Customer Reviews

The Orchard: A Memoir

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The Orchard, a Memoir, is a great book. Last week I was on a long flight back to San Luis Obispo from Omaha and I had this book with me, a gift from my mom. I started reading it and totally forgot about the flight, never noticed the movie they were playing. A good number of times tears were just pouring down my face and I'd wipe them away, wondering if the people on the plane around me thought I was a bit crazy.
But I tell you, I'm crazy about this book! Honestly, I read a good deal and this is easily one of the most interesting, deepest, most powerful books I have read in years. Although true, a memoir, it reads just like a fine novel. I was so totally absorbed reading this rare gem of a find, that it was difficult to realize that the author had died some 20 years ago--she, Adele Crockett Robertson, seems so real, so full of life, so gutsy, so immediate.
Briefly, this is the story of a young girl, a smart, educated girl with a good head on her shoulders, who loses her job in the great Depression, and goes back to the family farm to try and save it from the bank. The many people in the book all come to life perfectly and there are surprises aplenty. I am a gardenwriter (author of Allergy-Free Gardening)and have farmed myself, and I appreciate what Adele went through. I would also add that this is no doubt the best picture of life during the Depression I've ever come across.
I plan to review this book every place that I can, because to my mind, this one is so good, so readable, so well worth reading, so enjoyable, so satisfying, that it completely deserves to be a best seller. Do yourself a favor and read this marvelous book!

In this extraordinary memoir from 1932-1934, Kitty Crockett Robertson describes her life on the North Shore of Massachusetts during the Depression, a time when she, a Harvard graduate, became a hard-working apple farmer to save the family farm in Ipswich. Her physician father had died, and Kitty, wanting to keep the farm from being sold for development, which her Boston-based brothers favored, decided to give up her job working at the Harvard Library to try to make the orchard profitable enough to save the land.

Working almost single-handedly, she spent the next two years doing all the dirty work, learning in the process that "The Depression was that time of leveling when she and her neighbors kept going on the strength they learned from each other." From her earliest days on the farm, she personally pruned trees, cleared land, repaired sprayers and tractors, gathered swarming bees into hives, hired five workers at twice the going rate (because they, too, needed to make ends meet), dealt with an arrogant banker anxious to foreclose, protected her apples at gunpoint when necessary, and then fought the weather, storms, and a December temperature drop to twenty degrees below zero in her efforts to bring the crop to market.

In the process she earned the love of her workers (who had regarded her, at first, as an idle "North Shore millionaire"), gave up everything in her personal life to devote herself completely to her task, worked up to 16 hours a day for two years during the apple and peach seasons, and gained new appreciation for the values she saw every day among her workers, the wholesaler who bought her drops and cider apples, and the purchasing agent of Harvard, who helped her make commercial connections to sell her crop.

Robertson, who became a newspaper and radio columnist in her later years, was a formidable writer who always recognized the values which unite people, regardless of their "class," and this quality pervades her personal memoir. Unfinished, because her life became too busy to finish it after 1934, it was discovered upon her death in 1979 by her daughter, and it is she who moves the story to its conclusion after 1934. Filled with personal detail and wonderful tributes to those who helped her, Robertson is never self-serving, readily admitting her weaknesses while stressing her efforts to succeed. A unique look at one farm and its history during the Depression, The Orchard is an extraordinary record of the times, written by a truly extraordinary woman. n Mary Whipple

I picked this book up during a discouraging, lonely period in my life, and it really helped me put it all in perspective. The beautifully clean, understated writing paints a gripping picture of the enormous challenges Kitty Crockett faced and met during the Depression as she struggled to save her family's apple farm from repossession by the bank. It's a tale of true heroism. It gives a real feeling for the hardships that people faced and for the reserves of the human spirit that people drew on to endure these hardships. Can you imagine having to do grueling physical labor from sunup to sundown without having enough to eat, never being really warm in the winter, being constantly in debt, and yet getting up each day and doing what has to be done? Kitty Crockett is one of the most memorable characters I've ever met in a book.

My only complaint about this book is that it only covers two years of the author's life in detail. I hated for the book to end. I wish she had had time to write more, because she was an amazing person. Kitty's father, a doctor, raised his family in a colonial farmhouse by the ocean. Beginning in her childhood, he made Kitty learn to do a man's work in the orchard. He also gave her a series of boats to sail on the ocean. She loved the farm and the sea. She got a college education and a good job in a college museum, but gave it all up when her father died at the beginning of the depression. None of her brothers were willing to do the backbreaking labor to keep the heavily mortgaged farm working. Kitty quit her good job and immersed herself in running the orchard, which her father had always said would save the farm he loved. She lived alone except her beloved dog, with no money and little heat in the winter. Her own family seemed determined to see her fail. She found good, loyal friends though, and though her life was daunting, it was also full of the joy of nature and achievment. I can't praise this book enough.

The late Adele Robertson's story of her attempt to save her family's property by establishing a commercially viable apple orchard during the Great Depression is a true gem. Robertson, who later went on to become an award-winning columnist for the Ipswich Chronicle, writes in a clear first-person voice. At times wildly humorous and often poignant, the story is superficially about growing and selling apples. What it is really about is self-reliance and courage. It is no wonder that so many New England high schools now include this book on their reading lists -- Robertson (with the help of her daughter Betsey, who retrieved and edited the manuscript after her mother's death) has produced a riveting work that speaks to a woman's need to "make it on her own" without ever preaching about it.

One of the most beautifully written accounts of life in America. A stunningly simple elegy for New England entering the Great Depression. Wonderful.

The Orchard submerges the reader in the lifestyle not only of the Depression era but also that of a small New England farmer. I not only enjoyed reading about Kitty Crockett's triumph's and failures, but I somehow felt that I too experienced them. The book has piqued my interest about this time that I did not live through. There is much to be learned here from the self-reliance and the necessary simplicity of the people that did live through the Depression. It was also interesting to see that many of the issues that Kitty faced in trying to save her family farm, are still faced by small family farmers in New England today.

This compelling memoir of Adele Crockett Robertson, known as Kitty, chronicles just a few years of her life during the early 1930's. While her story takes place during the Great Depression, it is uplifting and inspiring. I found myself cheering Kitty on as she describes her exhausting experiences to save the family property from foreclosure.

Kitty was not down and out as millions were. She was young, optimistic, and energetic. Faced with enormous debt when her father died and propelled by childhood memories of her family harvesting bumper crops of apples, Kitty decided to work the old family farm. The farm, in Ipswich, had become a rundown homestead; but the orchard was still there, holding promise. The very first obstacles are members of Kitty's family, her mother and two brothers, who speculate how quickly the venture will fail: "Let the bank take it," they chorus.

Undaunted, Kitty leaves her secure job to take up residence on the abandoned farm. What she finds are a stack of unpaid bills, neglected farm equipment, and leaky pipes. Like her father before her, Kitty believes in the fruit trees he planted for his retirement: "I wanted to preserve what we'd had, even though the animals were no longer there, and it was apples now."

Negotiating with creditors, Kitty settles some of the unpaid bills, while securing credit of much larger amounts to repair the farm machinery. Unable to pay for coal, she moves her bed and sofa to a small area near the sunny kitchen.

One of Kitty's first tasks is the spraying of the trees, a job that normally takes two men to accomplish. Kitty tackles the job alone. More challenges ensue. We are right beside her as she describes her first encounter with a swarm of bees, her frantic search for the old smoker, and finally getting the bees under control.

As a helper, Kitty hires Joe, a memorable figure. With a family of six to feed, he skips meals in order to feed the children. Joe comes to Kitty's rescue time after time, even staring down, with an unloaded gun, peddlers bent on stealing a truckload of apples.

Later, following a good harvest, Kitty despairs as she tells of racing to gather blankets from attic trunks, even her own bed, as temperatures drop and she attempts to cover hundreds of freshly packed boxes of apples ready for market, to keep them from freezing in the cellar.

The Foreword and Epilogue, written by Kitty's daughter, Eleanor Robertson Cramer, tell how she discovered the manuscript Kitty had stashed at the bottom of a bookcase. We learn of Kitty's life beyond the years of her memoir--further struggles, marriage, and later her accomplishments as a local historian, town selectwoman, and journalist.

The Orchard brings the Depression close to those of us who have heard the wrenching stories from parents and grandparents, as I have. Kitty's narrative, like my father's stories, is real, about a lone woman who strives to keep the family heritage with determination and grit, tempered with kindness to those around her in worse situations. Adele (Kitty) Crockett Robertson deserves a place in the annals of literature of the Great Depression. If you read but one personal account of surviving the Depression, let it be this.

by Diana Nolan
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

An incredibly uplifting book that will stay with you years after you have read it.

I'm very grateful that, as a somewhat rambunctious Ipswich High School kid in the 70's, Kitty became a good friend during those turbulent times. She was, and remains, one of the most remarkable and influential folks I've ever encountered. This book is but one indication of the extraordinary person she was. For those who only encounter her through this utterly delightful work please know that she was even more compelling as her life evolved beyond this chapter. Enjoy! Eat local apples!!