Miracle Apples

Chapter 10

The first pests to appear in spring are leafrollers. Then the caterpillars and spring cankerworm appear. There were many types of caterpillar, the larvae of moths. My orchard had many larvae of the Japanese buff-tip moth. There were also larvae of the white-spotted tussock moth and others. Red, green, and other bright colours pretty to look at. I was amazed at how many leaves they ate. You remember I mentioned that if apple trees lose their leaves, new leaves will shoot. They emerge from the tips of the branches. So, whilst the insects were busy consuming all the leaves, they would mass together on the tips of the branches which still had new leaves, like passengers on an overcrowded train. That was the wake-up call. Talk about the rush hour, well that’s what it was like. The weight of the insects actually weighed down the tips of the branches. There must have been thousands! Tens of thousands! Hundreds of thousands! Anyway, there were an incredible number of insects on the trees. It was a staggering, almost unbelievable sight.’

To begin with Kimura thought he’d catch the pests by hand.

The overwhelming numbers of insects alone made catching them impossible. He might not have been able to catch them, but that didn’t mean he simply left them alone. Somehow, he would at least have to eradicate the pests on the trees planted along the boundaries between orchards. He had no intention of allowing the insects to spread to his neighbours’ orchards. Day-in, day-out, Kimura and Michiko, and his father and mother-in-law, would get up at the crack of dawn and collect insects until sunset. The tools they used were plastic bags from the supermarket, slipping one handle over their left wrists and flicking the insects into the bags with their other hand. In this way they could use both hands.

They filled three bags with pests from one tree. However many they caught, though, wave after wave of insects would continue to appear. It was a job offering no sense of fulfilment whatsoever. It was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it with water from a pond. The pests showed no sign at all of diminishing. Needless to say not a single apple grew. However assiduously they caught insects, the harvest was zero. He wondered why they carried on with it. Kimura devoted all his time to catching insects and pondering this dilemma.

Dead apple leaves falling to the ground make a sound so faint it is hardly a sound at all. Holding a plastic bag under his arm, silently catching insects, Kimura would listen to that quiet sound. It was one day at the height of summer. Sweat poured out of him, flowing down his forehead and over his jaw. With both hands full, however, he couldn’t wipe it away.

One by one he’d pluck the caterpillars clinging to the branches, blinking his eyes to get rid of the sweat. The surrounding apple trees were smothered in dark green leaves in the dazzling sunshine. The foliage was so dense you could hardly see the other side of the orchard. Chilly autumn seemed to pervade Kimura’s orchards, and his alone.

Rustle … rustle… rustle …

The faint sound of falling leaves began to sound like the beating of a big drum. The thundering noise echoed in his ears the entire time Kimura was in the orchards. He felt he could hear the sounds, even when we got home and went to bed. It seemed as though the apples were crying out.

Brown sugar, pepper, garlic, chilli, soya sauce, miso, milk, Japanese saké, shōchu, rice starch, wheat flour, vinegar … . He continued experimenting with any foods he could lay his hands on in place of pesticides. Foods in place of pesticides. If he could only find them this battle would be over. Or so Kimura thought. It was unlikely, of course, that he’d find foods that were as effective as pesticides. He didn’t believe they would provide 100% protection against disease and insects. It would be enough if, by creating an environment on the surfaces of leaves and branches which the bacteria and pests which caused disease disliked, sufficient numbers of leaves remained for the apples to grow. What Kimura was looking for, therefore, was not antibacterial agents or pesticides, but some sort of repellent.