Raspberry Production Year 1

The raspberry plants are producing really well.  We had thought that the first year production would be light, but it turns out that our production is really good for our first year.  So much so that we are getting 4 to 5 pints a day, not including what we're eating (which is substantial).

Raspberry Heat Stress White Drupelet Disorder

We're currently seeing heat stress in our raspberries. It started showing up even before it got extremely hot, but it was limited to one here and there. But the past couple of days we've seen it really hitting the Heritage variety of raspberries.  What we're seeing are some white drupes within the drupelet.

1. Drupe - The fleshy fruit with a single seed. In a raspberry or blackberry, it would be each of the individual tiny round balls of fruit that make up a cluster in what is considered the berry.
2. Drupelet - The individual drupes that in composite are considered the berry on plants such as raspberry or blackberry.

So what we're seeing is called White Drupelet Disorder.  Looking that up I found that it can be caused by a handful of issues, but one being excessive heat.
Imagine that?  A plant that's in a greenhouse, even with its sides open and the end-wall door wide open, would show signs of heat stress in NW Iowa from this past week. The high tunnel weather station showed a hight temp of 109F two days ago.  I'd say that qualifies as excessive heat. The Heritage raspberry variety is more susceptible to the disorder, and the variety showing the most symptoms is Heritage, but the others that are producing right now are showing it here and there too. They don't taste any different, but they aren't very pretty.

Final Chicken Day 2013

The second day of 2013 chicken processing went great.  Our customers are a big part of making it a lot of fun.  Thanks to all of our customers and we look forward to seeing you again next year.  Enjoy your chickens!

Chicken Days August 2013 Today

Today starts the last chickens for 2013.  We caught the chickens last night and I started the scalder this morning.  So far so good. The scalder didn't go out like the July chicken day so I'm hoping that all will be smooth sailing.

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.