Jose was an elderly farmer. He claims to still do things the way they used to be, and still aught to be, done. He plants almost all of his plants based on the cycle of the moon. He recommends waiting for a good full moon to plant yuca and to always cut off banana saplings during the last quarter moon. His small piece of land in the hills is filled with all varieties of fruit trees, vegetables, spices and medicinal herbs. He can tell you the the names of everything in his garden, along with 3 or 4 good reasons that everyone should have said plant too. He plants almost everything in small pots and old containers so that as time goes on he can move things around to make more room in certain spots or to allow plants to get more sun a various times of the year. He even has one "medicinal" plant that he takes inside at night so that no one will steal it for its "healing" leaves.
One tree though stands out among all the rest of the plants around Jose's house. While being given a tour of house once, I made the mistake of asking him what kind of fruit was hanging from the 12 foot tall tree. It had about 20 large grey and black shapes hang from various branches and one assumes that the tree is supposed to come that way. My credibility as a Honduran farmer vanished as soon as I vocalized my inability to identify what was hanging from the branches. Jose just looked at me and hissed "they are rocks! I never thought I'd meet someone who didn't know what a rock looked like." In my defiance I have seen lots of rocks, just never seen twenty or so of them dangling from a tree.
Trying to recover somewhat, I replied "of course they are rocks, but what are they doing in the tree." Again he looked at me like I was completely naive to not know why the rocks where there. "I thought you said your Grandfather was into farming. He never taught you how to punish a tree." In my grandfather's defense he worked with cattle, an no he never taught me how to "punish a tree." Jose claims that his avocado tree decided to misbehave by not producing any avocados the last few years. He claims that some trees need a good punishment in order to start to produce again. For him a some good river rocks should almost always do the trick, but sometimes it takes a few years for the tree to learn the lesson. You have to keep adding rocks each year if the tree fails to produce so that it knows it did something wrong.
At this point in the house tour I felt like Jose might be pulling a fast one on me. Though he had obviously not put the rocks on the tree just for my visit, as he did not know I was stopping by. For several weeks after learning about Jose's method to punish a tree, I chalked his tree theory up to a few too many sessions with his favorite "medicinal plant." I thanked him for the tour and tried to forget about some of his absurd farming ideas.
Then the confirmation came one day as I was speaking with another farmer, admiring the large oranges he had on his tree. He told me that the tree had given him some problems in the past, but after he punished it he has had great production ever since. I asked him if he had used the rock method for punishment. "Of course I used rocks. Do you have a different method to punish your trees in the United States?" My best reply I could think of was that we used 8 year old boys who would climb and hang from the branches. He clearly missed my attempts at a joke, as his face went blank recalling some far off memory. "I don't think that would work too well on the trees, but my father left me in the top of a coconut tree overnight when I was 7. Taught me a lesson for sure."
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