My mother loved pears, and I inherited that from her. This past summer would have been our best pear harvest. She’s gone, but I fully intended to enjoy the harvest for her, because of her. We have four pear trees, three to span the season and one as a pollinating guarantee. Only two bear, so far. The best of the two is the earliest of the season… those pears ripen in late August. I’d been watching that tree, easy enough as the dooryard orchard is in the same enclosure as the vegetable garden. The tree is still fairly small, narrow and upright. I watched, waiting for the pears to be ripe. 

One morning I ventured out, sure that there’d be some pears for the picking. But there were none. And I mean—none. There had been 21 pears on that tree, waiting to be picked, but this morning there were none. My first assumption was that a deer had breached the fence—but deer are not tidy foragers and there were no pears or pear bits on the ground. I was stunned—so I check the second pear tree—though its fruit wouldn’t be ready for another month. Most of it was there, but someone, or something, had broken some of the lower branches. They were wrenched from the tree, ripping some of the bark away from the trunk. I summoned Rick.

Together, like amateur sleuths we examined the damage. This was no animal. Some human intruder had ravaged our pears. When the late ripening tree didn’t easily yield her fruit, they pulled at it so hard they broke branches. I felt like weeping. Rick looked further and found the place at the back of the fence where the deer netting had been pulled away. Not that they couldn’t have come around to the house side and just walked in the gate. We were shocked. It’s not like our fence is some fortress of security, it’s just t-posts with wires supporting deer netting and rabbit fencing—we put it up to fend off the deer and the rabbits. But still, it takes some kind of gall to break into an enclosed garden area and steal produce. I checked, and, yes, there were tomatoes missing, too. But mostly those 21 pears.

Come spring we’re putting up a new, sturdier fence. We bought real fence posts, tall and sturdy, and there will be heavy duty welded wire. If they want in, they’ll need to bring bolt-cutters. We debate whether we need to put a lock on the man-gate. It seems crazy to consider a lock on a garden gate. We grow enough that we could share, if anyone were to ask. Back in Two Rock we grew enough for everyone on the farm, and then donated tubs and tubs of produce to the Food Bank. But nobody asked. 

This is a new, and ugly kind of intrusion. Friends have warned me. One came home to find a trio of “summer folk” helping themselves to the roses in her garden. They wanted to keep the severed roses—but she escorted them off the property with a shotgun. They threatened to call the police, but she assured them that that was her next call—and that her husband was a deputy sheriff. Another friend had frames of honey lifted right out of her hives! (That’s some brave thief!) And when we had workers on site, they raided our patch of morel mushrooms. Rick discovered it and made them give them back. Folks seem to think that everything is for the taking.

It was Robert Frost who first wrote that good fences make good neighbors. It’s about respecting boundaries, even, or especially when, working together. We have good neighbors, But times are changing, people are more mobile and local mores are breaking down.

We have suspects, some guys who were working on a neighbor’s house to get it ready for sale. They’d shown an unusual level of interest in my gardening. Thankfully they are not our neighbors—but we cannot prove anything or be sure of anyone. In the meantime we’ll upgrade the fence and keep an eye out. There’s not much else we can do.