The seemingly endless succession of frigid days finally broke, and we had higher temperatures today. It was the perfect day to be out in the orchards and, thankfully, we were able to take advantage of the opportunity. I had spent yesterday in the shop sharpening tools for the pruning season. We use Felco hand pruners, in part because they are easy to disassemble and sharpen. I use a simple grindstone and decent flat stone for sharpening. We also have an assortment of long-handled pruners which are all relatively easy to sharpen. For pruning saws, we use Felco folding saws for small cuts. Those saw blades are not sharpen-able as far as I know so we wind up buying new blades each winter. Too bad for that.

Alyssa found this bird nest, December 28. 2025

So today, with sharpened tools in hand, we headed down Finley Lane and spent much of the day clearing brush and small trees that have grown up around many of the wild seedling apples that populate the strip of land just outside the orchard fence. Trimming out around the wild seedling trees is a good December segue into the enormous pruning effort that lies ahead. We have hundreds of trees to attend to in the coming months. Starting easy is the way to go.

There were two of us—Alyssa and me—for the morning. Kevin and Cammy joined us in the afternoon. By the time it was dark, we’d cleared out around more than half a dozen trees and created several sizable piles of chip-able brush.