You Don't See That Every Day

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...