With the snow on the ground, our farm work has slowed. So it was time to do some "inside" work this week.
The result is the launch of our "URL" and home web site. This is still in a "draft" version, but we hope to make it the location where our friends and customers can link to all of our web presence and also get updates on both the farm activities and the new country market. The site can be accessed on www.ridgeberryfarm.ca (yes there is a Ridge Berry Farm in the US...so we could not get ".com").
Although the snow really slowed us down, we still managed to get some "farming" work done. We finished clearing our row of grapes and completed our rather crude pruning.
In the process, we found ourselves cutting down a lot of 10-20 year old hard wood. We've decided to build up an inventory of fire wood and we are now planning the home renovations with a wood fireplace/stove in mind (today there is only a gas fire place and the old chimneys have been dismantled).
We've also decided to tackle the pruning of apple trees this week. Again this is something rather new to us. Luckily pruning apple trees is a well-documented process on the web and it was just a matter of getting the "hang of it".
We have so far identified 9 apple trees on the front portion of the property. They include a Crab Apple (which produced very well this year); 2 McIntosh and an Empire (which had few apples and most were infected by bugs); and, a row consisting of 5 Pippin apple trees.
We did not even know the Pippin apple trees existed until late into the year. By this time the few apples they produced were on the ground. As a result, we are not certain of the exact variety. All we know is that they are very old, apparently rare and when producing fruit generate an apple which is ideal for cider.
The state of the apple trees were in different stages of neglect. The one which seems to have been pruned in the past couple of years was the Crab Apple.
So, we decided to start on this one. After a few cuts, it became clear to us how fruiting branches were generated (from the evidence of previous pruning) and we were able to move forward with some ease. It helped that the tree was rather small, however it still took us the better part of half a day.
We're pleased with the results, but as for everything else that we have pruned so far, we're still learning and we will only know how well or how poorly we've done next fall.
The group of Empire and McIntosh are in bad shape. They do not seem to have been pruned in a few years. As a result they have a multitude of "sucker" branches not only growing at the base but it some cases all the way up the main branches.
Some sort of fungus is also evident on the bark of the trees. I am not sure pruning (and eventually some form of organic spraying) will help, but we are going to try to bring these back into production.
In tackling these trees, I recall one British orchard owner saying that he can "throw his hat" through a properly pruned apple tree. Basically the ideal is to get as much sunshine into the canopy as possible. So this is what we've started to do.
While working on these trees however, it became quite evident that we were somewhat ill-equipped for the larger trees (the Pippins in particular will be a major challenge). We have been using hand-held Fiskar shears including extendable shears which are set on a rather long pole. In two days we broke 2 of the extendable shears! Luckily these have a lifetime warranty which is honoured by Canadian Tire.
For the larger branches, we have also been using a chainsaw. This is the part that felt very uncomfortable or rather unsafe. Climbing a ladder or into a tree with a chainsaw became a concern. It did not help that some of the branches were not easily accessible.
The solution was a new Sthil. A pruning chain saw on an extendable pole!
We've grown to love our Sthil tools (our chainsaw, auger, weed waker and hand-held tiller have proven so reliable), so it was natural to return to our favourite local dealer Pic's Motor Clinic in Fonthill for this new piece of machinery. They've been expertly servicing all of our tools and were also the local source for our amazing BCS tiller (if anyone in the area is looking for these kinds of tools, we highly recommend them).
To our dismay, our pruning work was brutally interrupted this week by the major snow storm that hit the Northeast, so I leave you with pictures of the "winter wonderland" in our backyard.
PS. We also again have to thank the neighbors for getting us out of our driveway! I'm not sure what we would do without them.
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