Sweet Rose Farm

Well it took about a week and the snow is gone, the ground is thawing and I think it won’t be long for the trees to start their budding process.

A view from the top of the orchard on March 7, 2015.  Pruning is complete.

Every year we have been adding birdhouses to our pest management and conservation efforts.  We have 12 swallow boxes and 4 kestrel boxes currently and will be making more this winter.  Last week I cleaned out most of the boxes to get them ready for the spring.  All boxes that I cleaned had nests from the last year.

Rose and I are out collecting scions from plum, Asian pear and peach trees.  We will try our first attempt at grafting in the spring.  I have a few trees that failed to take and only the rootstock is flourishing.  Here one of my few plum trees that made it will supply the plum scions.  You ever notice how shy Rose is when the camera is on her?  Here are a few more shots of her posing demurely.

I was able to do a trellis test section a couple weeks back. On the end and center brace posts I mounted a five foot oak 3×3 with 10 inch J bolts to extend the post between 9 and 10 feet.  I braced the end and center posts and installed a high tensile wire a 3 and 5 feet.  Eventually I will double back and put wires at 7 and 9 feet as well.

In between the brace posts I hand drove oak 5 foot  3×3’s at 30 foot intervals and attached a ten foot steel post using 4 inch bolts.  I used the center brace posts to start a new section of wire to the end posts, so each wire was a total of 150 feet long.  After putting a strainer on  each wire, the trellis was nice and tight with just a little bit of give to it, but not so much that it strained  the hand driven posts.  Here is a picture of my help, working hard to stay warm.