Prepping the orchard: Wood, Air & Light!

After our November post about the orchard, here is an update of its progress. In the words of John Bunker all you need is new wood, air and sunlight, and the rest is up to you and your tree's individual personality and story.

Two weekends ago we had the very good fortune of hosting a MOFGA pruning workshop on our homestead, for very old apple trees.  John Bunker and Phil Norris were our instructors, about twenty people came, and it was a perfect day with warm sun rays and my very first sights of butterflies.

During this 4 hour course we learned about the best practices of pruning fruit trees (as opposed to pruning for powerlines or ornamentals who just need to look good), to maximize their fruit production, but also to bring back trees that have been left untended for quite sometime.

Being that our house was built circa 1840, we have some Old trees, and although they might look 'old' and dying, they are still kicking.  And it is possible to bring them back to interesting fruit production with a little help.

 

Our Russet before... sorry I don't have a better before picture

Our Russet being actively pruned :)

First, you want to assess the vigor of your tree, to determine whether or not it will do well with an intense makeover all at once, or if you could help it with some homemade braces under some branches to reduce the pressure of gravity on the main trunk, or even more important, whether or not the fruit is any good!  Have you tried it?  Lots of different apples can be used for different purposes -- fresh eating, sauce, baking, juice, cider, apple butter, animal feed, etc. -- but not all apples are worth all that work.  Especially if they are seedling trees (meaning it isn't a grafted apple variety but one that simply grew from a seed).  Seedling trees may be edible, but rarely delicious.  So the advice given to us was to first try the fruit of the seedling trees we have, and maybe if it's not all that interesting, to use the tree as a root stock to save, or simply multiply one of our other trees with a better fruit on it.

From what I understand, all apple cultivars we commonly know of by name are supposed to be genetically identical specimens to the original one.  That is because they are propagated through grafting or budding, grown from a twig of the original one, passed down from generation to generation.  That is the beauty of orcharding: even if your tree is old, and you think you might not be able to bring it back to life (because of a hollow trunk or a nasty wound) you can give it new life by grafting a piece of last year's new wood onto a new root stock, or fifty new root stocks!  Well that wasn't the focus of this specific workshop, but I am thankful for that option, as my dearest apple (that we have temporarily named the Ghost apple), is probably close to 150 years old and has a very hollow trunk and because of that, could, might, perhaps not survive that much longer (Gulp!).  For that reason Mr. Bunker saved quite a few scions (= new wood twigs) which he will transform into new grafted young and healthy Ghost apples for future generations to enjoy.

Alex learning the ropes on the ghost apple tree from Phil

The next thing you can think about when pruning, is pruning the other trees around your apples :) Do you have lots of Norway maples or other early pioneers or invasives slowly taking over your orchard?  Cut them back, and use them as lumber, firewood, woodchips, etc, and give more sun to your fruits!

Alex and Ian, cording a Norway Maple that we took down to make room for the Ghost Apple

 Then dead wood is the easiest next step.  Remove all the dead branches, to give you a better, more accurate idea of what you will want to keep.  Then begin to remove what are called the Water Sprouts, the vigorous vertical branches that shoot straight up. 

Apple trees will never have fruits on vertical wood, never.  You need to have horizontal growth (or also otherwise called weak wood) to have fruits.  So if you see some younger vibrant growth shooting straight up, it might be a good sign that your tree is still very much alive, but you can go ahead and cut it off (remember it might seem extreme, but its not all for not, as you can also then remove last years growth on that branch to make scions :)). 

Sabrina came down for the workshop, and Léo in her arms :)

After removing adjacent trees, dead wood and water sprouts (thus taking care in part of the wood and sunlight aspects), we still have to keep cutting to create AIR.  You don't want any of your branches to touch, intertwine, or 'choke' one another.  So just like at the hairdresser, you want to layer the tree, and the analogy of a Christmas tree shape was used a lot, even though, with these olds gals, it might have to take a less symmetrical shape :) Obviously you want to encourage growth closer to the ground so you don't have to climb so high to get your fruit, so keep that in mind when you select the branches you will keep. An old adage is you want to cut enough to be able to throw a cat through the tree!

All cuts should be made directly next to a joint to allow the tree to cover the wound with bark. The two types of pruning cuts, heading and thinning are used for different purposes, but about 98% of all cuts we were told should be thinning cuts (cuts at a branching joint and not somewhere along a branch).

And I guess lastly, take your time, whether you are pruning for the first time or if you are an experienced apple orchardist...  As you open up new sunlight areas your tree might be telling you a different story next year, so think of the future, and don't be afraid to be gentle, there is always next year, or the fall.  With these older trees, don't be afraid to take your time, do the pruning in seasons, wait to see if new growth appears right on the trunk (as it will when you cut some of the top, thereby freeing some sunlight).

I say this because there is a saying, ''When you think you are done pruning, keep pruning!''. 

If you know some important tips about pruning, old or young trees, if you have comments, questions or stories about how you prune your trees, we'd love to hear from you :)

Til next time, be well!

This winter

While Léo sleeps, I take a few moments to let you know about a few of the things we have been up to, in this beautiful snowy winter. 

1. First and foremost: enjoying Léo's presence, his personality, good nature, and his growing appetite!

Léo is 8 months! and he has 4 teeths :)

Visiting the Canadian cousins always makes us have a cold, but we are still in good spirits:)

hmmmm... sacred wild blueberries, yum!

Multi-flora rose taking over a tree

2. Removing the invasive plants on the homestead.  Every chance I get more than an hour outside, I spend it bush whacking through the heavy and often impenetrable thickets of multiflora rose, which over the years has taken over, completely cover and toppled over some areas of the native vegetation. To think that the government used to give this non-native plant for free to land owners to protect wildlife and soil erosion! This removal process has proven very meditative, slow, silent and oh-so-satisfying :)

Invasive multiflora rose thicket taking over

Take that you mean thorny plant!

It can take 3 to 6 mechanical removals per year for 2 to 4 years to eradicate the plant. ouf!

 I have been creating piles with the cuttings, placing them in the middle of the fields and soon we will be returning the 'waste' as valuable organic matter to enrich the soil :) through some awesome permaculture garden techniques that I have been slowly discovering while reading many a garden books in front of the fire (where I spend most ALL of my time), like the Edible Forest Landscape and Permaculture Garden.  Our favorite techniques at the moment include the Chicken Moat, German Mound, Tree garden and Grass into vegetables, and we hope to test them out this season and give you our feedback about which ones worked best here.

Our new farming and gardening library, beautiful wood piece found in the barn just last week!

 3. Building the greenhouse: It will have taken a year, but we are really almost done building our second-hand solarium/greenhouse. All of the glass panes are now in place, only a few triangular holes along the top of the wall remain to be sealed.

Adding the very last pane of glass

Just this morning, after the snow storm

Since there is no better time than today, we have set up a smaller temporary greenhouse in the house to accommodate our already germinating onions and such, until the official greenhouse is ready to receive them.

 4. Cleaning our tools.  A little bit of elbow grease, some steel wool and some linseed oil.  For this season, we plan to use the 'sand box' method which we just learned about in the book 'self-sufficient gardener'= a mix of sand and used oil that you dip your tools in every time you return them to the shed, cleans and sharpens them every time!

Cleaned and oiled

Still dirty

On a side note, Alex has also been doing quite a number on the entire barn, emptying it completely, vacuuming, cleaning, repairing, setting up his workshop, and we hope to be able this year to bring back the original barn door.  Just this paragraph wont give it justice, so we'll have to dedicate a post to it.

 

5. We played in the snow ;) With these constant snow storms we are loving the winter weather and enjoying more cross country outings than during last year's non-winter! 

Creating our own cross-country trails on the homestead

The snow just keeps coming :)

Snow shoeing at KLT's Holman Conservation Area

The snow was so deep at times, we were sinking to our waists

Léo taking a nap after a long walk (and me cutting more roses while he sleeps!)

We hope you are taking the time to enjoy the snow, the pure & fresh air, and letting yourself slow down a little bit in this most peaceful season. We cherish this time to reflect, dream and plan the season to come. Because spring is coming... soon enough.

We always love to share ideas and knowledge with like-minded people.  Please feel free to share comments, links or ideas with us about homesteading, gardening and sustainable lifestyles.

Until next time, be well.

Chicken update, overwintering, dry leaves and fiddle heads :)

Léo and I, collecting kindling for us and dry leaves for the chickens

This will be the first winter for most of our chickens, definitely the first winter for them as layers, and we are trying to put all of the eggs in our basket (haha!) and make sure our chickens are content, while still minimizing waste and spending.

While I was watching one of many chicken coop winterizing videos online, I realized that before there were wood shavings at the store, there was another material that was used to keep a chicken coop clean-er: dry leaves.  It's so simple, with the number of trees we have, and the quantity of leaves they shed, it would be silly of us not to use them.

The benefit of using the leaves in the coop, before composting them, is that the added chicken manure enriches your compost with nitrogen, and the chickens break up the leaves, increasing the turn over rate into compost.

So I started saving piles of leaves, before winter arrives, making sure they are dry and storing them in the barn where hopefully they will keep.  I changed all the chicken litter, and they loved their new leaf medium, it feels like being outside!

I have also now turned the 60w red light bulb back on to keep them a little warmer, and hopefully soon I'll have a little radio out there to play them some classical music.

Léo and I, on one of our many outings; Mr. Serious here keeps us all in check :)

I was so excited the other day when Alex and I were preparing the back forty for the potential arrival of our sheep next spring, when I noticed a big patch of ostrich fern!  Last week I found the Oyster mushrooms in the front, and now fiddleheads in the back.  More reasons to already get excited about spring!

Our dried oyster mushrooms

The spore-bearing frond, the dead give-away of the Ostrich Fern

Til next time, be well.
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Apple Cemetary or Hidden Cider Mecca!?!

Younger fruit trees closer to the house

When we first arrived on the Homestead we were so psyched to be moving to an orchard!  We also thought that many of the apple trees were dying, or dead, rightly so because they hadn't been pruned in years and had been overgrown by Norway Maples.  Although we were thrilled to have them and had high hopes that we would be able to graft them onto new rootstocks before they past, we didn't give the actual standing trees a chance.  Boy were we wrong!

I mean, wouldn't you think that this tree's days are numbered?!

Among the many people that we have received so far on the Homestead, we were lucky to have the visit of Mr. John Bunker a few weeks ago. For those who have not yet heard the name, Mr Bunker is the leading pomologist for FEDCO and he is quite interested in Maine apple varieties, looking to find orchards that still have some of the old varieties that the settlers grew.

Mr. John Bunker with one of our supposed Russett apples, Alex's favorite

Since we have an orchard, and a really old one at that, we thought we should invite Mr. Bunker over and set out to identify our apples.  It turns out we have a hidden treasure!  So far we haven't identified many of the trees but we know that we have multiple different varieties, apples, crab apples, yellows, greens and reds, early ones and over wintering ones. Red Astrakhans, McIntoch, Snow, Russetts, Bell Flowers, Northern Spy and Cortlands are among the varieties that the previous owner remembers.  And Mr. Bunker said that our crab apples (of which we had no idea what we were going to do with) are the perfect kinds of apples for cider. hmmmmmmmmmm cider.

My very favorite, it doesn't look like much but it's delicious!... a yellow apple with red dots, still don't know what it is

Last November, I was very excited to figure out if any of the apple trees were going to fruit over the coming season.  This November, I am excited anew, to elucidate the mystery of the apple orchard and get ready for our first official holistic apple orchard crop... with high hopes once again, that we will be able to successfully use organic means to reduce worms and diseases.

Its pretty incredible to me that most of these trees are still alive and bearing fruit.  Now our job is to nurture them, back to full production.

Ok, a few of them are really gone...

an old apple surrounded by Norway Maples... for now :)

 

Yet another yellow with red dots

Lastly, we have added a little 'gadget' on the right hand side that now enables you to follow the blog by email.  If you want to be notified when we post a new entry, then sign up.

Til next time, be well.

The greenhouse will be up and fonctional by winter!

Things seem to happen slowly but steadily as the fall season gives way to colder and colder weather.  It snowed for the first time today in our part of Maine.  In the last week we have managed to plant the garlic, onions and radishes already for next spring and covered them with a nice layer of dry leaves (we'll never have to buy mulch or wood shaving for the chicken litter, with the amount of leaves we have on this property), saved enough dry leaves for the chickens and most importantly of all...

before... putting in the ditches

after! Finally starting to take shape :)

We have begun to finish building the greenhouse.  Now that Alex has dug out the drainage system in and around the structure and we have put down enough garvel, we have started putting up the old and beautiful storm windows of the house as the back and side walls of the structure and started adding the finishing cedar planks and insulation to the front wall.  By the end of this week we should hopefully :) be done.

Look at those floor to ceiling storm windows, amazing!

Its going to be amazing!!!  As you can see there are barrels inside already.  Some of them will be used as passive solar heat sinks and other as rain barrels to collect the rain water from our roof. Our plan is also to route the dryer exhaust into the greenhouse so that when and if we use the dryer in the winter and spring, it will help to increase the heat and humidity inside the greenhouse.  One machine's waste heat will be our baby plants treasure I'm sure :)

True story: today, Léo and I took a walk around the property and we found a plethora of wild Oyster mushrooms growing on a dead tree. I have already quickly processed them into a yummy mushroom soup and dried the rest for later. yey wild foraging 2 minutes from our front steps!

Til next time,
Be well (and vote!)


P.S.: Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason 
Should ever be forgot...
           - it was on this day in 1605 that Guy Fawkes
             tried to blow up the british parliament

Summer Feast

 My little snow man is a constant reminder that winter is near... Already September here in Maine and the Homestead is still in full production.  Since the beginning of August we have been canning tomatoes almost every day, to preserve as much of the fruits as possible, preparing pesto with the abundance of basil, and finding thousand and one ways to eat Patty Pan, the only squash that really did well this year.

Basil to season the tomato cans.

The harvest!!!

We grew many kinds of tomatoes this year, just to see which ones we'd prefer, and I have to say that the Black Sea Man tomato from Russia was hands down our very favorite.  Meaty, juicy, yet not watery and great for slicing and cooking with.  We'll definitely grow way more of those ones next year.

Putting Ira to work!

Boiling bath and Ice bath to remove the skins

Now the fruit trees are bearing heavily, and it's time to pick. We have been waiting for this moment since we moved in, having had no idea what variety of apples the orchard was going to delight us with.  What a surprise it was to also find that we had three different varieties of pears to combine with our many apples.  We had high hopes of making cider with our apples this year, and made a sample test batch which was so delicious, but we have yet to find an apple press to go through a real production, so for this year we'll concentrate on making apple and pear sauce for when bébé Léo hits the 6 month mark :)

Can you tell which egg is a double yolker?

Our earlier apple variety

And an exciting project that has been taking place of late is the set-up of our very first greenhouse (actually, a solarium that will be attached to the south-west facing wall of the house).  After a lot of searching, we found it second hand on Craigslist, Alex is now putting it together, creating the three missing sides with upcycled free windows we found in the trash around our neighbourhood.  The inside will boast in-ground year-round vermicomposting bins, rain catchment watering systems and cob walls below the glass metal frame. Stay tuned to see the development of the outdoor shower, brick patio and parilla :)

The future greenhouse...

 and our loveable cloth diapers :)