Bob Norsen asked me what
plans I had for his Bitty-O-Lator which I won on this site for having named it. I told him I belonged to a fruit club
and that up to now I’d been making compost tea in my five gallon bucket. Besides
using compost tea on my own garden and trees, I said I’d like to give
some tea to some to the fruit club members so they could test it for
themselves. When Bob said he was
sending the brewer, I thought to myself that early in the season I’d be
able to have enough compost tea for the club’s co-founder, Jerry Pate, so he’d spray away his
orchard’s scabby trees.
Last year I began
talking about compost tea at our club meetings and spent an hour showing the
group how easy it was to make. At
that time several of the more senior members balked and politely suffered my
conversation. To one particular fellow who mocked, I sent articles about compost tea
successes, weekly. A couple of
months down the road at this one particular meeting, the most senior member
present stood up and loudly announced to the assembly that he had purchased a compost
tea brewer. He said he knew of
so-and-so who told him this-and-that and what great apples you could have using
this compost tea and he began to gesticulate and described these glorious compost
tea sprayed apples and the lush orchard floor. One senior fellow later asked me if I
thought he could use this such-and-such pump for brewing his tea. I saw this as progress.
Well, The Bitty
arrived just in time for our February 4th meeting. They circled it, asked some questions. They’re
now beginning to talk about it. I know that the group is going to be
experimenting with compost tea this year, whether they make it themselves or I
do it. As for my friend Jerry’s
fruit trees, several of the club members will soon be pruning them and I’ll
be spraying.
Bob Norsen made
arrangements for me to get his brewer quickly and in the course of conversation
I gave him a little information about our club. Bob thought you might like to
know about the people on the list and about my friend…
Jerry
Pate was affectionately known as the Apple Man
of Cape George. His trees did so well. He had so many apples
on his lot that one day he put an ad in the local paper that read, “Apples-
50 Cents a Pound.” That’s
how we met. He went to the bins he built on the side of his garage and
started cutting pieces of all his apples so I could try them. He was
talking and cutting, cutting and talking. He’s
asking me how I liked this one, or if I liked the red blushed one over here,
and if I did then I’d love the
crisp dark red in this bin. Well my mouth was so full, my cheeks were so
puffed, the juice was running, and I had all I could do to just nod my head
while Jerry did all the talking and all he heard was me crunching. Then he
brought out one of his favorites, Hudson’s
Golden Gem. I d never seen nor tasted an apple like that in my
life. I had no idea how he could tell them all apart from one bin to the
next. He kept talking, telling me things like, this one isn’t
exactly perfectly ready yet and needs three more weeks, this makes great sauce,
or the Melrose
is the best keeper, and so on, and so forth.
There was no way you could tell from the road how many trees Jerry had
growing on his lot. Once he took me for a tour around the orchard and the
eating, dribbling, cutting and teaching started anew. Jerry would have
his little knife with him as he showed me one tree after another, cutting a
piece, and then handing me a new apple to take home. “This tree was on a
dwarfing rootstock but grew bigger than the tree on the semi-dwarf.” I
now had my mouth, hands, and pockets full. Once in awhile he’d tell
me about his latest fishing trip and where he had taken his boat out for
halibut or salmon.
It took some time for Jerry to finally get me to come to a meeting of
his group, the group he helped found over 20 years ago, the North Olympic Fruit
Club in Gardiner. I finally made it to a meeting and eventually joined. Any
time I had questions or problems, I could always call Jerry. He gave me
great advice, shared his experience, knowledge and friendship. He gave me
books and periodicals to read and fed my growing interest in raising fruit. He
and Maxine were always available. When his apples would drop, I’d get the call to come over with my buckets to pick up
the drops and feed them to my chickens. He showed me exactly where and
how to toss the ugliest apples over the fence for the local deer.
Jerry showed me how he washed and pressed his fruit, how he handled and
cleaned his carbuoys, decanted and then froze his cider in gallon jugs. Last
year Jerry tasted some of the first batch of my hard cider and gave me the
thumbs up. I told him in December I’d help him press his apples next season. He
turned his head slightly and gave me a questioning look, as if to say he wasn’t
real sure about that. I lost
my friend Jerry Pate
to lung cancer on February 7th. He was 85. I visited with his wife Maxine,
their daughter Karla and her husband Dave.
I came home and walked around in my little orchard. Yesterday was his
Memorial. On March 4th, Jerry’s
fruit club will be grafting his apples. His hobby, his work, will always be a
part of me, and his community.