Back to the land

When Mary inherited her grandparents' farm, nobody had looked after the orchard for over ten years. The old apple trees were overgrown with thistles, and half the fruit had been eaten by pests. Her husband Paul, who had grown up in the city, knew nothing about agricultural work. Yet within a few years they had turned the place into one of the most species-rich farms in the area.

The first thing they did was to stop spraying the trees with pesticides. Instead, they put up small wooden boxes, and the birds that moved into them soon began eating the caterpillars on the leaves. An elderly neighbour who had kept an orchard all his life taught Paul to graft young trees. Mary planted lavender between the rows, and the bees came back in large numbers.

Not everything has gone to plan, of course. Last winter, rodents gnawed at the roots of several saplings, and none of them survived. And the scarecrow that Paul built with such pride has never frightened a single magpie. Still, this autumn they harvested more apples than they could sell. Mary is sure that her grandparents would have been proud of them.