11th annual Barkslip's Fruit School
Treevolution
"Food for the Greater Family"
2017 Fruit School Road Show will be making ephemeral Spring appearances at these locations:
Harrisonburg, Virginia- February 25 & 26
Asheville, NC- March 25 & 26
Union, WV- March 11 &12
Please Note: The Sturgeon General has determined that Fruit school is a threat to conventional thinking. The organizers of this event can not take responsibility for its content or nor shall they be accountable for the mischevious fallout that inevitably occurs in its aftermath... Seriously,The dynamic of learning has really changed in a short period of time with the advent of easy access to information. Any factual information can be had with a push of a button. One needs to ask what can a real live teacher do that a computer cant? ...there is no app that accesses wisdom, insight and a spirit of innovation that comes from practical experience. Hands on labs and interactive onsite experience are still irreplaceable. The focus of fruit school will be less on factual gauvage and more on broader concepts, practical experience, and fun gaining a level of prowess with plants and directing that knowledge and skill in a way that benefits our communities. If you leave with more ideas than notes then I have succeeded.
Two days of learning how to work with fruit and nut trees without chemicals, develop "Greater Family" Orchards, and feed the world in a way that is of most relevance to these changing times
11th annual Barkslip's Fruit School
Treevolution
A New year's Intentions- "Feeding the roots of the Greater Family"
As long as people keep asking me to do Fruit school I continue to share what I have learned in my 30 years of orcharding. I am not a scientist or an encyclopedia, I am a farmer in pursuit of truth through first hand experience. I love orcharding, and I make money at it doing it without chemicals. I also make a lot of people happy and healthy with my fruit, the flavor of my produce reassures people that growing food naturally is not only possible, but it is preferable. I piss a lot of people off because it challenges what the chemical companies have made them believe, and most importantly, every year I see increasingly more natural diversity around my orchard.
As I get older I see the increasing significance of public commons. Edible parks and “Greater Family" orchards add another level of complexity to the place-that-no-one-owns. They are great demonstration sites and learning laboratories of what anyone can do in their yard, a place for people who are interested in growing fruit can come together in non-competitive community and build relationships, and lastly, the mind altering concept that this world is for everyone to share, not just for a few of the extremely privileged.
A fruit tree excels in a healthy and diverse environment. And so it is with people. For the 100’s of people that have gone through fruit school in the last 10 years a majority of them came to learn how to manage their private orchards for their direct families and I applaud them for that spirit. This year I hope to cater to that basic need of providing for oneself, but also to inspire ways in which we can create a collaborative spirit that will lead us to being more than the sum of our parts, to make a healthier social environment around us, think beyond ourselves, and harness the commons to provide and create such an abundance that if we dont share it with our ‘greater family’ we will just bust!
Professor Barkslip January 6th, 2017
Six years ago Asheville's Vance Elemetary students took one dollar from their lunch money on one day and bought three muscadine grapes....
This, the eleventh year of fruit school, I enter the second decade of showing people ways to grow fruit and nuts that makes sense for the longevity of a healthy planet. I have a strong urge to return to the original impetus for starting FS in the first place. Fruit school came about because I had moved to Asheville and was introduced to the derelict public edible parks in town. People had not really known how to take care of them in an efficient manner so I stepped up and began leading workdays. As the novelty of this wore off, and the volunteers dwindled, I concocted Fruit school in order to pass along what I had learned in the previous 20 years of maintaining a minimum input orchard on my farm in West Virginia. In turn, people would feel more comfortable, confident and competent to help maintain these public parks.
Bald face hornets make for serious sentries in my no spray orchard
...and every year those grapes produce bushels of fruit across the city from vines that have been propagated from them. Hard to believe that it only takes giving up a twinkie one day to create such abundance and fill the world with nutritious food.