July Chickens Day 2

Day one went awesome! The process went so smooth that we were amazed ourselves. The only issue we had was that the scalder flame blew out from the wind shortly after I lit the scalder. I knew I had a problem when I smelled the LP as I crossed the lane.  It really didn't set us back, we just heated water on the stove and on another outside burner, then combined it into the sclading pot and we were ready to go.  Hopefully we run as smoothly today.

July Chicken Days

Today and tomorrow we process the July batch of chickens. We setup for processing yesterday and we're trying a couple new additions to our processing.  We're always looking for ways to make the process better.

.5 GPH Emitters

Today we added additional emitters to the orchard waterline for each tree. Each of the emitters puts out .5 gal of water per hour. Based on putting an inch of water on the roots of each tree based on the number of trees per acre etc we determined that a single .5 gal emitter won't come close to putting out enough water if we don't get any rain. So we added the emitters. It was the perfect job for the day. With the outside temperature at about 90F, the water that sprayed out of the irrigation line from punching holes to push the emitters into was a nice way to keep cool. We finished the south side of the orchard. Tomorrow we'll finish up the north side.

Cedar Apple Rust (CAR)

I was out scouting the orchard today and noticed a few things of note.  A lot of the trees have settled into the soil and have pulled their rubber bands free from their trunks.  Another is that the grass seed is sprouting, but it is very, very thin. I'm sure we'll be over seeding this fall. A couple of the apples that we left on a few trees are maturing. The apples are mainly on the Wealthy apple trees.

Cedar Apple Rust (CAR)

And finally I noticed that several varieties of trees have cedar apple rust (CAR) which is a fungal disease produced by juniper trees, also known as red cedars in IA.

Wealthy Apple

We'll definitely have to keep an eye on the CAR to see if it is a yearly problem or just one that is an every once in a while thing.  My neighbor has a very nice grove of cedars a couple miles from the orchard, and since the spores can travel 2 - 5 miles, it may be something that we just have to manage.