Linda Hoffman, owner of Old Frog Pond Farm on Eldridge Road, heard the words “apples are hard to grow” so often over the years that they became a fitting title for the first chapter of her newly published memoir, “The Artist and the Orchard.” As Hoffman recounts her journey to restore an old apple orchard, she weaves in the story of her personal journey toward self-understanding.
The memoir’s opening scene describes Hoffman staring down the rows of abandoned apple trees across the street from a farmhouse, chicken coop, and barn she is about to purchase—even though she has no idea how to farm or grow apples. As she discovers, the most important thing is to prune the trees, cutting out some branches in order to let the light in for the good of the tree as a whole. This pruning becomes a metaphor for what Hoffman had to do in her own life so that she could grow and fully realize herself.
On that day, standing in the orchard, Hoffman had recently left a marriage of almost 20 years and a home in Groton. With her three kids she was starting a new life, having no idea of what might be ahead. The memoir shows that her one constant—besides the kids—is her art, which reflects her life at its different stages. She describes “Poems in Cloth,” a project she created while married to her first husband, that seems to reflect a defined life. In contrast, an early sculpture she makes at the farm in wood and metal is called “Beyond the Unknown,” and it suggests a willing uncertainty and an openness to what is possible. “It spoke to me about finding a fulfilling life that I couldn’t yet imagine,” she writes. Throughout the book are other art projects: a series of sculptures from old tools with poems that pay tribute to vanished farmlands; “The Circus Comes to Fruitlands,” with animals, acrobats, and clowns made from found objects that became the museum’s first outdoor art exhibit; works in string and yarn and small figures sculpted in wax, some cast in bronze, done when she wasn’t strong enough to work with heavier materials.
Linda Hoffman prunes an apple tree at Old Frog Pond Farm. (Courtesy photo)
The orchard is dominant, with all its demands and rewards. “The solo orchardist is lined up against an army of insects,” Hoffman writes, describing the plum curculio beetle, aphids, red-humped caterpillar, apple maggot fly—all waiting to attack the apple trees in waves. Hoffman is determined that the apples grown on the farm will be organic, which makes eliminating these insects and also diseases more difficult. To label the apples “organic” requires a certification, a process that has stringent guidelines and at times became “absolutely frustratingly ridiculous.” Hoffman learns how to drive an old tractor, hoist gallons of organic fungicide into the sprayer, and cut out dead wood in the orchard. She learns about the need to import bees for pollination, how to thin and graft, and how to recover from the disappointment and mystery of years with no crop of apples at all. The reader comes to fully understand the truth of the words, “It’s hard to grow apples” and to admire Hoffman for the physical labor and emotional endurance it takes to manage an orchard.
A journey from orchard to self
As Hoffman works hard over the years to learn all she can about making the orchard healthy, she comes to understand more and more about herself. She describes the lasting influence of two years spent in Japan soon after college. It is there that she meets her first husband. She describes the home they bought in Groton in a former church, where her daughter, Ariel, used to roller skate around the room in a black leotard and a crash helmet.
She describes the increasing confinement she felt in her marriage, how she had “no identity in her own right.” She reflects on her complex relationship with her mother. She attends retreats at a monastery and takes her vows as a Zen Buddhist. She learns to let go of self-censoring and the drive for perfection. She battles a health crisis, marries again, and creates a community at Old Frog Pond Farm. In the end, she has pruned her life so that the light can get in; she has found meaning and intention.
For Harvard residents, it is fun to read about people they may know—Denis Wagner, with whom Hoffman shares an enduring friendship; Franklyn Carlson, who was so helpful when Hoffman was struggling with her first crop of organic apples; and close neighbors. Now, driving by the farm, they can understand what it took to bring the orchard back to life and to imagine the old tools that used to be in the barn before they made their way into Hoffman’s art.
The book may not inspire us to try growing apples—it’s hard!—but it may give us a deeper appreciation of nature, a sense of the importance of place, and of working in the earth. Hoffman’s honest voice draws us close to her experiences and to the feelings that attended them. Her images bring people and places to life: She hears her mother’s confidence in the click of her heels as she walks away; she describes the raspberry patch draped in invasive dodder vine as like the ethereal cobwebs that circled around the room of Dickens’ character Miss Havisham; and an aged branch becomes an old elephant’s trunk. She often describes herself with images from the orchard.
During a conversation, Hoffman talked about her reasons for writing the memoir and about her writing process. She said she needed to write the book for her own self-understanding and completion. Whenever she tried to give up the project, she found she “couldn’t walk away.” She felt she had important things to say, things she had learned from working with the earth, from her Zen practice, and from her illness.
Hoffman said she kept notes on the work in the orchard and her interactions with Wagner—how to prune, how to graft, bits of conversation between them. And over the years she had written about other important times in her life; many of those pieces she had shared with members of her writing group.
The challenge for the book was how to weave those different strands together. The writer, like the sculptor and the orchardist, has to choose what to prune. She said she knew the book had to be about the orchard and its progress through time. The reader sees how, as she incorporated other experiences and reflections, it became also about her own progress over time—as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a wife, an artist, a community member, a Zen Buddhist, and a writer.
Hoffman will read excerpts from her book at Fivesparks Dec. 12 at 4 p.m., where the book will be for sale and signing. (Reservations are required; register at fivesparks.org.)
The book is also available at Amazon, bookshop.org, and at the Silver Unicorn bookstore in West Acton.
