Author: Jackie Kuehn
Most of the time, it seems the most perseverant plants are things like poison ivy, bindweed, and quackgrass. A few others come to mind, but rarely are they useful. Valuable plants, on the other hand, tend to be ephemeral, sometimes disappearing over a particularly cold winter, or a hot, dry summer.
My Red Haven peach tree, delivering a stunning crop of luscious fruit one year, fails to ripen more than one stunted peach the following year because the weather sinks to 18° the week the blossoms open; the bees shiver in their little beds instead of pollinating the fruit. Ever perseverant, reliable Seckel pears crack and rot that same summer because of too much rain.
But the plants that win the prize for stamina and perseverance in my yard are my purple raspberries. Cold, heat, too much water, too little water, and Japanese beetles notwithstanding, my Royalty purple raspberries deliver the goods. And they are very good goods.
I originally planted the canes near our patio, imagining the pleasure of reaching through the fencing around the patio, plucking ripe berries at will. That has come to pass. But the canes grow so lustily and bear so heavily that they gradually lean over and cover the sidewalk so completely we have to walk in the grass.
So I moved the plants. They now grow happily in their new location, yielding fruit in their season. But they never gave up the old location, either, despite my careful, deep digging to get the whole set of roots. I moved them a second, and then a third time. Now I have purple raspberries in many locations, including in the original beds surrounding the patio. Those plants epitomize stamina, and I expect to always have purple raspberries, no matter how hard I may try to change the situation.
I’m not sure I can make a clear parallel to the change of situations with Pomona. But I will try.
I began my tenure as editor-in-chief of Pomona with the summer issue of 1997. In those days, I prepared a camera-ready hard copy of the journal, and mailed the heavy box of papers to Chapin, Illinois. There, Heyworth Press photographed the pages and printed our beloved paper copies of the journal every quarter. As time passed and technology progressed, I eventually emailed them a PDF of the journal every three months.
Articles became harder and harder to get, as the NAFEX Facebook page became the new, faster round robin of information-sharing. Then came the difficult decision by the NAFEX board to tighten the financial belt and eliminate the hard copy of the journal—still a sore spot with many people. We lost a number of valuable members that way, people who were veritable founts of fruit-growing knowledge, but had no computer savvy.
The time has come to tighten the financial belts again at NAFEX. I was very kindly informed that my honorarium—which was established in 1997, and raised (by board decision, not by my request) by a small amount in about 2010—was no longer sustainable by NAFEX. Another person, who now edits The Nutshell, the newsletter of North American Nut Growers, will take over the job for less. I completely understand.
Am I sad? Yes. Will I miss editing Pomona? Absolutely. I will particularly miss some of the very special emails, letters, and phone calls I received from members. But I truly do understand, and I hope some new blood, new vision, and perhaps new formatting will result in renewed vigor for this important organization.
And, like my perseverant purple raspberries, moving me gently out of the position of editor-in-chief will not keep me from continuing my NAFEX membership, though in quite a different capacity. Stamina and perseverance will continue. But I may take a long rest before the next set of notes from Penn’s Acres. I’ll harvest my raspberries, and hopefully pears, apples, and a few more elusive peaches.
Thanks for a great twenty-one years. I love you all.
Jackie Kuehn
