You Don't See That Every Day

It's been a few weeks since I updated this space. Harvest has begun. Actually, we're nearing the end in both the garden and the orchard.  We started harvesting our hazelnuts mid-September. One of my brothers-in-law came out from Montana to help us, and I am so grateful that he was here. With his help, the operations ran a lot more smoothly.  We started the season with some stress ... our sweeper (which is used for the first step, sweeping the nuts into a row) was at the mechanics, the sunny days were running out, and we didn't know when we would have it back. We got the sweeper back, with its repairs complete, and off we went.  Because it had been so dry, the dust was flying as the Mr. ran the sweeper across the orchard. And then it was time for the rest of us to get to work. I drove the tractor that pulled the picker; one of our offspring would follow behind making sure everything was running smoothly. My brother-in-law loaded boxes onto our trailer and took it to the pr...

The summer has been a dry one for us, which means a bit more watering on the trees and garden. We are finally seeing a lot of garden produce for harvesting. Cherry tomatoes anyone??  My farmer has been preparing the orchards for harvest. This includes a lot of dust. He comes home each night after being on the tractor, with enough dirt on him to start another garden. He is getting the ground as smooth as possible, as stick free and weed free as possible, so when we go to harvest the nuts, we aren't picking up anything else. I think I heard him say we are just about done with watering our trees, and the nuts should start dropping soon. In some countries they actually go out and shake the trees or pick the nuts by hand. Here we get to use machinery which I think is a lot quicker and easier.

  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...

 This past weekend we started painting trees. It was like fingerpainting when we were little. Dip your hands into a glob of paint and splatter it all over. Except this time we were using gloves, and we had a mark to aim for - the tree trunk. We paint the trees the first 2 years to keep them from getting sunburned and to protect them from sprays. In some orchards you will see collars around the young trees. We looked at this option and decided it wasn't for us. The suckers till grow up those collars, and you have to remove each by hand to the get suckers that grow there. Plus that bark doesn't get accustomed to the sun if it has a collar on it.  Painting the trees is one job my kids don't mind doing too much. It goes quickly and we can have fun while we work. We wear a rubber glove on one hand with a cotton glove over it. We dip that gloved hand into the small bucker of paint we carry and coat the lower half of the tree. 5 seconds or so per tree and on to the next one. Thank...

 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...

  There was a time I did not go to the doctor for regular checkups. There was a time my husband did not go to the doctor for regular checkups. Pretty sure that time is now past us.  I listened to that little voice inside of me earlier this year and made my appointment, and actually went to it. I am so glad I did. As I talked with the doctor about changes in my health, she delved a little deeper past the regular tests. And she discovered the cause of some of the changes was cancer. That was not something I was expecting to hear at my age. Thankfully my doctor is thorough. The cancer is low grade and early stage, which is another blessing from going in when I did and talking to her.  Surgery is this week (April 13) and that should take care of all of it, without needing any further treatment. We are holding onto that hope until we hear otherwise. I don't write this to gain sympathy but to let you know how important it is to pay attention to changes and to ask the doctor ab...

  Spring is here. The daffodils are the herald for me. When I see those blooms, I know it's spring and warmer weather is on its way. They also remind me of my dad. Each spring he would send out the notice that they were in bloom, and he would tell us to come and cut a bouquet. If I had gotten married in March instead of May, I would have carried a bouquet of daffodils. This past weekend we finished planting the last of the hazelnut trees. Except for the pollenizers. In our orchards we have two main varieties of hazelnut trees, Wepster and McDonald. We have nearly 5,000 of each variety. Interspersed among those two varieties are the pollenizers, of the York and Yamhill variety. These are extra pollenizers as insurance for the early pollen and the late pollen. Well, this past weekend we finished replanting the last of the Wepster and McDonalds. Our Montana relatives were visiting and took the time to help us out, which made the task much more fun. And to my daughter's delight, an...

 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...

I can hardly believe it, but we are nearly done with pruning the one variety of trees in the new orchard. So, we planted 6000 trees last winter, half of them Wepster variety, the other half MacDonald variety. We started pruning the MacDonalds 2 weeks ago and we are nearly finished. We have about 150 left to do, which will be about 2 hours of work. We are pruning them to shape them for the future. At this point we want all the energy to go into growing the tree, not extra branches. The Wepster variety... well we might not prune them this year. Some growers do not prune the first couple of years even. The trees we have of this variety are kind of small and spindly, so we don't want to make too many cuts to them at this point. If that's the case, all we have left to do is finish the suckering in the old orchard and clean up the trimmings. Then replant the 300+ trees that died from last year. Perhaps when that is done, I can talk the Mr. into taking the kids on a little play time t...

 We did it! We finished pruning the older orchard last week!! There may or may not have been a small dance party when the last tree was clipped. It was a great relief to us to get that done mid-January. But that doesn't mean we get to go on vacation quite yet.  On Saturday we started pruning the new orchard. 6000 trees. Since we planted them just a year ago, they are pretty small and pruning goes a lot quicker. There's more to the shaping of these baby trees. We planted two different varieties in the orchard and we're starting with one variety first. This variety is a bit stronger and healthier looking; which means it's easier to teach anyone how to prune the way the Boss wants. We had 2 of my brothers out helping us (3 kids, me, and the boss) on Saturday and we just flew through the pruning. There's something mentally helpful when you have others volunteer to help you do a tedious job.  It also helped that my brother and sister-in-law sent us a box of these hand/to...

 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...