Book dossier

The orchard

by Adele Crockett Robertson

The Orchard is an exquisitely beautiful and poignant memoir of a young woman's single-handed struggle to save her New England farm in the depths of the Great Depression. Recently discovered by the author's daughter, it tells the story of Adele "Kitty" Robertson, young and energetic, but unprepared by her Radcliffe education for the rigors of apple farming in those bitter times. Alone at the end of a country road, with only her great Dane, Freya, for company, plagued by debts, broken machinery, and killing frosts, Kitty revives the old orchard after years of neglect. Every day is a struggle: she must dig a well, burn brush, feed the trees, prune and spray and pack and store her crop. At a time when a man could be hired to do a full day's work for less than the price of a meal, she is committed to paying a decent wage and is rewarded with an abundance of kindness from Joe LaPlante, the shy Frenchman, who holds off a band of apple thieves, and from Kasimir and his Polish relatives, who pick through the night to rescue the harvest from hail. And she is rewarded as well by the beauty of the world - the glorious spring mornings filled with the scent of apple blossoms and the rich autumn yield of red Baldwins, smooth-skinned Greenings, striped Spies, and golden Russets. Relentlessly, however, the Depression grinds on....