Before the very end of May, drought was creeping in and since the wind blows throughout the spring in North Dakota, we had some awful days of blowing dust as we all know.
When I was in college in Grand Forks, I often heard a saying, “there’s a lot of real estate changing hands today.”
You’ll probably recall about a month ago, the wind was blowing at about 50 miles per hour for a good part of the day and it actually reduced visibility in some locations. I live in a valley and I was actually filling gas that day and looking up out of the valley and all I could see was a gray cloud of dust.
It was kind of scary because obviously, it’s not normal. We’ve had additional days that weren’t as bad, but where we saw considerable blowing dirt. In fact, there were some ditches that kind of looked like they had snow drifts, only it was gray and not white.
Unfortunately, that happened a lot during the 1930s which is why so many people moved away. And we know now that back then most farmers didn’t know about proper tillage and planting of crops. It’s not all on the ‘30s farmers, but that was certainly a contributing factor.
The other big thing was the lack of trees. We always get ribbed by our relatives in the Carolinas and California about the lack of trees in North Dakota, but it’s gotten better since 1936.
The North Dakota Department of Agriculture is always giddy about telling us we are No. 1 in honey, canola, certain beans, wheat and sunflowers. But statistically, only 1.7 percent of North Dakota is considered forest.
If you look at pictures from territorial days or the early days of the state, most often you won’t see any trees in the picture. That must have been rough. And it’s most likely why a lot of people settled near rivers or lakes.
But, by the 1940s, people started planting trees, sometimes lots of them to create shelter belts to maybe not stop the relentless wind, but at least slow it down a bit. Most of those shelter belts, at least in the beginning, were Chinese elm, Siberian olive and certain evergreens.
Obviously missing were fruit trees. Many planted cottonwood and aspen as well because they grow quickly. Good on yah! But there should have been some sort of fruit such as apples because we all know apple trees are hardy to this climate and what used to be a harsher hardiness zone.
Roughly four years ago, I wrote an article about alternative crops in North Dakota in the 1920s and I think there were 1,200 farms back then that had cherry trees. What happened to all those cherry trees? And like apples, we know cherries are hardy to as low as Zone 2. They may not be eat off the tree cherries, but good enough to bake pies.
Since 1960, our hardiness zones have changed and now, nearly all of North Dakota is in Zone 4 with small spots of Zone 3 remaining. That means there could be a lot more diversity in establishing orchards across the state.
Some people are doing a great job with this, but we still have a long way to go.
A lot of vineyards have been established, pear trees are becoming more of a routine, there are more than a dozen cherry trees that will survive here, apricots do well and there is a peach called Contender that is hardy to Zone 4 (that’s us) and will produce fruit, provided the blossoms are protected from some of those late frosts we get in May.
After the Red River Valley flood of 1997, I remember Mike Jacobs from the Grand Forks Herald attended the North Dakota Newspaper Association convention with nothing more than the shirt on his back because his home and newspaper were both destroyed in that flood. What I remember most about that is how upset he was that he lost numerous apricot trees in his back yard… in 1997…. in Grand Forks!
So it’s entirely possible to raise fruit trees and vines other than apple. In fact, there are several varieties of blackberries now hardy to Zone 4. It’s entirely possible, just care for them properly and you’ll have so much fruit, you’ll begin to think it’s zucchini or something.
My wife was picking out flowers in a Minot nursery the other day and our 11-year-old grandson said, “Papa, can we get an avocado tree?” As optimistic as I am about alternative crops, I had to tell him no, that one wouldn’t be a good choice.
