Today in the orchard
For the second night in a row the pond in front of the house has partly frozen over. The nights have been consistently well below 32F. This fall has been cold. It’s also been windy, which has not been easy on the oldest apple trees, including the old Opalescent tree up on Turner Ridge about two miles from the farm. That tree has been producing delicious, beautiful, red, mid-fall fruit since long before cars, electricity and radio—and maybe even before trains—came to Palermo.
On a recent windy day about 3/4 of the top broke off the ancient tree and, although not entirely detached, it does not have enough connection to the trunk to remain viable. So this afternoon I took a ladder and a chainsaw up to the ball field where the ancient tree resides and pruned off the broken top. It’s on town land. No one gave me permission but anyone who notices will be happy not to have to deal with it. They would likely just cut it to the ground. I wouldn’t.
My plan was to cut out anything that was burnable in our wood stove, one 16” piece at a time. I didn’t want to make any large gallant cuts that might tear off a big chunk of the remaining live bark or, even worse, cause the entire tree to break apart. So I picked away at it, and in a couple of hours I had it cleaned up. It looks pretty bare. Hopefully there’s enough live growth on it to keep it going for several more presidents. I’ll save some scionwood from what I cut and graft a bunch of trees, at least one of which will go in our orchard. Don’t want to lose this one.