After Apple Picking

The three younger boys and I returned to an orchard I visited a year ago in order to pick apples and peaches. That orchard has about 1900 trees in not a very large area: they have a high-density planting, at about a 5- or 6-foot spacing between trees, with maybe 8- or 10-feet between rows. (By comparison, our trees of about the same size are on an 8-foot spacing in row, and 12-foot spacing between rows.) Very compact.

Their trees, planted in 2000, have trunks the diameter of a large grapefruit. Next to our carrot-sized trunks, they looked absolutely enormous. And laden with fruit. The reality of what our orchard could produce (potentially about 17 tons of fruit), all in apple, peach, and cherry sizes, and the amount of work required to harvest all that fruit, hit me, just a bit. We definitely have our work cut out for us.

With temperatures again nearing triple-digits, no one wanted to work outside much. Phil did attempt to spray some more of his rootlet-growth mixture, but the constant pumping required made him give up. Hopefully before he gave himself tendonitis. We should look for a sprayer that would work mounted on the back of our truck (and, someday, a Gator). Save his arms!

He is constantly amazed at how much the cows eat. When we first put the animals in the very dense lower pasture, he wondered if they would ever be able to keep ahead of the growth, or if they would basically be in a state of perpetual eating, never able to get ahead of the rampant growth.

I, the pessimist (ahem: I would prefer to say "realist") figured it wouldn't take the cows more than four to six weeks.

Neither of us would have anticipated the actual reality: they have just about exhausted their food stuffs in that acre. Phil walked around today and figured they were about done. Back to feeding hay tomorrow. Bummer, bummer, bummer.

Some days contain more disappointment than others. For Phil, this was more of a downer day.

But yesterday he had suggested that we start a daily "I'm thankful for ..." comment, as he would like us to be characterized as a family of thankfulness. The boys' thankfulness yesterday was fairly random (Jadon said "gummi bears," even though he hadn't had any for weeks!).

But they had very sweet ones today. Phil was thankful Isaiah didn't break his neck when he bounced off the trampoline. I was thankful Joe didn't drown in the stock tank when he decided he'd go swimming in there unattended (!). Jadon was thankful Joe didn't die when he fell backward off the stepstool (I didn't even know about that one). Abraham said, "I really liked picking apples. I just really like apples." And Isaiah was thankful for applesauce.