Well, we dodged the bullets of frost, fungus, and various insects, but got hit by hail. Pancake-shaped hail an inch or more across fell (well, blew horizontally) for what felt like forever but was probably a few minutes. Some apples were damaged; we haven’t done an extensive survey to figure out the percentage. Not having had hail damage like this before, we aren’t certain the impact it will have on apples when they are ripe, but they will certainly be marked. We are thankful that we are not selling to supermarkets, where apples with any blemish, however superficial, can’t be sold. Our larger commercial neighbors are not so lucky. Hopefully you folks who buy our apples can stand the “hail-kissed” look on some apples this year; if not, there is always cider .

With the hot, dry weather we have been having, there is very little chance of scab infection, and we see next to none in the orchard. Also a reduced chance of getting late blight on the tomatoes and potatoes, thankfully. Not too many insect pests either, so far. More waiting to go before we know how the insect damage will be. Meanwhile, the apples are starting to turn red and continue to get bigger despite no rain. The weather couldn’t be more different than it was last year, it will be interesting to see if the apples taste different when they have ample sun and heat.

At last, the pick your own varieties are thinned. We just don’t have the labor to thin everything, and with apples we will cider it is not necessary. We got a start on pruning off watersprouts too, usually an August job but thinning is easier if we cut some of the rampant growth out of the tree first. We have a giant pile of thinned-off apples - we keep them in 5-gallon buckets for a week if possible so that exiting pests can’t find soil to pupate in, then we pile them in a wagon until they are good and aged, again so any possible pests have difficulty surviving. Eventually we compost them. The apples we left on the trees are getting huge. It is so satisfying to see them sizing up, all spaced out and healthy looking.

Now we move on to worrying about our last pests of the season - keeping our eyes open for codling moths, checking apple maggot fly traps, and watching for secondary scab lesions. We will find out if our work last season picking up all late season drops has reduced these pests. Let’s hope so!

Every spare moment is spent thinning apples these days. Apples blossom in clusters, and despite a hard freeze locally we had very good pollination on most of the trees, so we have a great deal of work to do to get each cluster down to one apple. The pick-your-own varieties in particular fruit very heavily and need a lot of thinning. The apples are sizing up quickly this year, as the season still seems to be advanced compared to prior years. We will be watching for when our earliest variety becomes ripe so we can tell when our commercial varieties will be ready.

All of our biennial trees are fruiting this year, and since we have little to no scab in the orchard this year, even our macIntoshes are fruiting. So we have lots and lots of apples that look great at this point.

Lots of life in the trees as usual - lots of lady bugs and daddy long legs, as well as other spiders, and of course a chorus of birds all over in the orchard. We have one deer that visits regularly this year, nipping branches off the trees closest to the woods. No big deal, as long as the newest trees aren’t targeted too much (and he or she doesn’t start bringing friends).

Apples are developing, many are an inch in diameter already. The primary infection period for the fungus scab is over, and we see very little infection this year. Plum curculio, an insect that attacks apples at this time, is certainly active, hammering the trees we don’t spray with clay. The remaining trees are all white with clay, the new trees are mulched, and we are beginning to mow under the trees. Apple development is still ahead of where it should be, which means we will need to begin thinning very soon. And who knows? If the apples continue to develop at this rate, we will have apples in September rather than October.

We had overnight temperatures in the mid 20’s (24.7) on Tuesday (May 11) and were very worried about buds and blossoms that are vulnerable at this stage. After assessing things for a day or two afterwards it looks like we dodged that bullet. Our location on a slope towards the top of the hill lends itself to good air drainage and that combined with early sun may have saved us. Other growers I know in New York and New Hampshire were not as lucky, losing much of their potential crop.

Most of the trees in the orchard went from pink flower buds to full bloom in the last two days, thanks to July weather in May. There were pollinators buzzing around - our trusty bumblebees and lots of tiny bees and pollinating wasps and flies. There are also a ton of ladybugs, a very good sign for keeping aphids in check. All in all, a fantastically beautiful day in the orchard.

We have been busy in real life, if not on this page. We pruned the entire orchard in late February to mid March, and planted new trees where others died so that the orchard is once again filled in. A good thing we got all that completed in a timely manner, since the warm weather in April accelerated bud development. The trees are currently about 2 weeks ahead of schedule in terms of flowering and leafing out - the apple trees are likely to bloom this weekend, and the other fruit trees (plum, peach, pear and cherry) are in full bloom now. Hopefully enough pollinators are flying around that we will get good fruit set. We have sprayed our first sulfur of the season on the scab-susceptible varieties, and had a good wetting period. The idea with this treatment is that the fungal spores of the scab are released after a certain amount of warmth, when they get wet, and they need to stay wet to grow. The sulfur is sprayed on the leaves, where it changes the pH (acidity) of the water on the leaves and makes the leaf an inhospitable place for the fungus. Scab spores are only released for a limited period of time, so if there is sulfur on the trees for every wet period during that season, most of the scab damage can be avoided. Trees that are heavily infected with scab will lose all their leaves, which is very costly and stressful for the tree, and the fruit will develop black cankers. Some of the MacIntosh fruit look like walnuts when scab infection is bad enough. Luckily, a large portion of our orchard is scab resistant, so the sulfur sprays are unnecessary on those trees.

On the rest of our farm, the chickens are thrilled to be outside every day after a long winter trapped in their coop, and the sheep are once again eating fresh grass and turning up their noses at the hay. We have planted some early season vegetables, which are coming along slowly, and generally getting the gardens into shape for the prime growing season. And we got a puppy in March, Watermelon the labradoodle, who loves to herd escapee chickens back into their fence, watch the sheep, help us plant trees, and generally get her nose in every aspect of farm life.