Picking Cherries

We've reached the point at Red Bucket Farm where we are much too busy---sowing, weeding, watering, fertilizing (chicken poop tea!), harvesting, cleaning, processing, tending the chickens and bees---to have time to write a blog post. But there is a bit of photographic evidence that the orchard ladder is useful and well worth the cost.  Our three tart cherry trees suffered no losses over the cold winter.

Hops Harvest

Harvesting hops is my favorite garden "chore." We sit on the patio drinking iced coffee and listening to good music while picking hops off the bine. It's relaxing and smells fabulous!

We grow three kinds of hops here at Red Bucket Farm---Cascade, Willamette and Nugget. Hops bines (not vines) twist around a taut twine on our 12' tall hops towers. This morning our resident brewer climbed the orchard ladder and cut down the twines and bines.

We harvested 12 ounces of Cascade hops and 2 ounces of Willamette. (The Nugget hops aren't quite ready for harvesting.) Although it doesn't seem like very much, the Cascade hops filled one bucket to the brim. It's more than enough for a batch of pale ale, which is in the works as I write this. We'll store a few ounces of the Cascade hops in the fridge for a week to serve as the "finishing" hops for the India pale ale. Any remaining hops will be dried and frozen for future use.

Thinning the Peach Crop

Last year our mature peach tree produced a minimal crop due to unfavorable weather conditions. Summer arrived in March forcing a premature bloom. Winter returned in April and froze many of the blossoms. The rest of the summer was plagued with drought. We were pleased that our fruit trees survived such a tumultuous growing season.

This year is quite the opposite. The temperatures have been seasonally appropriate and our fruit trees bloomed beautifully in April. Pollination must have been adequate because the peach tree is loaded with an abundance of walnut-sized fruits. There are so many little peaches forming on the tree that we expect branches will break under the weight of the fruit or the whole tree will simply keel over.

Experts advise thinning the crop. Heavy fruit like peaches should grow no closer than every four inches, about the width of an adult hand. Thin branches can't hold more than one peach. At harvest time, it will be far more satisfying to bring in a bushel of 100 large peaches rather than a bushel of 500 tiny peaches. It's important to be realistic about how much fruit one tree can produce.

So we thinned the crop. Using our awesome orchard ladder, we removed hundreds of tiny green peaches. It seems like a shame, but in another month or so I think we'll be glad we did it.

Orchard Ladder

This spring we invested in an orchard ladder. It was a safety measure---too often I have watched my husband teetering a the top of an eight foot step ladder with bricks or 2x4 lumber tucked precariously beneath one or two ladder legs in an effort to balance the thing. These were situations in which I would dial 9-1- and wait for disaster. Fortunately it never occurred, but when we discovered orchard ladders, this purchase quickly became a priority.

An orchard ladder is a tripod. The ladder side is wide at the bottom and narrows gradually to the top. The third leg hinges widely---perfect for working on a slope or hillside, and ideal for getting right into the middle of fruit trees without causing branch or fruit damage. (This week we're picking sour pie cherries and thinning peaches.) The ladder is also useful for managing our 12 foot tall hops towers. Working at the top of this ladder feels stable and safe.

Purchasing an orchard ladder takes a little determination. They are not readily available at hardware stores or  farm retailers. Our new 12 foot aluminum orchard ladder is made by Tallman. The local Tallman distributor operates a cherry orchard about 30 miles away and sells a few extra ladders out of his barn.

As our fruit trees continue to grow, we look forward to many years with our orchard ladder.