North Star Orchard

A farm is not an island. Well, it could be on an island. It could even own an island. Mmmm…farming on a tropical island sounds mighty nice. I’ll have to think more on that…

But what I mean here is that a farm is not an entity unto itself; it depends on the support of many others. The obvious others? The farm owners, our farm helpers, customers, and CSA members. The not-so-obvious others are the business and individuals without which the farm could not function and, well, grow.

For us there’s any number of important support others. This is like the list of credits at the end of a movie. Most people know they’re there, but they don’t really watch them. For those few of you who might be watching, here’s some of the business/people in our ‘credits’:

Stoltzfus Farm Service
Anderson Truck and Auto
Radbill Automotive
One Village Coffee
Perk
Chester County Crop Care
Nolt’s Produce Supply
Rainflo Irrigation
Bauman Family Apple Butter
Tie Dye Guru
Google
Constant Contact
Veni Vortex
Siteground
Credo Mobile
Phil Brown Welding
Kubota
Giant
Turkey Hill
Inverbrook Farm
Pennypack Farm
Charlestown Farm
Quiet Creek Farm
CCEDC (w/ Suzanne Milshaw)
Farmers’ Markets: West Chester, Phoenixville, Oakmont, Headhouse, Clark Park, Emmaus, Upper Merion – and all the people who work hard to make those markets happen.
…and more

Who’s on YOUR list of credits?

(Sophie has been a full-time helper since spring 2007)

Background: I don’t really keep track of what I’ve done in the past… there’s too much to do in the present! Plus, I always have to be on the look out for rabbits, treats, concrete trucks, and Amish buggies… I can’t spend time thinking about the past. What if one of them shows up?!

Why are you working at North Star Orchard? Wait, I’m working? I was just having fun… that’s not work!

What do you want to do when you grow up? I’m four… I’m already grown up!

Least favorite farm job: Fighting groundhogs, accidentally biting frogs, going in the house, hiding from thunder, waiting for Mom to come home.

Favorite farm job: Getting treats and toys, chasing concrete trucks that go past my house, barking at buggies, scouring the farm to chase out those pesky rabbits, watching people do things in the barn.

Favorite vegetable/ fruit: I really like Housi Asian pears and some of the really sweet apples. Carrots and Brussels sprouts are awesome, too.

Favorite flavor of ice cream: I’m not sure if the blog’s reading audience would want to know just what I like to snack on while I’m running around the farm…

This is the time of year when everyone seems to be fighting off a little something, be it a cold or flu, and I’m grateful that I work outside and am not trapped inside with all those germs. However, we’re all literally “under the weather,” affected by what the sky throws at us, even though we sometimes as a culture pretend not to be. Case in point: Just over a week ago in our area, the Brandywine Creek rose to flood levels and many major state routes as well as smaller roads were closed in places due to high water. But the world carried on, everyone attempting to drive to work as usual. And, surprise! Some were met with confused traffic jams on detour that lasted for hours.

As farmers, we’re one of the few remaining professions in this country that seriously takes the weather into account to plan our day. Often, we North Star employees wake up to phone messages from Ike or Lisa, with the morning’s weather-dependent plan of action for the day. People are often curious how a certain weather event affects what we do at work. If we can, we avoid or plan around working in the rain. Some things can’t happen; peach picking, for example, needs to wait until the peach fuzz has dried off a bit. Tomatoes and peppers shouldn’t be disturbed while their foliage is wet, for fear of spreading fungal diseases. There are inside tasks that can be done, like packing CSA shares, washing vegetables, or planting seeds in the greenhouse. But some days, we have to persevere. Last Monday, with a steady rain and the temperature flirting with fifty degrees, we needed to pick vegetables for the CSA. The week before, with the Olympic pears needing to come off the trees and intermittent rain showers for days, we spent the day out in the orchard, hiding out in the box truck at intervals to avoid the worst of it.

We’re a motley crew on days like this – hats, brightly colored and mismatched rain suits, rubber boots, and – if we’re really desperate – neoprene gloves that act like a wetsuit to keep your hands “warm” in cold water. This is often the limiting factor in rain – nothing will slow you down like cold, numb hands. Wet feet are a close second, and rain seeping down the inside of your sleeves is a major annoyance, but not good enough reason to stop. Spirits are varied on a rainy day. Most of us find our minds wandering to daydreams of a hot cup of tea and a warm blanket; some of us find it “refreshing” and enjoy the challenge.

And what about the trees? How do they feel about the weather? Well, this season I’m sure they’re wishing that the rain could have been spaced out a bit more evenly. All of this rain came as Chester County had entered a drought watch, the lowest of the state’s three official classifications of drought conditions. Some of the trees were affected, their fruit ripening even earlier than expected (in a year when the season’s already ahead of schedule) and dropping fruit prematurely due to drought stress, which complicated our efforts to pick the fruit at the optimum moment. Rainstorms can also be detrimental, with high winds flinging fruit from trees. Full-size Olympic pears flying around; now that’s no joke! For this reason, we take special care to remove the fruit from the tips of branches when we’re thinning the Asian pear crop. And you can imagine the impact of even a brief hail storm on an orchard. A whole season’s harvest can be ruined in a matter of minutes. We had a not-so-severe hailstorm this summer; perhaps you’ve even seen a piece of fruit or two that was “kissed by the hail” with a tiny, cosmetic blemish. Other weather events can have a lasting impact on the trees. While an annual crop can be wiped out and tilled in, perennial crops like fruit trees are an investment. When disaster strikes, you try to pick up the pieces as best you can. Last winter’s blizzard left us scrambling to devise the best way to deal with split peach trees and to correct broken scaffold branches in the young apples.

Obviously (I hope), the weather plays a huge role in agriculture. In an orchard, weather patterns determine which varieties you can plant – different varieties have different levels of cold hardiness and chill requirement; each type of fruit requires certain conditions to reach peak flavor. An apple that loves upstate New York won’t fair as well in southeastern Pennsylvania and vice versa. Weather patterns also make some areas more ideal for growing beautiful fruit. The major fruit producing areas of Washington and California, for example, have a summer dry season without rain, which makes a world of difference for the control of fungal diseases that thrive in wet, humid conditions. Furthermore, in a world where climate change is already manifesting itself in eccentric weather conditions that affect agriculture, a commitment to eating locally means that everyone, not just those of us who spend our days out in the elements, should pay a bit more attention to just how “under the weather” we really are.

When I gave one good friend the news that I was going to be working at an orchard, he laughed at me. Not to disparage my choice of career in agriculture, but because I’m short. I told him: that’s what ladders are for! And it’s true – there’s nothing I can’t reach with the use of a ladder or the Brownie (the hydraulic lift built for orchard use). Sometimes, I think it’s even helpful to be small – I can squeeze between crowded branches or the the wires in the trellis system, climb under limbs and find all of the lowest fruit. But, yes, usually, it would be to my advantage to have several more inches to work with or the coveted long fingers and wide handspan of the natural-born apple picker.

Today I felt especially diminutive in the orchard. To be honest, I felt like I was in a cartoon – a small character in a world of magical, supersized fruit. I was picking the Royalty apples in the young orchard. The advice I got before I headed out to pick: Use two hands for the big ones! The Royalty apples are freakishly large, some weighing in right around 2 lbs. They’re more than a meal; they’re an entire pie. Royalty is a large apple to begin with, but the trees in the first few years of production give especially large fruit. Last year, we dubbed them “SuperRoys” and separated out the largest to appeal to customers who go for that sort of thing.

Notwithstanding my 5’3″ reach, even the Royalty trees – topping out as some of the tallest apples after three seasons in the ground – can be mostly harvested from the ground. This might defy your image of an apple orchard, but commercial apple trees these days tend to be shrinking. The trend toward dwarfing rootstock means that apple trees might top out at 10 or even 6 feet. Every grafted apple tree has two components: the rootstock and the scion. The rootstock controls the size of the tree (as well as many other qualities), and the scion contributes the variety (eg Royalty, Gold Rush, etc.). A smaller tree means that it’s easier to reach (less ladder work), but also, as with most agricultural research of late, the development of these dwarfing rootstocks is an attempt to increase productivity. To produce apples, you need sunlight. The most sunlight reaches the outside edges of the tree, and there’s less and less light as you travel toward the inside of the tree. This shaded interior is what one of my teachers fondly referred to as the “zone of firewood production” (as opposed to fruit production). Smaller trees have less “inside,” with more outer edge relative to interior than larger trees, thus they can produce more apples per acre. (This is an oversimplification of some pretty complex interactions, but you get the general idea.)

At North Star, the youngest orchard is at the home farm near Cochranville. The apple trees are noticeably more dwarfed than the apple trees at the two other leased properties the farm grows trees on; in fact, their size and resultant weaker root system means that they require a trellis to withstand the strongest winds. Most of these trees are on “Bud 9″ rootstock, which means that they’re 30% the size of a standard tree and will offer a crop only two to three years after being in the ground. (Officially, that’s Budagovsky 9 in the tradition of naming rootstocks after the research station where they originated, and then shortening them to a confusion of M’s, MM’s, Bud’s, and random numbers.) At North Star, the apple trees in this orchard are in their third year and producing a surprisingly large crop for such young trees. At maturity, we’ll keep them at about 12 feet tall and continue to see a lot of apples in the first tier of branches that’s easily reached from the ground.

Maybe the orchard is a cartoon world after all – shrinking trees, gigantic apples… An orchard is not a wild place; it’s very much shaped by the human touch. From breeding to grafting to pruning, the trees themselves are human (co)creations. The orchard at large is also engineered, the tree spacing carefully considered for optimum production, the rows and alleyways designed around the tractor the way Los Angeles was designed around the automobile. It’s a planned endeavor every step of the way, a conversation with Mother Nature, but one where she always gets the last word.

(Rootstock info from The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips)

If you were wondering how the North Star crew spent their Labor Day, they were, well, laboring. Farmers don’t get to commemorate all the legal holidays. The peaches and the pears don’t stop; neither do we.

Although, in the interest of full disclosure here, I was not laboring on Labor Day. One of my closest friends decided to get married smack dab in the middle of Hosui harvest, so I snuck away for a few days. It felt strange to leave – farmers don’t get “summer vacation.” Farming (at least full-time on a small-scale diversified farm) is more than a job – it’s a lifestyle. Instead of finding happiness in a week on the beach, you had better be content with your daily routine. Farm jobs are unique in other ways as well. In today’s world, what other job opportunity would you find that advertises to hire a couple or that provides you with your housing and most of your food? Where your work week might fluctuate from 70 hours one month to zero in another?

What is Labor Day after all? I know it’s supposed to mark the end of summer, but the true start to fall isn’t for another two and a half weeks. In any case, the historic Labor Day seems like much more of a morale booster, created by politicians and management, than a holiday of and by the workers, like May Day. Along those lines, I certainly don’t mean to begrudge anyone their eight hour work day or any other hard-won benefits, but I would like to point out that farm work is a special case and has never really enjoyed the conditions won by the other professions. (For example, from the U.S. Department of Labor: “Certain small farms are exempt from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the FLSA. Workers engaged in agricultural employment (as defined by the FLSA) are exempt from the overtime requirements.”) And if you own and operate a small farm, any hourly wage or time requirements are out the window. Making a living without supplemental income is not easy. According to FarmAid: “In 2008, the average household income for farmers generated by their farming businesses alone is projected at $5,900, which is down more than 30 percent from 2007 estimates and accounts for less than 10 percent of total income projections for family farmers.”

I realize that I’m lucky in the agricultural world – I feel well-compensated for my work and “even though” I have a college degree, most of the people that I know think that it’s cool that I work on a farm. They’re fascinated by learning about what sort of work I actually do (What do you do all winter? Do you drive a tractor? What time do you get up in the morning?). I benefit from the last few decades in which certain farmers have worked hard to rebuild relationships with their customers and to raise awareness about agricultural issues.

But I know that for the vast majority of people laboring on farms in this country, there is not quite the same cachet attached to their work. Farmers have long struggled with negative stereotypes and farm workers with mistreatment. As a nation, we’re out of touch with the reality of farm work, because so few of us do it. According to the EPA, less than 1% of the population claims farming as an occupation. We’ve forgotten things that our grandparents likely understood: what it’s like to work on a farm and how much skill and determination it takes. Perhaps more of us are at least familiar with a farm or two than was the case a decade ago. CSA memberships and farm tours are much more common now, so that consumers have more opportunity to step foot on a farm. Books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma have taught us a lot about our food system. But this still doesn’t mean that we’re in touch with the reality of farm labor for the majority of farm workers in this country. And how can we appreciate or value something that we know nothing about?

I was privileged a few years ago to spend one morning working alongside (well, mostly lagging along behind) a crew of strawberry pickers in central California. My group (a bunch of mostly college graduates studying organic farming) was warned that we were not to talk to the guys – our presence alone would already be slowing them down. A humbling thing to hear when you’re aspiring to be a “real” farmer worth your salt. Well, it certainly didn’t seem like we slowed them down, because they lapped us in no time, all the while teasing us in Spanish. Meanwhile, we did the best we could, at least while preoccupied with commiserating about how much our backs hurt us only a half hour in. Faster than you could imagine, the entire field was picked, and everyone was piling into their cars to drive to the next field, about twenty miles away. The whole experience was humbling; these guys (and yes, they were all guys) had skills.

Other than this one morning, my knowledge of the reality for most farm laborers in this country is next to nil. A reality that might include being paid piecework, lacking health insurance while performing one of the more dangerous jobs, and never having any contact with the people who eat the food you grow. Issues of farm labor are something that doesn’t get talked about as much as environmental sustainability or the organic vs. local debate. So, start by thinking of us working away at North Star (and, for the most part, enjoying ourselves) while you’re having your barbecue – you’ve seen our smiling faces on the website, so that shouldn’t be too hard. But then, just maybe, try to envision all those farm workers out there whose faces you’re not seeing.

You didn’t hear this from me, but the farmers’ market scene is a bit of a performance. I don’t say this to question quality or integrity, but rather to point out that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. What you see on a Saturday morning, or in your CSA bag, is only the cream of the crop. That produce had to go through a lengthy audition process to make it out on stage. Only the highest quality produce makes the cut.

Behind the scenes is the not so glamorous side of agriculture: dirt, rot, bugs, and the tedious work of sorting through all that. In the packing room, we speak a language of “ones” and “twos,” “firsts” and “seconds.” The firsts are what you see, the seconds (as in “second quality”) find some other home – it might be apple cider, Asian pear butter, or the employee fridge. (Come to think of it – as a farmer, I don’t know that I’ve eaten “first quality” produce in nearly a decade, and I’m no worse the wear for it…) If there were such a category, I suppose the number threes would be the produce that doesn’t even make it to the sorting table. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say, fruits and vegetables will eventually go the way of all the earth, and they’re not all going at the same rate.

As a result, there’s more time than you might imagine spent in sorting, grading, and schlepping fruit around. Some things are “field-sorted” or graded as they’re picked. Others, like apples, are brought into the barn, and then sorted in a separate process. We spend hours at the grading table, giving every piece of fruit a once-over before it goes into the cooler. One or two of us feed apples into one end of the grader where rotating brushes give the apples a bit of a polish. They roll out the other end where one or two of us are inspecting each and every apple before it goes into a wooden crate. If we’re really cranking, there will be a fifth person to expedite the whole process and just move crates around as needed. If we were growing for the wholesale market, the station would also be outfitted with a sizing mechanism to sort the apples in increments down to the 1/8 of an inch. (And if we were really fancy – electronic sensors, computer software and digital imaging would take the place of human touch.) “Too small” apples would be rejected and the rest would be priced according to size. At North Star, there is still such a thing as “too small,” but since we’re selling directly to our customers, we can include more of those apples that are the perfect size for a quick snack or for a child. Sorting criteria fluctuate with the variety. “Too small,” “too green,” and “too ripe” can look entirely different depending on the apple variety.

While other points on the agricultural continuum, from planting to eating, have been glamorized or merely familiarized, this whole intermediate step that can include sorting, grading, washing, bunching, packing, stacking, loading, and unloading is nearly invisible. These are less captivating tasks, I know, but the only image of this sort of work that I can conjure up from the common imagination is that one “I Love Lucy” episode. You know, the one where Lucy and Ethel try out a job in a chocolate factory? . They’re at the conveyor belt, and the chocolates keep coming faster and faster… Well, I have those moments, too, when apples are spilling out of the sorter, faster than my brain can make the decision “one or two?” But, unlike Lucy, I can flip a switch and make them stop. (And, unlike Lucy, I don’t get to eat chocolate!)

In a world where the vast majority of our agriculture is out of sight and out of mind, there are, unfortunately, a number of invisible sectors in our food system. Joining a CSA is a great way to bring your food source a few steps closer. But you’re still not there on the farm with us day in and day out to see how we spend our time. Just like with any job, whether you’re creating spreadsheets, preparing annual reports, or sorting apples, there’s the mundane and nitty-gritty work that keeps everything rolling. And, behind the scenes are glimpses of some truths that used to be common sense to folks. Farming, like life, isn’t all number ones and sweet-smelling peaches. That whole “one bad apple spoils the bunch” business didn’t come from nowhere! And, hopefully, we’ll find it before it gets to you.

(Josh is a full-time seasonal helper this year)

Background: I grew up gardening with my mom.  We had a small veggie garden that consisted of 4 raised beds.  Just recently, my wife and I started a much larger garden with over 40 varieties of vegetables, herbs and fruits- this keeps us busy all summer long.  When we have eaten our fill, we can most of our extra harvest.  This way, we are fed almost all year!

Why are you working at North Star Orchard?: I love working at North Star Orchard, not just because Ike and Lisa are the best bosses, ever.  A supporter of CSAs and sustainability, this farm allows me to work someplace that I not only enjoy but share similar values.

What do you want to do when you grow up?: As I look towards my future, I see myself continuing to work in this field.  It may be hard work, but it is something that is important to me and my family.  Plus, who doesn’t like to literally enjoy the ‘fruits’ of their labor?!

Favorite farm job (so far!): My favorite job here on the farm is hoeing because it is so much fun.

Least favorite farm job: My least favorite farm job is gathering the kale. 

Favorite vegetable/fruit: I love Brussels sprouts, especially when they are sautéed with some garlic and olive oil (and cooked by my wife!)
Favorite ice cream: Mint chocolate chip- please note that I will accept ice cream donations willingly.

(Genevieve is a full-time seasonal helper this year)

Background: My educational background is in city planning, and I’ve been involved with and passionate about local food in Philly for the past few years. Originally, I grew up in the beautiful mountains of northeast Tennessee, and I’m from a family of 5 (one of whom is a twin brother).

Why are you working at North Star Orchard?: I’m interested in really learning how an organic farm operates; I want literal hands-on experience to understand how it all works and to see if it’s the life and work for me.

What do you want to do when you grow up?: I want to be a happy, compassionate, and productive human being.

Favorite farm job (so far!): At this point, it’s probably transplanting, as you feel like you’re filling out the farm and setting the veggies off to really start growing!

Least favorite farm job: I’d say any task where you’re likely to be surprised by multi-legged insects (like moving a long-standing rock pile) is not on my list of favorites.

Favorite vegetable/fruit: I really love lemon cucumbers and blueberries.
Favorite ice cream: Chocolate chip cookie dough is a great one.

I really like those in-between times of the year, when spring blossoms into summer, summer fades away into fall, when fall hardens into winter (just kidding on that last one). Seasonality is more tangible; you feel on the cusp of something new, even though you’ve experienced it every year of life so far. Perhaps it’s because my birthday falls during one of those times, but I also like that these passages are rooted in natural phenomena: the shortest day of the year, the longest, and those with equal proportions of day and night. Our cultural ideas of the seasons don’t always match up – we embraced summer weeks ago, pulled out our white linen and headed down the shore, but summer officially begins on Monday, June 21st (at 11:28 am to be precise, if you’re hanging out in Greenwich, England). And I’m always amazed (and thankful) that on the first day of winter (winter solstice, the shortest day of the year), the days actually begin to get longer. Winter’s just begun, but the sun is returning. The flip side, however, is that summer solstice signifies the days getting shorter.

Not to get too scientific or biodynamic-sounding on you (because I’m not qualified in either realm), but this seems fitting in the orchard. Spring is the time of new growth: flowering, fruit set, shoot extension. As the days get longer, the branches also elongate (about 12 to 18 inches, for example, in healthy, productive apple trees each year). Spring is now past; vegetative growth has slowed or stopped, and fruit is enlarging and ripening. As the days shorten once again, the accumulation of all that rampant sunshine, transformed by photosynthesis into carbohydrates, is expressed in the fruit. And in the garden at large, planting is almost over; we’re buckling down to reap the harvest for the next several months. The natural cycle – of growth, fruiting, harvest, storage – is of course in line with the seasons.

You’ve probably seen pictures of the bloom at North Star, and you’ve tasted the results of the harvest, but what’s going on in the orchard in that in-between time, before spring gives way to summer and that glorious six months of the year when there’s fruit to harvest? What have we been up to? Certainly not sitting around twiddling our thumbs and watching the fruit ripen on the trees. Spring is a very busy time of year in an orchard, especially in a young orchard like the three-year old orchard in Cochranville.

Thinning and spreading. These are the key words. What exactly are we thinning and spreading? It sounds like we’re preparing to paint a house, or perhaps deal with an oil spill. Thinning is a literal thinning out of the fruit. As soon as bloom is over and pollination has taken place, you can see the tiny fruitlets forming at the base of each flower. Every flower has an ovary, and if it’s pollinated, it will form a fruit. The trees do some of their own thinning. “June drops” are the fruitlets that fall off the tree of their own accord (yes, right around June). They’re easy to spot – the fruits aren’t sizing up, and they’re a different color, often a not-so-healthy shade of yellow. Even still, the “fruit set” of a tree is, in our opinion, usually overambitious. The tree doesn’t generally thin enough to meet human standards. The fewer fruits on a tree, the bigger and juicier those fruits become. The tree has a certain amount of resources to spend, and if there are “too many” fruits left on the tree, those sugar resources will be spread awfully thin.

So we come in, armed with red clippers if it’s Asian pears, or just fingers if it’s peaches or plums. We remove a lot of fruit, leaving just one every four or six or eight or twelve inches, depending on the variety of tree. As we thin, we’re also selecting for the biggest, nicest, undamaged fruits with the best position on the branch. Catch the Asian pear thinning action on YouTube. Every spring the crew spends weeks and weeks working their way through the orchard, branch by branch, tree by tree.

Spreading, one of the main strategies in tree training, is crucial for the development of young orchard trees. Training and pruning are the two main tools we have for shaping fruit trees, to guide them into the desired form and structure. Well-trained trees will need less corrective pruning later on and will develop a stronger, more fruitful framework, even producing fruit at a younger age. The goal of branch spreading is to “set” the branches at an ideal angle. Branches that grow very upright are vegetative, produce less fruit, and have weak angles. In other words, they form a sharper angle relative to the trunk of the tree, which is more likely to break under the weight of developing fruit. Branches with wider angles (30 to 60 degrees from the trunk is ideal, depending on which tree you’re talking about) are desirable because they will produce more fruit and are stronger, less likely to break. Without getting too technical, this works because there is an inverse relationship between vegetative growth and fruiting growth in trees. The more vegetative growth (i.e. leaves and branches) the tree puts its energy into, the less fruit it produces. Inside the tree, this is all controlled by hormones with fun names like auxins and gibberellins. By simply manipulating the position of a branch (up or down) you can manipulate the expression of these hormones. Pull a branch down, and it will produce more fruit sooner.

So, during that window in spring when the tree is actively growing and the branches are more pliable, we head into the orchard to do what I’ve affectionately referred to as “torturing baby trees.” The angles of very small branches can be affected by tools as small as a toothpick or clothespin. Larger branches are spread with metal spreaders of various lengths with pointy ends. One end sticks into the trunk and the other holds the branch in place at the desired angle. Another more drastic, and effective, approach is to tie branches down. A clip is inserted into the ground that holds a loop of string. Another string is then attached that connects the loop to the branch in question, holding it in place. Some of the trees (plums especially are notoriously vigorous) wind up with so many strings that it looks like some kind of Maypole celebration is happening in the orchard. By the end of the season’s growth, the tree’s new woody tissue will have hardened, and the angle we’ve chosen will become permanent.

I wish I could say that we were done thinning and spreading for the season, just in time to celebrate the solstice. But on a farm, there’s always more to be done, and, inevitably, it should have been done yesterday. I wish we were ready to simply revel in the ripe fruit coming off the trees (the first plums were harvested on Friday!), but there are more apple and peach trees to spread, more peaches and pears to be thinned. I suppose it’s also fitting that on the longest days of the year, there’s the most to be done.

When mid-May hits, a flurry of activity begins in the orchard. It’s fruit thinning season!

Remember all those gorgeous blooms of spring? Well, almost every one of those blooms sets a baby fruit…and there are just too many on each tree. From the tree’s perspective, this is a good thing. Since it’s just aiming to reproduce, the more potential seeds the better. From the perspective of a fruit eater, however, there’s just too many fruits on a tree. The development of excellent flavor is dependent upon the balance of the fruit load and the energy a tree can put into it. For nearly all fruit trees, we have to thin off quite a number of baby fruits, so the tree can put its energies (and sugars!) into the fruits that remain.

Apple, peach, and plum thinning can go relatively quickly (although in the case of plums, it can take an entire day to thin one single tree!). But thinning Asian pears is what takes up most of our time in the orchard during thinning season – both because we have so many trees and they set so many little fruits! One of our helpers a few years ago took it upon herself to count how many pears she cut off a single full-grown Hosui Asian pear tree, and the result was right around 2000! That’s 2000 individual cuts per tree to get the job done. (quite frankly, Mo, I’m not sure I really wanted to know that!)

Time flies by though – most of us listen to ipods or other listening gizmos. Once you know what you’re doing, the task isn’t too hard and it’s nice to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks while working. Personally, I get a lot of ‘reading’ done during thinning season – cool!

Fruit thinning season finishes up (hopefully!) by mid- to late July.