Fruit Trees: A farmer's tale

Tuesday, February 23, 2021
9:25 PM

Long ago, a young man who had spent his young years helping his father in the family orchard decided to venture off on his own to start his own orchard.
He had been preparing for this day for many years by apprenticing with a local Alchemist. This Alchemist specialized in botany and particularly in generating "special" seeds. One line that our young friend helped the most with was a new strain of fruit tree seeds. Together the Alchemist and his helper labored for several years to try to achieve a tree that would produce a multitude of fruit types; apple, cherry, peach, plum, and several other more exotic fruits.
The time eventually came to plant the test seeds and see what germinated.
The wait-time was some of the most anxious the young farmer had ever spent in his short life.
Finally, a sprout appeared.
One.
Of all the hundreds of seeds they had tried to germinate only one sprouted.
The Alchemist was extremely disappointed. He had pursued an avenue that obviously was a dead end.
He decided to grant the one sprout to his apprentice. Maybe the boy could get something to grow and all the time he had spent would not go to complete waste.

Our young farmer was overjoyed. He hurried back to his new, as yet unplanted small plot to plant his sapling and start his new orchard.

The sapling grew slowly and seemed to be doing well. It grew tall and strong and in a few years, in the early spring, some blossoms appeared. The blossoms varied greatly in color, shape and size. Soon, he could see fruits beginning to take shape.
And to his amazement, the tree yielded all that he and the Alchemist had imagined. The varieties of fruit were seemingly endless, with all of the types growing at all of the various levels. But always, the tastiest and most beautiful grew at the very top, where harvesting was almost impossible, but still achievable.

Harvesting had always been the trickiest part of the fruit business. Finding labor at the right time, for the right price, when the fruit was ready was something that farmers have been struggling with for time on end.
Our young farmer had a new idea. While working as apprentice to the Alchemist, he had learned about Harvest-monkeys. These were creatures imported from some unknown regions, that would work for food. They were very intelligent, almost as smart as men, but less self-centered. They loved to work at harvesting, eating while they worked and going home to their families and sharing in that day's harvest.
They also absolutely loved working in our farmer's tree. All of the various fruits were there with just a reach. They did need to work a bit harder to get the best fruit, up near the top, but that was just another fun thing about this tree. They could get good stuff and occasionally, get real good stuff.
This arrangement was working well for our farmer. He was achieving success as a farmer and it was time to expand.

He bought a new small plot.
Then he discovered a strange thing.
The seeds produced from fruit from his "special" tree, yielded only specialized seeds.
Citrus fruit yielded citrus-type trees. Some only thin-skin fruit like apple and peach.
Others were only big-seeds fruits, and on and on.

He went ahead and planted what he thought would be a useful and profitable orchard.
His trees grew well and he looked forward to visiting the Alchemist to proudly announce his success.

But…

When harvest time came so did the troubles. The monkeys didn't like working in the new trees. They complained. About how each tree had only one kind of fruit. If they wanted some other kind, they had to climb down, traverse to ground until they found the type they wanted, and then they were once again limited by the single type that particular tree yielded. All the time they spent moving from one tree to the next was using up all their energy. They had a word in their language for this type of tree. It was a curse word. It was something like Trate!
I don't know exactly what that word meant, but it wasn't good.

They wanted to get all the fruit they wanted from one tree.

Our farmer was deep in debt, what with buying plots for the new trees and hiring more monkeys.

The monkeys shouted at him. "Give us more trees like the one we used to work in!"

But he couldn't do that. There was only one sprout from that original experiment. There were no more seeds to grow another tree like that. And the original was not big enough to supply the monkeys with all the fruit they needed, not to mention, fruit for him to sell.

So, they were stuck.