A fruit tree delivery halted by coronavirus-related closures turned into a free giveaway in Magalia on Friday morning to help residents replant trees burned by the Camp Fire.
It was a moment of generosity and rebirth amid the stress and disruptions of communal crises.
The story of the trees began in early April, when 3,000 fruit trees from Oakdale-based Burchell Nursery, Inc. were on their way to Costcos in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest. Then word came that the delivery could not take place. Garden centers at large businesses, deemed non-essential by Michigan’s governor, were closed. The trucks stopped in Omaha, Nebraska and then turned around.
Tom Burchell, the president and CEO of the longtime family-run Burchell Nursery began looking for alternatives. It would be too expensive, he said, to repot all the trees and store them for sale next year. So he called up Doug Crowder, the pastor at Magalia Pines Baptist Church.
The two had already partnered up a year ago to distribute 1,000 donated fruit trees to people rebuilding after the fire. The giveaway had been very popular. Some residents had requested a second round for when their properties had been cleared of debris and rebuilding was underway.
Crowder and Burchell agreed this was the time, and they set the event up within a few days.
“For us it’s exciting, as we want to continue to fill needs,” said Crowder. The church has distributed more than 7 million bottles of water and 85,000 meals in its parking lot over the many months since the fire, he estimated.
“We think these are the important things, the essential things,” he said.
He mentioned the event in his Sunday sermon — now streamed online — and prepared flyers. Word spread quickly on Facebook and the internet.
The crowds that showed up surprised Crowder. People started lining up early Friday morning, hours before the official 11 a.m. start of the distribution. By noon, hundreds of cars waited in a line that went around the block.
Apple, cherry, peach, nectarine, apricot, pear and plumquat trees filled the parking lot. Some still had tags with their previous destinations in the Midwest: Bozeman, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and more. Burchell said he thought the trees would do well on the ridge because they had already been pre-selected for a colder Midwestern climate.
He estimates that the cancelled delivery was worth around $45,000, but said that his business, which mostly caters to commercial farmers, could weather the loss.
“It’s not about us,” he said. “It’s really about the pastor, and the Ridge, and helping people … I didn’t want to have to throw these out.”
Volunteers, from children to senior citizens, bustled around, wearing masks and staying apart as possible. They handed out three to four trees per vehicle. It hadn’t been hard to find help, even though it was short notice.
“People just want to get out and do something and work right now,” said Crowder.
The trees were going fast, but word that another truck was on its way with more assuaged concerns.
Alan Carter and Beth Thoms picked up two cherry trees, a peach tree and an apple tree to replace the fruit trees on their Paradise property that had been completely killed by the fire. Their insurance proceeds had all gone into the rebuilding, and they had none left over for landscaping.
They said their new home was almost completely rebuilt, and they expected to move in within a few weeks.
“I am just amazed at the generosity of the North State,” said Carter.
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