Pie Cherries in Bloom

My gorgeous Montmorency sour cherry tree is packed with blossoms this year. And our two colonies of Italian(?) honeybees come this weekend, hopefully in time to fertilize the heck out of each and every one of these flowers!

By the 4th of July, I'm optimistic that I'll have at least enough homegrown sour cherries to make one purty little lattice-topped pie that I may or may not end up eating all by myself with a fat scoop of goats milk vanilla ice cream on top. Hurry, Summer, HURRY!

This is our little wood pile, cut from a massive chunk of an apple tree that fell during this past Winter's ice storms.

As much of a bummer as it was to lose such a large piece of our biggest apple tree, I can't help but smile when I see this log's little heart, and know that it was in there the whole time, and it was only on account of losing that limb to the ice storm that we were ever able to see it.

Even during the rough patches, life is good. :)

Pickin' & Grinnin'

Over the course of the past week or so, it has become increasingly clear to us that the apples and pears were ready to come down. In fact, Scarlet and I would go and gather the windfalls each evening to add to our goats' rations, and were noticing a definite increase in the amount of apples committing hara-kiri each day. Picking time was nigh.

But picking apples from our non-dwarf, very old apples trees is not a task to be undertaken lightly. This is no picturesque, Pinterest-photo op. This is a bark-chunks-to-the-eye, ladder-teetering, crinked-neck, farmer versus tree, battle royale.

Apple to the cheekbone - coming up!

Our tallest apple tree is in excess of 15 feet high. And in the torturous way of many fruit trees, seems to grow it's biggest, most perfects fruits in the unreachable branches located 15 feet up, dead center. Basically, they're completely inaccessible, which isn't to say that we ever learn to just leave those apples alone. Nope, our cider-greed blinds us to the futility of our pursuit.

This year, we judiciously decided to throw in the towel (for now) after managing to pick and knock down 140+ pounds of cider and sauce-worthy apples, leaving another frustratingly impossible to reach 30-50 pounds still in the trees.

We also managed to collect another 13 pounds of smooshed, bug chomped or otherwise "imperfect" apples to share with our goats.

The goaties' share of the goods.

Our share! :)

As if our epic apple haul weren't enough, we also finally had a pear crop. Granted, at just 20 pounds, it wasn't huge, but when measured against our previous best-ever crop of one lonely little pear, we counted ourselves exceedingly lucky to end up so flush with fruit.

Aren't they purty?!?

With the picking being done, we now enter phase two of the fruit-a-palooza; washing, peeling and juicing. Hooboy!

With 160+ pounds of apples and pears that will need dealing with, I predict a busy week, filled with intense paring knife, apple peeler and steam juicer usage. I'll have to keep my eye on the prize - that first pint of ice cold homemade cider.

Like last weekend's jam-o-rama, this fruit-a-palooza may require a little external motivation to get through. Cue the motivational montage!

:)

Early Spring Planting in the Hollow

As much as I'd like to be putting some of my veggie starts in the ground this week (or even this month, for that matter) it is still much too wet here to work the ground for the new garden. So, I'm going to turn my focus to putting in a few trees and some ground cover.

I ordered a lovely assortment of heirloom fruit trees, the majority of which were unfortunately out of stock. So we probably won't be adding any new apple trees this year, dang it, but I did get my hands on a few cherry trees. Here's what I picked up today-

1 Black Tartarian Sweet Cherry
1 Montmorency Pie Cherry
2 Sugar Maples
2 Scarlet Oaks
1 Monkey Puzzle Tree
4 each of Kinnikinnick ("bear berry") and Wintergreen ground cover

The trees will be split between our orchard rows and our chicken yard, and the ground cover will all go in the chicken yard. We're trying to control the rate of erosion in the chicken yard by replacing some of the now-devoured grass with spreading ground covers that do well in clay soils. There aren't many of them. The fact that these produce a fruit that we may or may not be able to get to before the chickens do is just a bonus. ;)

I found out after I bought just the one Monkey Puzzle tree that you actually need a male and a female in order for the tree to produce nuts. Did you know that Monkey Puzzle trees made food? The cones contain up to a few HUNDRED nuts each, which, when roasted, are supposed to be quite tasty.

Unfortunately, the trees have to be upwards of 30 years old before they can bear fruit, so I won't be reaping my nutty reward any time soon. Their unique look, and the fact that they can live to be 1000 years old sold me on them anyway. Maybe my 10 times great-grandkids will like Monkey Puzzle nuts? I'll plant some for them, just in case.

Cabin Fever Diaries - Dispatch #2

Three days of fairly heavy snow were followed by a day and night of freezing rain. This is very bad news in the land of trees. :(

The snow that has accumulated on trees, power lines, etc., melts just enough to refreeze again as a clinging, solid crust on whatever it is adhered to. It doesn't take long for the weight to become more than the trees and wires can bear, and things start falling and collapsing.


One of two ornamental Japanese(?) willows that were thrashed by the weight of the cumulative snow & ice.

Last night while the power was out and the snow and ice were at the peak of their destructive potential, limbs and whole trees would snap all of a sudden with a crack like a rifle shot, followed by a thunderous rush of snow. Normally wispy evergreen branches and fronds came raining down on houses, cars and power lines. Each pop and crack woke me with a start, wondering if the house (surrounded on all sides by cedar, fir, maple and alder) would take a hit. Going from deep, exhausted sleep to fight-or-flight adrenalized panic a dozen times per night sucks.

Besides the fear of having timber fall on our heads while we slept, we fared just fine. Our wood stove is a beast, and we used it to warm ourselves, cook our food and melt snow for water when the well water ran out.


"White Out Soup" (aka - everything that needed to be cooked before it spoiled), the greatest coffee pot in the world, and tea water for Bill.

Our power is back - for now. And luxuries like flushing the toilet and being able to wash the dishes are back and will not soon be taken for granted, I assure you.

The Bright Side of Bad Weather

Last night we got wailed on over here in Western Washington. The winds were as high as 60 mph, and let me tell you, being inside a little old house in a little hollow on a peninsula doesn't help to lessen the feeling of living in a wind tunnel in any way. After a night of howling and banging, I was scared to go outside this morning and see what might be missing, and/or freshly impaled by a tree limb.

But the goats wait for no wimp, so I had just decided to suck it up and go outside for morning critter patrol when I felt my couch gently, rather soothingly, rock back and forth under me. Yes indeed, we had ourselves an earthquake.

It was a small one, especially by West Coast standards, just a lil' 4.2, but fresh on top of a clobbering windstorm it was a little unsettling.

I sat back down for a few more minutes to wig-out on facebook. Am I nuts or did we just have a little earthquake? Almost immediately, my cousin Jen seconded my quake theory, and a quick trip to the USGS website confirmed it. Yikes what a morning! When do the other plagues arrive? I'm hoping that the four horsemen of the apocalypse get food poisoning or take a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something on the way to my house. I've had plenty of excitement for one day, thanks.

Anyway, beyond the inconvenience of navigating my house by head-lamp and this morning's initial world-coming-apart-at-the-seams paranoia, all inhabitants of Boggy Hollow escaped mother nature's wrath unharmed, which I will call blessing number one.

Blessing number two came from the skies in the form of limbs and branches. The wind knocked down a lot of tender branch tips as well as quite a few heftier limbs. The goats LOVE a good fresh evergreen tree and there were literally tons of them laying in the streets throughout the city. I only needed to go about 20 feet from my front yard to collect a yard cart full of them from the street in front of my neighbor's house. I'd say that we jammed a good 30 pounds of Douglas Fir needles & branch bits into my cart, which will supplement the goats' hay & sweet feed rations quite nicely, for free.

I may go get another cart load from a little further down the lane, but for now I'm going to chalk up my free goat chow score and my safe little house as my wins for the day, and sit back with a hot cup of coffee and a blazing fire and just enjoy my many blessings, in whatever strange forms they choose to present themselves.

I like to prune it, prune it

The modest increase in daylight seems to have given rise to a mild case of Spring fever in yours truly. Unfortunately, my cranky arthritic joints aren't really on board with all of the gardening & cleaning chores that my panicked brain insists that I get cracking on. As a sort of mind-body compromise, I've been doing some of the lighter yard work, like pruning my zillions of trees.

In reviewing the layout of our yard and garden over the past year, we've had to make a few difficult decisions about which plants and trees will be staying, and which ones will not. It is honestly painful for me to cut down a healthy tree, but I've decided that sacrificing a few for the good of the many is the best course of action. They are just too crowded, and if left to grow to maturity, will completely blot out the sun in several parts of our yard. And so, seven or eight of my poor little trees have a date with destiny this coming weekend. I console myself by knowing that the harvested wood will be used well, and by promising to plant at least as many new trees (in more appropriate locations and of varieties better suited to our climate and our family's needs) as trees that will be taken down.

In fact, just today I picked up a 3-variety dwarf apple tree from Costco. It will bear us Gala, Chehalis and (my favorite) Honeycrisp apples, yet remain nice and compact, without throwing too much shade or crowding out other plants & trees. It is a little surprise gift for my darling husband, who makes a mean jug of hard cider and has been pining after (pun totally intended) his own fruit trees with which to make his potent potables. But before the reward comes the work, so angry knees & shoulders or not, I'll be outside quite a bit this week, pruning and chopping. Uhg.