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 !!