Walking in the Trees

It is a beautiful, sunny day for pruning the fruit trees. The calendar says it is time to prune and the added benefit is a nice day to do the work in. Ben is home for Christmas break from college and is enjoying the cold, snowy weather. Well he would be enjoying the snow if we had some this year.  At his school in Florida one of the things Cassie and he miss the most is the snow. Their school actually shines large 12 foot by 12 foot snow flakes on the side of the tall buildings to help encourage a festive spirit for the season. Cassie and Ben have been working hard everyday playing the ‘catch up’ game that farmers play in the winter time.  Along with the flooring project we’ve been working on, pruning the apple, cherry, apricot and pear trees; Cassie has been reorganizing the market storage supplies, cellar and throwing away old text books.  Umm isn’t it nice when you get in the cleaning mood so much can be accomplished?

Back to pruning fruit trees…when we first planted the orchard we bought some really tall ladders and would prune off the top of them; somewhere along the line one of our farmer friends suggested pruning from the ground so that we could pick from the ground, novel idea.  So we began the process of bringing our trees down to a lower level, trees that are only as tall as you can reach to prune, standing on the ground. Now that that they are pretty much that height and are old and strong, Ben finds it much easier to just ‘walk in the trees’ to prune them. All I can say is, “stay in the tree Ben and don’t let the ground come up to meet you”.