Today's Reading
She got an early start, determined to beat the morning traffic. If she drove straight through, she'd likely get there in time to see the attorney before lunch—if he wasn't too busy—visit the family graves, then find a hotel for the night on her way back, maybe stop over near Baltimore. The extra clothes were for if she needed to stay a day or two longer. Not likely, but just in case.
Reaching 70 West, the traffic lightened, and she cautiously invited the ghosts. She couldn't think about her mama, not yet. She'd start with her daddy, and the farm, always the farm.
Daddy—Wetherill Pickering—was known far and wide as a good man, the best of men, with a large and tender heart, if a weak one. Hardworking, God-fearing, smart in a baker's dozen ways, full of grandiose ideas but never a businessman.
Mama possessed those brains for business, as well as grace, beauty, and discipline—her own and the kind that kept her children and occasional farm workers in line. It was Mama who'd insisted Daddy hire help once he'd suffered his first sign of heart trouble.
Ginny remembered the day an acre's worth of blueberry bushes had arrived in mid-October and needed to be planted before frost. Mama'd lamented from the first that Daddy was overstepping himself ordering all those bushes for the fall when they'd never even planted blueberries and didn't know the first thing about them. On top of that news, Daddy said he'd placed a preorder for an acre's worth of two-year-old blue spruce seedlings—five hundred and fifty, slow-to-medium growers, not native—to be delivered early the next spring.
Mama nearly had a fit, but Daddy wouldn't listen. He'd proclaimed that Pickering land was God's idea for soil—gentle slopes with perfect drainage, inches of rich topsoil with just enough sand and no substantial clay, and irrigation brought from a creek with tributaries deep enough to make a Baptist smile. He vowed that with a little help they could dig the old stumps out before the seedlings arrived to transplant. Folks, he'd said, would come begging for those Christmas trees in another five to seven years.
Already he'd cultivated the largest Christmas tree farm within fifty miles—thirty acres of Scotch and white pine, Norway spruce, and Douglas fir, with another twenty cleared and lots more acreage up the mountain in high meadows if he or any future Pickerings ever wanted to expand. Already he'd pushed his bank loan out with an extension, and still the Depression ground on.
It was the only time Ginny remembered her mama challenging her daddy, reminding him the farm was Dymoke land—not Pickering—and that overstepping themselves was not how her ancestors had held on to land in the New World for more than two centuries.
Ginny flicked on the windshield spray and sent the wipers flying to clear her vision, just as her memory raced through the farm's grueling work cycle, year after year—a cycle and anchor she'd hated as a girl and yet missed over the last decades.
Daddy was right about people coming, wanting those trees... but what a lot of work, and the outcome always so uncertain.
Hard labor marked November and December, between cutting trees to ship to the city and those to sell directly from the farm. January meant taking down all those signs and props—anything not frozen in the ground—as well as the Christmas lights to store for the next year.
As soon as that was done Mama and Daddy would sit together at the kitchen table and work up the tree orders for the next year. Even now, Ginny could see them sitting there, cups of coffee steaming between them and the ledger book with its long columns—columns that Mama added up because Daddy didn't have the patience. That was a nice time, that little window when the snow fell and we were stuck indoors.
As soon as the snow melted, there were stumps left from the Christmas tree sales to dig by hand until they could get the tractor in, and finally to spray to keep the Pales weevils—stem eaters—at bay. By late March or early April, seedlings arrived for transplanting and needed to be in the ground—six feet apart—as soon as possible, all while keeping watch for a late freeze and those thieving gophers eager to eat the roots right back to the trees' stems. Ginny shook her head at the memory.
May had brought new lime-green growth to the trees—"candles" that stood upright on their branches. Those candles were one of the prettiest sights in the world to a Christmas tree farmer. But a late frost could tip them a dry brown, setting the growth back a year and making the tree, though still alive, unsalable for that year.
Fertilizing the trees while trying not to fertilize the weeds came next—what a job—and then the hand removal of cones from the trees. Always so messy. Ginny shuddered. She'd hated that job and all the times Harold had swiped his sappy fingers through her long hair, thinking it was funny. The stuff had been like tar to comb out.
By mid-May it seemed every waking hour outside of school was spent mowing between the rows of trees. In June, they'd sheared and shaped trees waist high or taller. That's how she and Harold had spent their summers—June, July, and August in the heat and humidity of Virginia, feasted upon by mosquitoes, sculpting those trees. So funny that customers thought Christmas trees grew into cone shapes by themselves.
They were still mowing in September, not only between rows but between trees in each row, hoping to make it easier for shoppers to roam the fields come November, and especially to keep the field mice and rabbits from adding the bark of the young trees to their winter diet.
By October, Mama and Daddy roamed the fields while Harold and Ginny were in school. They priced and ticketed each tree, checking for any diseased or stressed trees that might need to be removed—trees that wouldn't hold their needles. Mama touched up any signs that needed a freshening—she had a light hand and artistic bent. Daddy sharpened saws and axes. On weekends they all began hanging lights and lanterns, getting ready for the season. Such a festive time.
Then back to cutting trees to ship in November. Doors opened to customers the day after Thanksgiving. Every day, especially every weekend was crazy busy after that, long hours right up until Christmas morning.
Ginny had to force her eyes wide to keep awake, lulled as she was by memories. December was the best. Longtime friends and neighbors coming by to choose and cut their tree, often bringing cookies to pair with the hot cider Mama and I mulled. Some folks came from as far away as Maryland or West Virginia to choose their tree—a family tradition—sometimes a second generation.
This excerpt ends on page 13 of the paperback edition.
Monday we begin the book The Pursuit Of Elena Bradford by Ann H. Gabhart.
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