Mad Tom Orchard

We are busy getting everything ready for the start of our 20’th apple harvest, since we restarted the orchard in 2002.

Crop looks good overall – hurricane Henri stayed east of us and caused no damage  – only .2 inches of rain.  Warm weather is ripening the apples faster – looks like temperatures next week will be cooler.  First weekend we will have good Zestars, Ginger Golds, and Sansas – see pictures at the end of this post.  We are setting up the donut kitchen again and plan on donuts for opening weekend and all the following ones as well.

Barn will be set up the same as last year with one way entry thru the gate and exit for those paying thru the barn – if someone else in the group is paying, you can exit thru the side gate.  Please limit to five customers in the barn at one time.  Outside in the orchard no masks needed – in the barn please wear your mask and practice social distancing.

Look forward to seeing you !!

Summer is rolling along rapidly – apples are growing well – 9 1/2 inches of rain in July is making the fruit size up well – some varieties approaching 1 1/2 inches. It has been a challenge to keep up with the grass, the morning glories and the grapevines.# Zestar, Ginger Gold, Sansa, Macintosh, Gala, and Crimson Crisp all have a lot of fruit – there are more Honeycrisp than we initially thought, but still fewer than last year.

We expect to start harvest on Labor Day weekend. We plan to use the same one way entry and exit last system as last year. Fortunately we are in Vermont with low levels of Covid infections. Unfortunately even though we were vaccinated in February & March, I, like a number of other people treated for cancer have not developed antibodies so we need to continue to exercise caution. The overall good news is that the cancer treatment has worked.

We look forward to seeing you this fall. Pictures show some good Macintosh and Zestars.

We are a little over two months away from the start of apple harvest which will be  around Labor Day weekend.  The overall crop this year will be somewhat less than last year due to uneven bloom on some trees and the cold weather at the end of April.  The number of apples set on Honeycrisp trees is very spotty and Honeycrisp crop will probably be about 1/2 of last year’s crop.  There will still be good apples – just not as many.  Macintosh will be good this year.  Zestars look like our biggest crop yet.   As always everything is weather dependent so there are no complete guarantees.

We have been fortunate to get good amounts of rain this year and so far have not had any damaging storms – a lot of the storms seem to go farther north – possibly deflected by the Taconic mountain range to our west.

One big job at this time of year is mowing throughout the orchard to reduce competition by the grass for water and nutrients (and repairing broken mowers as needed).  Second big job is hand thinning the apples on some trees that are overset so that branches will not break and the remaining fruit will be fully sized. One photo shows hand thinning on a young Golden Delicious tree where the apples are approaching one inch size  and the other photo is a view down the valley while we enjoy some coffee – working outdoors in the sun at 60 degrees is not ALL bad.

Keep us on your fall calendar !!

It has finally warmed up and several days with high temperatures in the 80’s have pushed the bloom along and the petals are starting to fall.  We survived the 24 degree morning on April 22 because the buds were still not fully open.  We have had several days of good pollination weather.  Honeycrisp crop will be light this year – overall it looks like probably about 80% of our record crop last year.

Four months to go and a lot depends on the weather, but having a reasonable amount of bloom and good pollination is a good start.  Stay tuned for updates.

We took advantage of the bloom and some sunshine to take some pictures of some of Sylvia’s quilts.

So by late March, the snow had melted and we were able to almost finish pruning – warm temperatures in early April pushed the apple buds along and we were showing green tip leaves two weeks earlier than normal.

We put our first copper and oil spray down on April 10’th – earliest ever.   We managed to get all the brush picked up and run thru the big chipper – older backs take increasing notice of the bending over.

Then last night and today we have had about five inches of new snow – supposed to rain tonight and melt it all off.  The early season increases the potential for frost damage later, but so far we are ok.  Buds at full green tip can survive with limited damage down to 25 degrees.

In the middle of all this, in early April we made our first trip back to Boston in over a year for more scans and a bone marrow biopsy which came back with good results.  Got to see both our Massachusetts based daughters and their kids as a bonus.

So now when the snow melts we will clean up the last of the pruning, replace the cracked valve to restart the irrigation system and rebuild the shelters for the bumblebees before they arrive.

Green tip buds

Feeding brush into the chipper

Brief detour back to winter – daffodils in there somewhere