Author : Megan Betz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (621 download)
Book Synopsis Analyzing the 'community' of Community Orchards by : Megan Betz
Download or read book Analyzing the 'community' of Community Orchards written by Megan Betz and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the oldest community orchards in the country, the Bloomington Community Orchard (BCO) was planted in 2010 with the goal of providing "free fruit for all." As the trees and the organization grew together, participants began describing membership in the orchard community as spanning multiple taxonomic kingdoms. Inspired by participants' articulation of their multispecies community, I use BCO to examine the ways current and historical relations with orchard plantings and the concept of community animate community orchards. Humans and trees co-construct the orchard, and in turn, the community it fosters. For millennia, trees have joined with humans in orchard cultivation, communicating their experience of orcharding care in their ability to recover from pests, produce fruit, resist disease, and remain alive. They communicate their demands through their liveliness and unruliness, resisting efforts to control their flavor, growth pattern, and harvest. These histories of cultivation are held in each moment of interaction, and these interactions co-construct shared futures. From a position in the orchard community, I ask, how do human and nonhuman orchard participants co-construct the orchard community? In addition to methods more attuned to human voices (discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation), I include the voices and presence of trees by examining their responses to care provided. Responses were measured in continued life, fruit production, and ability to combat disease and recover from pruning. To unpack human-fruit tree relations, I follow the seasons, tracing the most prominent moments of connection between human and fruit tree, often mediated by another member of the orchard community. Along the way, I explore humans-fruit tree (seen in winter's dormant pruning); humans-fire blight and human-codling moth (seen in spring's pest management); humans-squirrels (seen in summer's harvesting); and interpersonal human relations. I argue fruit trees mediate orchard relations that shift how BCO participants articulate and navigate community relations. The result, drawing on Haraway (2003), is a network of significant relations that center on a human-fruit tree companion species relationship. Offering space for volunteer orchardists to participate in this companionship has rippling impact for how they perceive shared space, nonhuman community members, and their fellow humans.
