The dwarfs all look good and have been fastened to their trellis.
And with the rain that we've had in such a short amount of time, they're well watered in! We had some hail and that took a few branches off of one of the rows of the dwarfs. Strange, but it was an inside row. Not any other row, just one.
I went to an IPM field day the end of last week in Eastern Iowa. It was very good. The more time spent scouting and learning from others is extremely valuable. It's one thing to see disease and insect problems in a book or on on-line, but it's much different to try to look for it on leaves and fruit in an orchard and then come up with a plan to deal with it.
Our current orchard activity is removing all of the apples from the trees and using cloths pins to correct crotch angles on the small upper branches.
The orchard has been pretty clean with limited pest pressure so far. The cedar apple rust is back, but not as extensive as last year so far. I didn't treat for it this year, but with two years of infection data, we'll make sure we come up with a plan going into next year. We did get sun scald on
our trees that have lighter colored bark. I don't have a good picture of it, but the problem comes in the winter from the sun warming the bark enough to allow water to flow, and then freezing. It kills the bark on the south facing side of the trees. We'll have to see how they handle it over the next year or so. The other issue we had was the hail. We pulled all of the apples off of the trees again this year, but before we pulled them, the hail damaged most of the apples and left them with dents in them.
That would be a real bummer to have the crop damaged by hail, but then I guess that it's just another one of those things that you can't control.
Hopefully this coming week will be dry enough to start cutting hay in ernest. We got a small cutting off of the back of the farm, but the bulk of the hay is still waiting for its first cut. It has to be great for the bees on the farm. The alfalfa is in bloom and every pollinator in the county must be able to smell it, if they can smell. If you want to know what heaven's going to smell like, just stand down wind of the hay field with the alfalfa blooming. And then when it's fresh cut, and then again when it's drying. What awesome smells.
Last weekend we processed chickens. They turned out really nice again. It's great to be able to offer such a high quality product. Feel free to stop out any time and take a look at how we raise the chickens. I think you'll appreciate the difference and see why we take such pride in how they're raised and processed. It takes a lot of management, but as with most things on the farm its a matter of managing and working within the variables of the natural environment vs controlling the variables. One example that always amazes me is that the chickens don't get eaten by predators. Having pens that they can get into at night for shelter is enough to keep the predation to a minimum while allowing them to roam during the day. The other extreme would be to keep them always penned up or to put them in a building where we would totally control that variable. The chickens are extremely labor intensive, so there's always a debate about next year.
Finally, the high tunnel raspberries are HUGE this year. I should have pruned them back early in their growth, but I didn't and now we're paying the price by having canes that are ridiculous. The raspberries not in the high tunnel are about 1/4 the height. It will be interesting to see how the berry production is on these canes.
