Low Hanging Fruit
March 28, 2024 – Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Darci and Abraham showed up at Wesley’s door at the same time. Darci held a pizza box and Abraham a six pack of sodas. Wesley answered when they knocked and waved them inside.
“The game’s already started,” Wesley said, gesturing toward the TV in his apartment’s front room. “Just put the food on the table next to the couch.”
“I feel like we should enjoy the spring weather instead of being glued to the TV,” Darci said.
“That’s because your bracket’s trash and you have no hope of winning,” Abraham replied with a laugh.
If asked who had suggested filling out March Madness tournament brackets, none of them precisely remembered. They were not particularly interested in basketball, but each had an unwavering competitive streak. Their bracket picks were mainly to prove who was most insightful and prophetic.
Wesley, Darci, and Abraham shared more than a love for being right. All three were graduate students and neighbors in a student housing complex. They shared occasional meals and off-campus excursions. Since they were studying different things, their friendship made them feel like they were accepting and open-minded.
Wesley was an engineering student researching smart agriculture. Abraham was into bioinformatics. Darci spent her time studying literature on the liberal arts side of campus. From her perspective, Wesley and Abraham sat around programming all day. They assumed she spent her time in a stuffy library writing poems with a pen and paper.
After the three sat on Wesley’s couch to watch basketball, it did not take long for their minds to wander. They checked their phones more frequently. Then Wesley remembered something he wanted to tell Abraham about coding.
“I found this Python library that’s totally plug and play for deep learning.”
“How memory intensive is it?” Abraham asked.
“Really light. I’m running on an old laptop with no problem.”
The conversation grew louder and more intense. Finally, Darci heard enough and shouted, “Will you two shut up? I don’t want to hear about Python codes. Unless you’re talking about pythons as in actual snakes, can you be quiet and at least pretend to watch the game?”
Wesley sniggered and continued to whisper about the amazing Python library he found. He remembered to keep his voice down until he began describing his latest research. His excitement and volume grew until he reached his trademark, know-it-all pitch Darci found hard to ignore.
“So, what I’m trying to do is build a network of soil monitors that talk to each other. Low power. Low cost. Put them out in a field and they tell a farmer where he’s wasting water.”
“Where you’re wasting water is hard to figure out?” Abraham asked.
“You wouldn’t think so, but probably 30% of irrigation water is wasted because the soil’s different. These guys dump the same amount of water everywhere, but parts of a field might have more clay, other parts more sand. But they’ll never figure it out on their own. No offense to farmers, but most of them barely get through high school.”
Darci stopped pretending to watch the game. “You can’t insult farmers like that! I’m offended for them.”
“I said, ‘no offense.’”
“You can’t just say, ‘no offense,’ and then feel free to be as offensive as you want.”
“I forgot you think of yourself as a farmer.”
Over the past year, Darci had bragged about working at a fruit and vegetable stand while she was in high school. She told Wesley and Abraham it helped her get in touch with the earth.
“I never said I was a farmer, but the farmers I know are smart and practical,” Darci replied defensively. “They know how the real-world works.”
“No offense, but I’m not going to take advice from a farmer or a poet on how the real-world works.” Wesley used a teasing voice in an attempt to show he was not entirely serious. “In the modern world, you need new skills to survive.”
“Like Python programming?” Darci asked with an eye roll.
“Yeah, like Python programming,” Wesley replied.
“Sometimes I think all your computers make you clueless about the natural world,” Darci said to both Wesley and Abraham. “If you were stuck on a desert island, there’s no way you would find food and survive.”
“Our instincts would kick in,” Abraham replied. “Finding food is a problem anyone can solve. Humans have been doing it forever.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say about farming,” Wesley added. “You take highly educated, intelligent people like Abraham and me and we’d master basic farming in a day.”
Darci narrowed her eyes before a mischievous smile filled her face. “Oh yeah? You wanna bet?”
“Whattaya mean?” Wesley replied.
“If you’re so brilliant, the two of you together should easily be able to beat me at a little farming activity. Something straightforward. Like picking apples.”
“I’ve never even stood next to an apple tree,” Abraham replied.
“Picking apples is easy. You two are so intelligent, you’ll figure it out immediately.”
“I don’t want to waste a bunch of time on an apple farm,” Wesley said.
“It’ll be fun. We can find an orchard next weekend and only spend an hour there. And to make it interesting, if you two pick more apples than me, I’ll take a programming class like you’re always nagging me to do. But if you can’t pick more apples than me, you both have to take a poetry class.”
Wesley and Abraham looked at each other and slyly smiled. “I don’t know,” Wesley replied. “Seems like a lot of work just to prove a point.”
“You afraid you’ll lose? Come on, it’ll be good for you to get outside and see agriculture firsthand. That is what you’re studying, isn’t it?”
“And we work together? All the apples we pick versus what you pick alone?” Abraham asked.
“Right.”
Abraham turned to Wesley and said, “I don’t see how we can lose.”
“Alright, let’s do it,” Wesley smugly concluded. “You’re going to love studying Python.”
Darci grinned back at them like she knew something they did not.
When apple-picking day arrived a week later, Darci agreed to drive her car to a semi-rural area with apple orchards. Abraham sat in the passenger seat with Wesley in the back.
“Spring has to be my favorite time of year,” Darci said in a singsong voice. “Everything feels so fresh and alive. Look at those flowers.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Abraham replied, sounding not very interested.
“I’m taking us to some orchards I’ve seen before,” Darci continued. “They had ‘pick your own applies’ signs up, so they’ll be happy to host our little contest.”
“Whatever you think,” Wesley replied indifferently, after looking up from his phone.
Darci turned onto some country roads and before long was driving past rows of leafy apple trees.
“I don’t see any apples on these. They must have just been picked,” Darci said thoughtfully. “We better talk to the farmer and find out where the trees with apples are.”
Darci found the opening in an orderly white fence and followed a gravel road to a farmhouse. Nearby, tractors were parked next to a metal barn.
“Let’s go ask. Wesley, you should do the talking since you’re in the agriculture business and you speak the same language.”
Wesley gave Darci a sarcastic grin before leading the group up to the farmhouse door. He knocked and a middle-aged man wearing a flannel shirt answered. He held a small motor, which looked to be under repair. His face and arms were as weather worn as the house’s shutters.
“Hi there. Is this your property?” Wesley asked.
“Yep. Like it or not,” the farmer replied dryly.
“The three of us kind of have a bet going and want to pick some of your apples.”
The farmer flinched and looked at Wesley like he might be joking. “Where you folks from?”
“Cambridge. We’re graduate students.”
“Oh yeah? What do you study?”
Wesley perked up. “I’m studying something called smart agriculture. Helping people like you manage your resources better.”
The farmer’s eyes brightened and then he chuckled. “No offense, but you don’t sound very smart. If you were, you’d know you don’t pick apples until the fall. It’s April. Apples haven’t started growing yet. Better come back in October.”
Wesley was not used to being corrected. He blushed and turned accusingly toward Darci. “You were the one who suggested apple picking.”
Darci chuckled like the farmer. “It was kind of a test. I thought knowing about the life cycle of a tree was pretty basic stuff. Did you expect some apples to be ready at random times of the year? Maybe the springtime apples?”
Wesley shook his head dismissively. “I didn’t give it much thought. I was just following you.”
After watching how flustered Wesley became, the farmer was happy to pile on. “Son, doesn’t sound like you could pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.”
Wesley opened his mouth to reply but no words came out. He turned and tramped off the farmhouse porch and back to Darci’s car. Darci and Abraham followed.
“Looks like I won,” Darci said with satisfaction. “I think you’re really going to enjoy the poetry class.”
“You didn’t win anything,” Wesley replied. “The bet was about picking apples. If there aren’t any apples, you can’t win.”
“If you remember, I specifically said if you didn’t pick more apples than me, I win. You picked zero and I picked zero. Zero is not more than zero. Logic. You’re always telling me how important logic is.”
“But there aren’t any apples.”
“You agreed to the bet. It’s your own fault if you thought apples would be ready in April.”
Abraham had remained quiet since getting out of the car, but he spoke up and said to Wesley, “I think she got us. If we’re too clueless to know how the seasons work, maybe we deserve to take a poetry class. Force us out of our comfort zone.”
Darci grinned and hopped with excitement. “I think something with the romantic poets. I’ll be grading for a class during summer term. I’ll take it easy on you because I know you have a lot to learn.”
“How about we go two out of three on this bet?” Wesley replied with a grimace.
“I’m open to suggestions, but we should get you in that poetry class before it fills up. I can help you out if you forgot how class registration works. It follows the calendar too.”
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