself with this device that didn’t cost him a dime to fabricate. So I’m thinking, why the hell don’t you make two more just like it, one for you and one for my husband? That would give us each fifty trees to pick. Ten less than Roger had to pick up with his bad sciatic leg. Then we can return that useless piece of gasoline-powered machinery that destroys the tranquility when it’s running and farting out pollution, and I can buy some furniture for the house. But my French wasn’t good enough to convey all of my intricate, well-developed thoughts. So I just nodded and continued with my harvesting. (When my French did get good enough to convey my deep thoughts, the caretaker quit. When he left, he advised Craig to get a new wife.)

We returned to San Francisco after that first harvest, and a month later a very tiny check arrived from the sale of the walnuts. I thought that it was missing at least one zero. The caretaker had told us that the nut machine would pay for itself in three years, but if the checks continued to be of this size, I figured that it would take twenty years.

The following year, a frost struck the trees when they were just budding and so the walnut check was even minuter.

Last year, France had the biggest drought/heat wave they’ve had over 500 years and two of our walnut trees died. When it was apparent that the trees were struggling to live, I nagged the caretaker into setting up the irrigation system. But, by the time my nagging was coming to fruitiion, it was too late to save the trees. The trees are located on the road so everyone who drives by can witness the testament to our ineptitude as farmers.Because the trees weren’t watered in time we had very few nuts and they were so small that it is not even pleasurable to sit on the terrace on the evening and crack them. The check for these Lilliputian nuts was even smaller than the previous year’s check for the frost addled nuts.

I ran into the cheese vendor from our town's Friday outdoor market. We were chatting and he told me that he had some walnut trees. I asked him a very rude question. Did you have any nuts last year after that drought and did you make any money? To my consternation he informed me that he didn't have a lot of money, but that he made more money than usual because the nuts were scarce last year. He even rubbed his fingers together in that rural French sign meaning "lots of money."

Last summer, a neighbor suggested that we have the trees trimmed to increase our nut production and make the trees healthier. We received two quotes for the work and hired a man who started while I was here in January. I was very impressed with him because he came to work every morning even though he had to work in a cold wet rain that plagued us the entire month. A few times, when I was returning from a walk with the sheep, I would see him up in a tree, and always, our caretaker was standing on the ground below chatting with him.

My husband had given the caretaker a check to give to the tree trimmer to cover half the work before the cutting began; and he had left the second check and payment to hand over when the work was finished. Sometime in April, my husband started wondering why the second check had not been cashed.

At the beginning of May, we found out the reason. Our friend and her husband arrived for a visit in San Francisco. The day before leaving France, they went to the farm to videotape the sheep for me. The caretaker was at the farm and he told my friend that the tree trimmer left without finishing the job because the tree trimmer "claimed" that the caretaker talked too much and that he couldn’t stand working with the caretaker jabbering at him constantly. I immediately sympathized with the tree trimmer. God knows how many days I have hid from the caretaker in my own house just so I wouldn’t have to endure his endless chatter. It was impossible to get any work done if he discovered your hiding place.

This July my husband has been learning the ins and outs of irrigating the trees. It requires that the pipes be moved every six hours. He learned yesterday that he has to maintain a certain amount of pressure running through the pipes or Roger will have to come over and inform him that the other farmers who are hooked up to the irrigation system are unhappy because we are straining the communal pump.

For the past two days, our area has been getting lashed with the edge of a huge storm that has been attacking Brittany to the north. It was so bad up there that they were advising people not to leave their homes. The winds here blew away our new parasol which I had left open on the terrace as there was no hint of a pending storm. The pedestal must weigh over eighty pounds because Preston and I both needed to lift it when we purchased it. The parasol and the base went flying about twenty feet, crashing into the house and pulling the base off of the parasol and stripping the large screw that held it in place. The wind also blew lots of nuts off of the trees. So the check will be small again this year.

Yesterday, Craig walked in and lamented about how tough the life of a farmer is. One of our GOOD trees, with lots of nuts on it, fell over in the storm. And to top it off, it was near the group of eight trees that had died last month because of flooding caused by the water finally filling our long dry canal (that’s another story). And then Craig speculated that that the tree that fell over was probably one of the few trees that the tree trimmer had trimmed adding more insult to our continuing injury.

When Roger came over last night to gently chastise Craig about his inability to constantly keep up the water pressure in his pipes, Craig told him about the fallen tree. (Most men would be embarassed to talk about their small nuts and inability to maintian the pressure in their pipes, but Craig takes it all in stride, confident in his manhood.) Roger kindly volunteered to come over and right the tree this morning. He said that sometimes, when a tree falls over, several of the roots are still rooted and the tree can be saved. I insisted that Roger join us for some hot apple cake that I had just pulled out of the oven. Roger said that I was going to think that he only came over for food. I joked and said that I wanted to make him fat like us Americans. I worry that he’ll think he only comes over to do work for us. I’m going to have to do a lot more cooking and baking to keep enticing him to help us with our farm follies.

Roger just pulled in the yard with his tractor. God I’ll miss him when he moves into town as he threatened last autumn. I’m afraid he’ll make the decision to move sooner because of all the work we’re requiring of him since the caretaker left. I’m afraid no amount of apple tarts or cakes will overcome the annoyances we generate for him. They don’t make saints like Roger any more.