Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton

All of the planting is done! 960 apple trees, 365 blueberries and 100 raspberries. We now have 74 varieties of fruit growing.

You may have noticed some big changes on the land this winter. We have cut down over 1000 of the huge old trees to make room for new plantings.

Don't be alarmed. This is a regular operation in an orchard. When one door cloese another opens, and the new stock that we will plant is of much better breeding and has much better disease resistance.

The long story is that while there were many benefits to having the land fallow for fourteen years, the old trees grew out on the top and shaded their lower limbs. On most of the big trees the first live branch was out of reach. Additionally, the blocks had been laid out for chemical management, lacking the airspace and even surface needed for organic management.

We honor the big old trees and thank them for feeding so many over their years. And we promise much better is on the way!

Here is a list of the perennial plantings we did this spring.

Apples, 118 trees, disease resistant stock

Plums, 12 trees

Sweet Cherry, 24 trees

Bush Cherry, 12 trees

Raspberry, 800 plants

Blueberry, 165 plants

Blackberry, 30 plants

Asparagus, 300 plants

OK. Let's get started. Everything on the farm that wasn't nailed down was auctioned off or otherwise sold. Might as well buy a shovel, rake and hoe. Oh, and a Bobcat to move heavy stuff around. How about a Gator to get around with tools? Better add a dump truck so there is something to fill with the Bobcat. Buying stuff takes a long time.

As an aside, let me say that craigslist has been much more productive than ebay. Looking back over the purchases, just about everything was found on craigslist. Although there is a lot more to choose from, I think the problem with ebay is the shipping costs, and usually not being able to check out the goods in person.

So a decision was made between us all to leave the funky house as it is, for now, and make do so we can fully concentrate on the land and farm operations.

first winter

This orchard is pretty run down. No equipment, repairs to do everywhere. It is certainly a clean slate. We have decided that the spirits of the old owner, his fathers and grandfather are happy with this turn of events, and are helping us.

We don't really have a good way to deal with snow yet. Everyone says that this is the biggest snow winter in a decade...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving '07 was very meaningful, coming just days after the final purchase. Alane and I had family turn out - parents, children, brothers, sisters, niece - plus Jim and Pete, the managers we have chosen to work with. Our Thanksgiving celebration was very rudimentary and in all ways the best one of our life. Well worth the price of admission.

Time to stand and deliver.

We took possession of the orchard on Thanksgiving day 2007. After some amount of cleaning and scrubbing and assembling a table and donated pots and pans we had the best First Thanksgiving ever.