2025 Lessons Learned

When I worked a corporate job, there was a woman who believed that being rude and questioning everything made her look smart.  In meetings she would always say a throw away "thank you" and then ask "what are the lessons learned here?"  I suppose she thought it made her look erudite and "with it."  It was really a put-down to whoever had presented.  

As autumn sets in and I am inspecting the trees--some munched by deer and others failing to root successfully--her question reverberates in my head.  In the case of this project, it is a pertinent question.  

Corporate execution, despite the best efforts of consultants to streamline and make everything seem linear, is not always straightforward. I began this project believing the biological process of planting seeds or trees, adding the elements to make them grow (air, sun, water), and seeing them grow would be comparatively clear-cut. 

How short-sighted I was. 

Similar to my old corporate life where situations would pivot and change, there were a number of unexpected things that happened in the first year.  In contrast to corporate execution, which almost always traces back to a component of human fallibility or judgment, this first year of orcharding has been an experience in changes and unexpected occurrences driven by unknowns.  Or rather, by knowns that I am not going to know.  Some cases, where the results are clearly in contradiction to the expectation (by this I mean, when a plant doesn't thrive or even dies),     provide a more concrete chance for assessing lessons learned.  However, there is also an element of chance which is unlike anything I experienced in corporate.  

In this first year of orcharding, I posit the following lessons learned:

• Failure to understand the soil - this is partly a matter of timing. If I had cleared the space and then waited a year, I would probably have had a better sense of some of the dynamics - what areas were boggy, where the water was pooling.  Scientifically, studiously, I could have taken measurements (either explicit or observed) of the sunlight patterns, water, etc. I could have done more soil sampling of the layers.  However, in my defense (only against myself leading the prosecution) I put forward a few rebuttals.  First, rainfall may average, but some years are wetter and some are drier.  The first year I planted, it was wetter, and the places I dug didn't drain quickly enough, causing root rot.  Second, waiting a year to understand and test and measure would have been a year's growth delayed.  In my mind (my Aries side talking) it is always better to take action rather than wait.  
• Digging too deep for too heavy a clay - I used an electric, one-man auger to dig the holes for a majority of the trees.  This was extremely efficient for reaching depth quickly.  However, the post facto analysis of trees that died is that some of the holes were simply too deep in a heavy soil that didn't drain.  Since the site was completely forested before, it stands to reason that trees and plants germinating in the surface humus were able to push roots through the heavier soil layers, with little to no space for extra water storage between the soil and the roots.  Next year, when replacing those lost trees, I will try to plant some plants "higher" in a looser mound of soil such that they are able to better root without hitting pools of water.  
• Not being present enough - The ideal is to be always present, to be able to monitor plants day to day and then adjust in real time: water, nutrients, animal predation.  Due to the setup of my own life, I wasn't there full time in the growing season.  When the deer were munching the newly sprouted leaves continuously, I could have prevented some loss.  The life of fruit trees is measured in decades.  Having a slower first year isn't the biggest issue.  
• Underestimating wildlife - This topic deserves a longer meditation, but in short I truly underestimated the extent of the damage that wildlife could do.  Having always gardened in places which had sufficient human presence (so I thought) to deter animals, I started this project blithely.  I had worried that birds may eat the berries, or peck at the fruit when things started to bear more.  However, I hadn't accounted for how destructive deer are.  They have been responsible for mowing down a number of my plantings indiscriminately. When seen from a business perspective, the destruction of the investment in plants is material and can't be overlooked.  Japan differs slightly.  In Izu, palm civets, crows and wild boar are the main issues.  The wild boar are more seasonal and easily controlled with fencing.  The palm civets and crows are fruit lovers with powerful jaws and beaks and can easily break into food they want to eat.  No fencing will make a difference.  The deterrents available are at best weak.  They also require being present to enforce them.  
• Nature will always surprise - in the middle of the summer, I would have said that the easternmost grapes on the vineyard would be struggling because the heavy shade was keeping the morning dew on the leaves too long.  There wasn't full sun on the plants until well after 11 a.m.  However, the vines that have grown the most in this first year were those on the easternmost row.   When plants are just in the right place (the soil, the light, etc.) without outside interference, they take care of themselves. Some trees grew 4 feet in a season; others struggled just to get situated.  There will always be a surprise in who thrives and who doesn't. 
• Don't discount chance - in Japan, a particularly harsh and dry summer caused a loss of a number of newly planted trees.  [Image - graphs] To some extent this exemplifies the issue: there was nothing I could do if I weren't physically there. But more broadly with agriculture, there is always an element of chance that can't be predicted.  What was the chance that it would be an exceptionally dry summer with below-average rainfall, right after I had planted 20 new trees? 

Could I have anticipated any of this?  Perhaps.  But waiting to set up trail cams to study the wildlife, taking measurements of sunlight and rain, and doing more soil sampling would have taken time.  In the span of an orchard (measured in decades) a year isn't much.  But beyond the "lost time," waiting would have denied me the joy of planting, which is a powerful motivator in my case.  Idling a year while making observations may have led to 'better outcomes' in terms of having a higher survival rate.  But it would have demotivated and depressed  me to watch barren land go unused.  

The process of assessing "lessons learned," of analyzing what I could have done, can easily become an exercise in self-recrimination and an unnecessary deployment of the subjunctive.  "If I had weeded more," "I should have watered more" etc., it still may not have made a difference for plants that were incorrectly sited or planted too late.  

Where the successes did happen, where an apricot tree grew five feet, or a plum tree, sited perfectly with the right water and sunlight, shot up new branches like streamers, it brought me such joy.  Among my grape plants struggling above ground, I had one that rose up and branched perfectly on its trellis. I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on any of those moments, even if the cost is a few lost trees.