Today in the orchard
(Report by Skylar.) My father is paying me a visit this week, and he has jumped into helping on the farm. In the morning we weeded the one and two-year old apple trees in the nursery. This job is quicker than weeding the trees in the orchard, and we have to do it every few weeks all summer and fall. We use a hoe to shave off the small weeds in the top layer of soil and our hands to remove larger weeds with deeper roots. If we get to them before they grow too large, they are quite easy to remove.
Deer fly
I think this is the correct day to pay tribute to the deer fly. I have been seeing them for about a week now, but today we got caught in a brief tornado of that consisted of hundreds of these flies. Deer flies are in the genus Chrysops of which there are about eighty species living in North America. To me they are less of a bother than black flies and mosquitos, as their bites don’t seem to cause an itchy welt, but they certainly are annoying, especially the females who feast on mammal blood while the males feed on flower pollen. I cannot say I love to be around them, but I can’t blame them for biting me. They don’t exactly have a choice in what they eat.
