Despite the recent snow—and frigid conditions this week—Wisconsin winters haven’t been that cold or snowy in recent years. Last winter was the warmest on record.
Trees are among the living things coping with the changing climate.
Trees provide tremendous benefits to both the environment and our lives. A healthy tree canopy pulls carbon dioxide from the air and stores it. Trees offer shade and cool spaces. They provide food for wildlife and humans alike. The list goes on.
Liz Griffith is focused on the fruit bearing variety. She manages Door Creek Orchard. Her parents brought it to life more than 40 years ago.
Griffith grows 90 species of apples, mostly heirloom, including Ashmead’s Kernel and Esopus Spitzenburg.
Griffith says apple trees can live for decades and come with environmental benefits. "Oh yeah, I mean, perennial farming is great for hydrology because we’re not tilling up the soil every year," she says.
It's a chilly January morning. Griffith is layered up, chainsaw at the ready. It’s pruning season. Griffith calls it her favorite because it makes her feel connected to the trees.
“Getting rid of broken branches, diseased branches, branches that are just vegetative, and just kind of blocking airflow and sunlight. Those are the ones you're looking to take out first. And then you're also looking to shape the tree for longevity and production,” she says.
Griffith points to the top of a McIntosh she’s strategically pruned. “So, that one lost its top, but over the past two years we’ve been growing a new top, and it looks great,” she says.
Griffith approaches orcharding the way her parents did. The trees are part of an ecosystem that includes a wetland, pond and prairie. The entire system is managed as naturally and nonchemically as possible. A combination of grasses and perennial rye is growing between the rows of trees.
“It’s generally an orchard mix in the aisles. Right now, it looks very trimmed, like a golf course. We have to do that going into winter because the rodents will come in and chew the trees if there’s cover for them,” she says.
Griffith says rodents have become a bigger problem in the last five years because of climate change. With warmer conditions, a tiny mammal called the pine vole has appeared at the orchard.
“We never used to have pine voles. It used to get too cold consistently in the winters for them to survive because they're living below ground and they were traditionally further south and now it doesn't,” she says.
Griffith deploys “natural” control strategies for rodents. Raptor perches, kestrel and owl boxes are strategically scattered across the orchard landscape.
But she’s watching other climate impacts unfold.
“And my dad, if he were here, would say the same thing. We are dealing now with a litany of things he never had to deal with. We’re talking about winter—Wisconsin winters used to be snowy and cold and sunny consistently. Now we have these ups and downs—freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw,” she says.
Apple trees are generally hardy and can handle subzero temperatures.
“They hit their peak dormancy when it gets the coldest, and they’re able to handle it,” Griffith says.
But if milder weather suddenly hits, “They'll start to lose dormancy, and then if it drops back down again real abruptly, that's when you get tissue damage on the tree—roots, buds, things like that—because it’s not as dormant, it’s not as hardy. So that’s a big issue,” Griffith says.
She’s exploring ways to diversify and make the orchard more resilient—for instance, introducing new types of fruit trees.
“I’m gonna try American persimmon, which blooms really late. We also have a pawpaw planting—they bloom later than apples,” Griffith says.
She’s also considering nutritional sprays that might help her trees recover from an unexpected freeze. And Griffith hopes to get a special portable wind machine she can pull behind her tractor. The idea is to mix warmer air from higher areas of the orchard to lower spots.
"I'm going to try to write a grant for a portable frost fan run with a tractor pto. That'll suck the air from the top of the hill down here they're purported to do. Well so that's something we're going to try," she says.
For now, Griffith needs to focus on wintertime pruning. She’s not alone on this cold morning in the orchard.
Emma Everitt’s family has purchased apples here for as long as she can remember. As she grew older, Everitt helped during harvest season. Today, she’s getting her first taste of pruning.
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“When you spend so much time around them—the fruit—you get invested in it. And also, spending so many hours here … it feels like a family out here—all these things,” Everitt says.
Orchardist Liz Griffith smiles and moves on to the next tree.
