Life Lessons From Pruning Trees

Each winter when the harvest has been completed, we begin the laborious but vital task of pruning the orchards. This is laborious because the trees are so tall that a man must use a pruning tower (similar to what is commonly known as a cherry picker) to get up into the tops of the trees to make his cuts. It's vital because pruning removes the deadwood and promotes growth of fruitwood, making the tree more productive. More on that a bit later...

The pruner has two tools he uses to make his cuts: a shear for smaller cuts and a saw for the larger ones. How he selects what to cut and where is crucial, for he must be able to look at the overall structure of the tree and maximize the growth of fruitwood in the spring while ensuring that he does not weaken the overall structure such that, if a big crop is set in the late spring and into the summer growing season, a heavily-fruited branch may break, thereby losing that portion of the crop he worked so hard to promote.

The guiding influence the pruner must have is to "open up the canopy", meaning that he wants to remove unproductive wood that will shade the interior of the tree more than is necessary. When the canopy is opened, sunlight filters down into the tree's interior, thereby offering the chance for more fruitwood to develop. A fully-shaded orchard floor may be aesthetically pleasing, but it's also a sign that the trees have not been properly pruned during the preceding winter.

The pruner, when selecting his cuts, looks first for deadwood. These are branches that have shown signs of vigorous growth, but without any or little evidence that they bore much fruit. A branch that grew a great crop of foliage again may be aesthetically pleasing, but it does little for the farmer's bottom line. The deadwood is cut away in order to promote the growing vigor from the tree into the more productive and potentially profitable fruitwood.

Often the fruitwood is not as pleasing to the eye as the deadwood; it's more gnarled, it has knobs and spurs which are evidence that it bore fruit there during the previous season. It's usually not as long or extensive, but is more stunted. But that fruitwood is the key to a grower's livelihood, and the grower will do all he can to maximize its development and continued growth. He will prune to allow more sunlight exposure to the fruitwood, and he will give the tree nutrients designed to maximize the tree's vigor and health such that more fruitwood will grow.

By now you've probably already recognized the parallels between pruning fruit trees and living a balanced and productive life. But, at the risk of declaring the obvious, here are the lessons I draw from this:

• When we put our energies into activities and events which are solely self-focused, they make look more aesthetically beautiful to us but they often bear little fruit that benefits others. That makes those things deadwood, and those things must be cut away and removed.
• God told us that He is the light of the world. So when we remove the deadwood and open our canopy, we also open ourselves to His wisdom and strength and provision, and we offer ourselves to become more productive, more relevant, more purpose-driven.
• Like the fruitwood on the tree, there are parts of us that look more gnarled and which aren't as attractive or presentable to the outside world. But the important thing is not what we look like, but what we do and how productive our lives are for the good of others.

The pruning is done now. Very soon, our trees will be blooming and the pollination will take place. And within a few weeks we'll be able to see the first signs of the kind of crop that's being set and how well we did this past winter to remove the deadwood, open up the canopy, and promote the growth of the fruitwood and the fruit that will issue from it.