Today in the orchard
It was windy, cold and partly cloudy, sprinkled with the occasional moment of warm sunshine. All the farm ponds are now iced-over though no one is looking for their skates just yet. I haven’t checked out the big ponds so I don’t know about them. The first decent storm of the season is predicted for tomorrow, to be followed by abnormally cold air.
Cammy wrapped the last of the trees around the farm with screen. I went up to the neighbor’s and put on sixty treeguards there. We do an on-going work-trade with them. We maintain their orchard, and in return I’ve gotten to plant and grow out a bunch of back-ups of our favorite rare, historic-Maine cultivars. We also get a load of firewood to supplement what we cut ourselves. It’s a beautiful spot that was long ago a small commercial orchard of a hundred trees or so. About twenty of the original trees—mostly Ben Davis and Stark—remain.
As it was getting dark, we closed down the cooler for the season and moved all the remaining apples down to the basement. In the next few days we’ll go through the boxes, sort them out, pitch the rotten ones, set aside enough to do another cider pressing and store the rest in the root cellar. Then I’ll seriously plunge into the ID’s. That should take the entire winter.