Chapter 24

Taking a break from shoveling the compost into a small trailer, Pepper watched John and Sally ride out of the compound on their way to move the horses from one pasture to the next.

He looked over at Carl and said, “I’d like to learn how to do that.”

“Do what?” Carl asked looking up from what he had been working on.

He wondered what Pepper wanted to learn.

“Ride a horse,” Pepper answered.

“I guess we could do that after you finish spreading this compost around the orchard,” Carl said.

Although Pepper had heard the term compost, he wasn’t really sure what it was, or why it was used. His lack of experience with gardens of any kind was making itself known.

He asked, “Why do I need to spread this stuff around the orchard?”

“It gives us something to do with the horse manure you’ve been hauling out of the barn,” Carl answered with a smile. Seeing the puzzled expression on Peppers face, he added, “It’s fertilizer for the fruit trees. Nothing goes to waste around here. Even shit is valuable.”

Thinking back to the catalogs that he could order seasonal items from, Pepper said, “I thought fertilizer was a kind of powder that came in boxes or bags.”

“This is the all natural stuff,” Carl said.

It never ceased to amaze him how Pepper thought everything came in a box, bag, or can.

Pepper asked, “Is it better?”

“Yes, it is,” Carl said. “The stuff you’re talking about is a chemical based fertilizer.”

“I didn’t know that,” Pepper said. “I guess this is organic.”

“Yes,” Carl answered nodding his head.

There were times when he was amazed at how little Pepper knew. The way he used the term organic made it sound like it was something special.

He looked at Pepper and asked, “What does ‘organic’ mean to you?”

“It means that it’s made without the use of chemicals and stuff,” Pepper answered. “You have to pay extra for organic stuff, because it costs more to make it without using chemicals. An organic apple costs a dollar more a pound than an apple that has been sprayed with chemicals.”

“Well, the fertilizer that you’re shoveling is compost made from the horse manure from the barn. We use it on the fruit trees in the orchard, the vegetable garden, and out in the fields. We don’t have to use insecticides out here for the fruits so I guess that makes them organic,” Carl said.

“That’s good. Organic food is supposed to be a lot better for you,” Pepper said. “You should grow more of it.”

“This is for feeding folks here,” Carl said.

“Why don’t you sell it?” Pepper asked.

It was obvious that Pepper didn’t understand the difference between having a couple of trees and an orchard for food production.

Carl said, “You won’t get rich selling a couple of bushels of cherries.”

“You could grow more,” Pepper said.

To him it was really simple.

Carl said, “Growing fruits out here is challenging. The orchard started with two kinds of native plums, Norther and Wanata. We’ve been growing Montmorency cherries out here for years. We just recently got Lodi apples that were grafted onto crabapple rootstock. Hopefully they’ll survive a couple more seasons.”

“How about oranges?” Pepper asked.

Carl laughed and said, “Oranges won’t grow here.”

Looking over at the forest, Pepper said, “I thought that you just planted the tree, and then picked the fruit later. I mean, there are all kinds of trees around here. Why can’t you grow oranges?”

“The climate is way too cold up here for citrus trees. Just think of it this way. It takes the fruit a certain amount of time to ripen. If it gets cold before the fruit ripens, then it just falls off the tree,” Carl said. He patted the Bobcat compact track loader and said, “We better get back to work. I want to fix this.”

Picking up the shovel, Pepper said, “Okay.”

Carl worked on the Bobcat for another thirty minutes while Pepper shoveled the compost into the trailer. Experience with a shovel had taught him how to work without killing his back. He worked at it in a steady constant pace until the trailer was filled

Pepper set the shovel aside, and then said, “I’m done.”

Frustrated by his lack of progress in fixing the hydraulic system, Carl said, “This is going to take us all day if I don’t get this fixed. Why don’t you drive the ATV over to the orchard and spread the manure?”

“Sure,” Pepper said.

He looked at the ATV utility vehicle. It kind of looked like a car, but it wasn’t.

He asked, “How do I drive it?”

“It drives just like a car,” Carl said.

He went over to the ATV and pointed out the various features to Pepper. After having the features pointed out to him, Pepper felt like he could drive it.

He started to get in when Carl said, “Take the shovel in the bed in the back. When you get to the orchard, shovel about ten shovel loads of compost at the base of a tree, and then move on to the next one. Come back here, when you’re done.”

“Great,” Pepper said.

He drove off barely paying attention to where he was going. He kept looking at various features of the ATV. It didn’t seem to go very fast. He looked back at the trailer load of compost, wondering if that was slowing the ATV down.

He managed to find his way to the orchard, and pulled up to the first tree. He got out and grabbed the shovel. He tossed ten scoops of compost at the base of the tree, and then got back into the ATV. He drove it twenty feet forward and repeated his actions.

He muttered, “It sure would be easier with two guys doing this. One guy to drive, and one guy to shovel.”

It took as long to unload the trailer as it took to load it. Most of the delay came about because he also had to stop shoveling and drive the ATV. He felt that he had to do all of the work while Carl played with the Bobcat. When he got back to the compost piles, Carl was seated in the Bobcat.

Carl called out, “Park it over there. I’ll load it.”

While it had taken Pepper more than thirty minutes to load the trailer the first time, it only took Carl ten minutes to load it, using the Bobcat. After the trailer was loaded, Carl went over to the ATV.

He said, “Move over. I’ll drive and you’ll shovel. It won’t take long to get this load spread over the orchard.”

“That will be a lot better than what I had to do before,” Pepper said.

“That’s the idea. There’s enough work around here that we can’t afford to waste time doing things the hard way,” Carl said.

“Why did you have me do it the hard way if you were fixing the Bobcat?” Pepper asked finding it easy to remember the name of the small earthmover.

“What would have happened if I hadn’t been able to fix it? We would have lost an hour of work,” Carl answered.

Pepper thought about how he ran his business. When something like that would happen, back at the store, everyone would stand around until the repairman fixed the problem. The idea of doing the job the old fashioned way, would never have occurred to him. The attitude out here was very different. They believed that when something needed to get done, it got done.

He would never have come up with the idea of fixing a broken piece of equipment himself. The men and women out here had no qualms about rolling up their sleeves and diving into a repair, regardless of previous experience with that particular piece of equipment. He had watched with amazement when one of them would figure out how things should work and then figure out why it wasn’t working correctly.

There were other things that he had noticed while at the ranch. When something broke, they took care of it right away. One day a light bulb had burned out in the barn. Carl had sent him to fix it before mucking the stable. The next thing Pepper knew, he was standing on a ladder changing a light bulb. It was his first real experience with a ladder.

The point was that back at his store, he would have let several light bulbs burn out before calling in someone to replace them. The store would have looked dark and dingy before the problem was fixed. Out here, that would never happen.

The ranch hands never put things away dirty. Even shovels were cleaned before being returned to where they were stored. They took the minute or two necessary to wipe it down or wash it off. Despite the fact that each horse dropped forty pounds of manure a day, the barn was relatively clean all of the time. He couldn’t imagine what a stall would look like after a week without being cleaned. All he knew was that he wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to clean it. There were smells, but they were the healthy smells of life.

The net result was that the ranch always looked clean despite the age of the buildings. All of the buildings were painted. The interiors of buildings, even little storage sheds, were well lit and cheery. The gravel drive was level and without ruts. Fence posts were straight and strong. Gates swung easily without dragging against the ground.