Orchard Dreams

Editor’s Note: Nadine Schaeffer passed away Tuesday, May 27, 2025 following a ten-year battle with ovarian cancer. Tributes are posted to her Facebook page. We will miss her terribly, but are so honored that she chose to share her immense knowledge and love of nature with Edible Monterey Bay readers, in this personal essay and in stories like The Compelling Quince and Eat Your Roses.

Planting trees is an ancient exercise in hope and imagination. Baby bare root saplings arrive as thin little sticks, a few feet tall with sparse and scraggly roots—no leaves or branches, almost no signs of life at all. It’s difficult to believe in their future from such humble beginnings. Yet trees are a reminder of a different way to approach time, an older temporal awareness that predates clocks, calendars and online scheduling. Most of the trees we see in forests were born before us. The trees we plant now are a hope and a prayer for a future we will never see.

Ten years ago, I dreamed an orchard into existence, and now I walk amid its verdant embrace daily. At the time, I felt overwhelmed with climate grief, the wildfires and rising seas, the extinction of entire species and the trajectory of humanity—it all broke my heart daily. I didn’t know what to do as just one human, but I had to do something. So, I decided to plant some trees, a little forest of my own and I chose to focus on fruit trees. I wanted to symbolically replace the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley that were cut down for development, when the name and focus of the region changed to Silicon Valley.

Almost 30 years ago, I arrived in the Bay Area and worked for a new and novel company at the time, called Netscape. I never felt quite comfortable in that squat ugly box of an office, occupied by workers staring at smaller boxes. Yet, behind the nondescript building was one of the last lush Blenheim apricot orchards from the previous era. I would sneak out there in between meetings to cool my mind amid the trees, and if the season was right, stuff my mouth with golden spheres of sublime apricot ambrosia. Those trees planted a seed of an idea, and two decades later, that tendril of thought eventually led me to an old, neglected farm property in the Pajaro Valley.

There wasn’t much here when we came to this area. The hillside was brown, parched and baked into cracked clay pan. Sometime during the last century, farmers lived here and a few of the trees they planted still thrived, despite decades of neglect. Three Blenheim apricots, two Bartlett pears, one English walnut and one Newtown pippin apple tree whispered to me, “This land has potential, the sun is bright, the evenings cool, and the water tickles our roots.” The house had electrical problems, plumbing problems, all sorts of problems. The barns were packed to the rafters with trash. But I listened to the trees, and they spoke to me with greater truth than did the real estate agents.

Behind the nondescript building was one of the last lush Blenheim apricot orchards from the previous era.

I grew up in the Midwest and so did my partner. A big chunk of my childhood was spent on a 500-acre conventional corn farm in Indiana— which, to be clear, in no way prepared me for operating a mixed fruit orchard in California. But my upbringing did instill a desire to work outdoors, to grow good food. At the same time, I knew that a monoculture conventional farm would bore me and not do much for the environment, either. So, what to do with these eight acres, full of nothing but possibility? I decided to plant as many different fruit tree varieties as possible, and so we did.

Plant pears for your heirs, they say, our forgotten pastoral ancestors. A single pear tree will produce 100 pounds of fruit or more every year, for centuries. What an investment, what ROI! So, I planted some pears, 20 different varieties, 40 trees in all.

Apples, peaches, plums, apricots, walnuts, persimmons, figs, pomegranates, citrus soon followed. I scoured online catalogs, interrogated local experts for their favorite varieties, and ordered the first 300 trees from 150 fruit varieties in blissful ignorance.

With the help of many hands, I took a barren hillside and changed it into a teeming ecosystem, one with flowers, fruit, birds, bees and other pollinators. The mammals followed: cottontails and their larger jackrabbit cousins, coyotes and the occasional native weasels. Now, raptors soar overhead, joined by hawks and vultures, rarer kestrels and occasionally a golden eagle or two, for this is truly the valley of birds. We put up owl boxes to control gophers and squirrels. The owls heard my invitation, and they are here, hooting and shrieking throughout the night, leaving only the pelleted remains of rodents as evidence.

I used to love living in cities and visiting other cities, to see the world and its endless delights in a constant rush of movement. Now, I rarely want to leave these eight acres because they contain a universe of fascination to me. Time is change, and trees are the record. What is a tree if not the perfect embodiment of fractal growth? Starting as a straight and narrow line, then exploding forth into unique expressions of tangled complexity: branch, stem, bud, leaf, flower and, finally, fruit.

Engaging in the health of a tree means engaging in the health of everything, the soil and ecosystem, but also the health of the orchardist— mind, body and soul, and the surrounding human community as well. The mulch we use comes from local tree companies I beg for wood chips, and the compost is from a horse farm up the hill. By using these inputs, I divert materials from going to the landfill, but also, meet my neighbors.

Though I am introverted by nature and do not easily accept help, farming requires many hands, and those hands have come here mostly unbidden, but, oh, so welcomed. Volunteers have written in, shown up, harvested and become a vital part of this place. Where there was nothing, now there is a community as well as a forest. The cultivation of food is so exquisitely integral to humans. To work in the soil, to idly chatter over the planting of tender starts, to gather and share the abundance is part of what made us human millennia ago.

Trees, however, can be plagued by a host of woes. Insects, birds and rodents I expected, but fungal and bacterial diseases, not so much. A few trees died, and I mourned, but I also learned from them while I planted their replacements.

More trees got sick and recovered, with or without my help. Many of these fungal and bacterial woes can coexist with their arboreal hosts, waxing and waning with the seasons. I learned that some things don’t need to be fought, only acknowledged.

I may yell at the birds and curse the insects in the moment, but I know we are all part of the same weft and warp of life, and I do not begrudge them a tithe. If the entire harvest is at risk, I escalate to nets to keep the birds away and wage predatory insect warfare too. I do get a fiendish joy from releasing a giant bag of bugs destined to devour other bugs. I am not pure, for death is surely part of life, never to be denied.

Most days, I spend at least some time caring for my trees, and in return they gift me with the sweetest fruits and the intangible gifts of fresh oxygen and carbon sequestration as well. They have taught me patience, brought me friends, woven my place into the community and the intricate web of life that is the pulse of the planet.

Ten years ago, I dreamed a forest into existence, and now it sustains me and those I love, along with a billion other life forms I don’t know by name. It wasn’t easy, substantiating this dream, but it wasn’t that hard either. The trees have utterly changed this landscape, but they have transformed me as well.