Wow - okay, first, an apology: I'm sorry I've been neglecting the blog. I making a New Week's Resolution to be better at keep you up to date. (And I'll go back and fill in some of the exciting farm details that you've missed.)Today I started hand-thinning the apples. See, conventional farmers do chemical thinning. They spray any number of things (usually throwing in a pint of Sevin) on the trees, and the weaker apples die off, leaving minimal work to do by hand. I can't do that, though, 'cuz Sevin isn't exactly organic. So I get to go through the orchard and pick thousands and thousands of apples.
This might be a strange thing to say, but it's good that we have a bit of scab with year. It makes deciding which apples to pick really easy. See scab? Pick apple. As I make the orchard healthier, it's going to be harder to thin. I'll feel much guiltier. Poor little apples. They never got a chance.
This here is the first load. That is less than half of what I'll pull off the first row. (This year, I have 11 rows.)
Now I just have to figure out what to do with them. Compost, yes, but not all of them. Anyone out there have any ideas?
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