Today in the orchard
In a brief respite from the gray and the cold, the sun and its heat returned to the farm today. Off came the sweaters and the sweatshirts. Alyssa, Kevin, Skylar and I spent the day in the Finley Lane Orchard. We began the annual task of putting on the “tree guards.” These are the spiral plastic sleeves that protect the trunks of the younger trees from being nibbled by voles and mice during the winter when there’s not a lot to eat and the tender bark is too tempting to pass up. In summer there’s lots of more palatable stuff in the orchard, and the small rodents rarely cause any damage.
But winter is another thing, especially once it snows and the voles create networks of tunnels beneath the crust. A ten-year-old tree can become toast (literally) in a day. Once the trunk is “girdled” it may be too late to save it. So we put on the tree guards in the fall and take them all off in April. We remove them in the spring because the borers (Saperda candida) love to sneak in behind the sleeves in the summer. On off on off. It's that amazing endless circle.