Beans

We had the beans planted on Saturday evening. The Schwaller's finished up around 11:30pm. They were planted just before the rain hit at about 2AM. Since then it's been raining everyday off and on with a total so far of around 2.18" of rain in the last 3 days. Good thing we got the beans in when we did or we would be looking at the middle of next week some time before we could get back to it and the beans I have wouldn't have worked too well being planted into June. It will be close as it is being planted on the 25th.  Now we just hope for the best and see what the weather, pests, and markets do.

Orchard Fence

Only 3 more strands of the 8 strand fence to go today. Then we can apply power and hope that the deer decide that they don't want to jump 6' high to get over the fence.

Watering In Apple Trees

Note to self - don't water in trees in high wind without having your trees staked! I was watering in some of the trees in the orchard that weren't staked and the wind just pushed them right over. So yesterday we finished staking the trees and also finished running the layflat hose. Today I hope to run the irrigation tubing for the emitters. It was so hot yesterday (100.3F) that we had to stop at 3PM.  It was just too hot to continue.

Orchard/North

We completed planting the north side of the orchard yesterday. The wind blew the dirt into our eyes the entire day and sandblasted us relentlessly, leaving us squinting, red faced and raw. But we knocked out all of the trees that were planned. We have about 20 extra trees that we'll put in today to wrap up the planting and then we'll call the planting officially completed. We did stake some trees yesterday and used some special rubber-bands that have a T on them. It took us a while to get the technique down but I think we'll be able to get that completed over a few days without a problem. Besides the wind we did have the auger chain break while trying to dig out a rock. I had lots of repair links on hand, but no additional chain, so we were delayed while Sharon ran to town to get some more chain.  But overall, the day went well, even if by the end of the day everyone was very tired both physically and mentally and wanted to see the last tree go into the ground.

New Orchard!

We've been planing a PYO orchard for several years now, and after all of the prep-work, which started in 2011, we've finally started planting our trees.  This year we're putting in about 800 trees and we've left some space for some different planting techniques next year.  We put in 7 varieties of trees that are a couple years old and well feathered (have branches). The planting has been going great, but the weather has pushed us back several times and we haven't completed our fence or our irrigation system. But overall, the project has been going very smoothly - as Sharon said, "we never have projects that run this smoothly." We should finish planting today if things continue to go smoothly.

Calves

Good thing we sorted and moved the cows.  They started calving as soon as they were moved and the calves are coming one right after the other.  All of them look great so far, although one cow who has had issues nursing calves in the past is still having her issues. I'm about to go down and stand in the rain/snow and watch to see if her calf is latching on enough. The calf was on yesterday, but today that calf looks mighty tired so we'll keep an eye no him.  Her calf last year was given goats milk because she wasn't nursing it well enough, and then the calf stayed with the goats as she grew.  We call her goat-calf because she hung with the goats so long she probably thinks she's a goat, and lets you walk right up to her and pet her just like a goat too.  We don't want another goat calf though. Bottle feeding isn't all it's cracked up to be.