Mad Tom Orchard

Yesterday the temperature made it up to 64 degrees – warm, sunny, no wind – perfect spring day – warmest  day since October 29 last fall.  Snow is finally gone in the orchard.  We had 130 inches for the winter.

We took advantage of the beautiful day to graft 60 of our Fuji trees (which have not done well) over to Zestar which has been one of our most popular early apples.  The choice was to wait until we could get more new Zestar trees in spring 2018 or cut the center out of the Fujis and insert small scion wood from our Zestars.

In the attached pictures you can see the small twigs capped with green wax to keep them from drying out.  So in three years we will  start getting more Zestars.  It was a long day, but we are pleased with the results.

We have made it to April. The snow (of which we still have plenty) has melted down enough that we have been able to start pruning  again.  It has been too deep to get out in the orchard since early January.  February average temperature was 5 degrees and it was coldest recorded month ever.

The new chipper is making brush clean up much faster – we need to be faster to get the remaining 500 trees pruned.

The weather has not been cold enough to damage the trees  – fruit buds should be fine for the apples and probably ok for the cherries.  Raspberries have been covered with deep snow and we have not had freezing/thawing that sometimes causes damage. Bloom will be late this year – probably sometime in second half of May – there are plenty of fruit buds.

We are looking forward to Spring !!!

All is well with the orchard – more than enough snow.  We still have a lot of pruning  to do, but it has been too cold to get out – have spent the time instead getting our taxes done.  Looks like pruning will wait until March.

Fortunately the heavy snow (and some ice) has not damaged the apple trees.  Because the trees are pruned each year and the heavy fruit load each fall, the limbs are strong enough to avoid much breakage.  It has been a different story for the trees in the surrounding woods and our standby generator has run a couple of times for almost a day.

We are looking forward to Spring – it will have to come sometime.

The storm last week dropped 18 inches of very wet snow – we now have our power, satellite TV and last but in no way least Internet back.  Standby generator made things much better during two power outages – each about a full day.   Direct TV people said wait until the snow melts.   Internet continues to come and go.  Tractor with snow plow is a big help.

Our pruning will wait until January – pictures are from last week.  Our family is all healthy and looking forward to Christmas.   Best wishes for a good holiday to everyone.

We are enjoying  the wind down after a really good harvest.  Plenty of things to do including putting away all the harvest stuff in our barn, draining the irrigation pipes, mowing to discourage the mice and voles, cleaning up flower beds, putting machinery away for the winter.  Sylvia has made 60 quarts of apple sauce and an occasional pie.

We are planning a short trip to the coast of Maine week after next and then trips at Thanksgiving and Christmas to spoil the grandchildren.

Thanks to everyone who came to help us get the apples harvested.  Pictures show our now quiet orchard plus rainbow and sunset.