You Don't See That Every Day

  The last few Saturdays at the farm have been busy ones. We've had a number of people out weeding the garden, stacking firewood, hoeing garden areas, planting garden areas, watering garden areas, cutting grass, and brush.... And we are almost done with suckering and painting our newest orchard. We're down to the last six rows (480 trees). It may sound like a lot to some but considering all the rows we have done I'm excited that we're down to just a few! After this Saturday I'm hoping to move on to another Farm project When my dad was alive he was in charge of when to plant the garden, and other Farm chores around the place. This year has been a bit of a learning curve for all of us, figuring out when to plant, how to repair things, and just do all the millions of jobs my dad did out on the farm. For some reason in some of the crops we planted not everything came up. I feel like we would have been enjoying fresh lettuce and some other vegetables by now. It was almos...

 Three weeks have passed since surgery, and it has been a humbling time.  I am not supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds. My family has been extra cautious, not letting me lift anything remotely heavy. For someone independent like me, that has been tough. As the weather finally turns nice, and the outdoor projects call my name, I chafe at not being able to lift heavy things. I have things to build! I have dirt and compost to move! I have brush to haul. I have things to do!! But I am trying to be good and wait the full 6 weeks for healing. Because really, my family needs me back to full health by then too, not relapsing because I was impatient.  Thankfully I am healing well, and there will be no more treatments needed. I am looking forward to hiking and running again, and being back to 100% So out in the orchard this week, I was the designated driver. The task this time was to spread fertilizer on the new orchard, by hand. We did not broadcast it (fling by machine allll...

 It took us 2 Saturdays, but we got the older orchard cleaned up of the pruning. One of drove the 4-wheeler with the trailer attached to it, while two others would walk and pick up the large sticks and branches and throw them into the trailer. It wasn't hard work, but it was a good workout. Our youngest daughter entertained us with a lovely monologue on unicorns. And added some dance moves in too. The other daughter had her music on loud enough for all to enjoy. By taking turns on who walked and who drove, we were able to stay on task better.  The Mr. has almost gotten the suckering done too. This year he is doing it by machine instead of us all getting down on our knees and manually clipping the suckers. So the plus side is my knees are feeling good. The drawback is that I didn't get in miles and miles of 'lunges' this year.  On the other hand, walking up and down rows in the new orchard, flagging the trees we need to replant, has garnered me lots of steps on my step c...

 Back in 2018 June, we started our hazelnut planting. Our "older" orchard refers to the first trees we put in the ground, all 4000 of them, in the winter of 2018-19. One year ago from now, back in 2022, we planted 6000 more filbert trees with the help of many family members and some hired hands. This bigger orchard is what I will refer to as the newer orchard.  This week in the older orchard, we are nearing the end of pruning! I feel like we should have some kind of celebration when we finish. We have about 200 trees to go. I think by Saturday we should be able to finish completely. I have high hopes.  But wait, there's more. There's always more to do on a farm. We have the newer orchard that may or may not be pruned and this year. We just planted these little trees a year ago and I'm not sure if the Boss wants to prune or not. Either way, he will probably be doing the majority of that pruning, while I work away on the suckers in the older orchard. Suckers are the...

It's a new year, so I am going to try and start some new practices. One of which is blogging about our orchard each week. This week in the orchard we are pruning the hazelnut trees. We started back in December and we're now more than halfway through our older orchard of 4000 trees.  Why prune? Well, the lower branches hit the tractor and the farmer, causing potential damage to each one. (And no one wants a damaged farmer around here.) As we prune the lower branches and those that hang out the wrong way we are training the tree to grow upwards. Pruning the branches pushes the energy for growth to the upward limbs.  It's not hard work, but it takes a long time right now. The day will come, so I'm told, when we won't be pruning much at all. And mostly doing it with pole saws or chain saws. Right now it's loppers and hand clippers.  In the beginning of pruning season my hand and arm were so sore after a long day of snipping. But now, a month into it, I don't ach...