Lettuces and Apple Trees

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, on the strip of ground behind the almshouses, where two men grow food on identical soil.

Two growers work two equal plots,
Same soil, same rain, same sunny spots.
One plants for market, week on week,
One plants for market, and for keeps.
Year one, one's basket's twice as full.
Year nine, whose ground is bountiful?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two growers on the strip behind the almshouses in the town I've never named, and their soil, in the old chorus, was equally good. Same acre each, same water, same market on the same Wednesday.

The first grew what he could sell this month, which is not a foolish policy: lettuces, radishes, beans, all of it in and out within weeks, all of it countable. He knew exactly what every row had earned him, because he had sown it in April and sold it in June and could set the one figure against the other.

Anything that would not pay inside a season he did not plant, and he could give you a good reason. Money spent must show a return; a man who cannot say what a row earned has no business planting it.

So there were no apple trees on his acre, and no soft fruit, and nothing that wanted three years before it gave anything back. His ground was busy and productive and produced, in year nine, almost exactly what it had produced in year one, which he attributed to the market being harder than it used to be.

The second grower did both, and this is the part worth attending to, because he did not stop growing lettuces. He kept most of his acre in quick crops, since a man must eat this year, and he gave over a strip along the wall to apples and currants.

For three years that strip produced nothing whatever, and he had the sense not to judge it by the Wednesday basket, because a thing planted for year six is not failing in year two, it is doing exactly what it does.

What he watched instead were the signs proper to it. The trees were taking. The wood was hardening. The blossom came the third spring, and there were bees on it. None of that was money and all of it told him he was not wasting the strip.

By year nine his acre carried two crops on the same ground: the quick things that fed him weekly and a wall of fruit that arrived every autumn without being sown again, and which his rival could not match for a decade whatever he did that season.

And the wall did something else that surprised him. People came to him for apples in September and bought lettuces while they were there, so the slow crop made the quick crop easier to sell, which is a thing he could never have proved on any ledger.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Marketing does two different jobs, and the great error is judging both by the same harvest. One job is to bring in trade this month: the offer, the letter, the call to action, all of it countable and all of it properly judged by enquiries and sales. The other is to make you a name people already know before they need you, which pays nothing this month and everything in year six, and which is destroyed the moment you insist it justify itself by Friday.

Nothing here contradicts what I told you about admiration not being evidence. That letter said judge your work by whether it sold rather than by whether people liked it, and I stand on it. The refinement is this: an apple tree is still judged, and judged strictly, but by whether it is taking root rather than by what it put in the basket last Wednesday. The failure is not judging. It is using one measure for two crops.

So use the measures proper to each. For the quick work, count enquiries, sales and what a customer cost you. For the slow work, count the things that come before money: people arriving who already know your name, fewer price arguments, enquiries that mention something you wrote, the phrase somebody used about you at a meeting. Those are the blossom and the bees, and a trade that watches for them will keep the strip along the wall long enough for it to pay.

Two practical cautions. Keep most of the acre in lettuces, particularly if the year is thin, since nobody has ever built a name while going out of business, and the cooper's lesson about surviving the bad autumn outranks everything in this letter. And do not plant a new orchard every spring: the whole value of the slow work is that it is the same thing continued, and a man who digs up his trees each year to try a different variety has simply found a slower way to grow nothing.

Three questions, and be honest about the second:

1. What proportion of your effort pays this month? Go through a normal fortnight and mark each thing as quick crop or slow. If it is all quick, your year nine will look like your year one, and you will blame the market as your neighbour did.
2. What have you dug up before it fruited? Name the things you began and abandoned inside a year because they showed nothing: the letters, the page, the talk, the habit. Each of those was probably a tree pulled up in its second spring.
3. What are your blossom and bees? Decide now, in writing, what early signs would tell you the slow work is taking, so that in eighteen months you are judging it by something rather than by mood or the state of the takings that week.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose ground is bountiful in year nine?

The man who planted along the wall, and he was not the better grower nor the braver one. He simply understood that his acre could carry two sorts of crop, and that the apple tree failing to produce in year two is not evidence about apple trees. His neighbour applied a good rule, that money spent should show a return, to a thing whose return arrives in year six, and so quite logically never planted anything that lasts, and worked just as hard for nine years to stand exactly where he started.

The verse:

The lettuce feeds you here and now,
The apple asks you wait, and how.
Plant both, and judge them each apart,
Or year by year you'll start to start.

Until next time. Go and mark your last fortnight's work as quick crop or slow, and if there is nothing along the wall, plant one thing this month and agree with yourself not to dig it up before its third spring.

P.S. The two crops help one another, which is the part nobody can put on a ledger. A customer who already knows your name needs less persuading, argues less about the price and answers your letters, so every apple on that wall quietly makes your lettuces easier to sell. Attribute it however you like. It is still true.

Also in the archive: The Quiet Month, Everyone Liked It and Ninety-One Letters.