Old Common, Day to Day Technology. Waht do you hang onto?

[goeduck]

I have an old orchard that shows up on a 1860 survey and was described at that time as an old orchard. 160 years. Not many of the 150 original trees are left but I have grafted about 50 new trees off of the remaining old girls.

 

[Jstpssng]

The orchard has been in production for 120+ years but most of the present trees are first, maybe second, replacements. We need to replant several each year.


Note the tree on the left below is rotted, hollow, with a new primary trunk now taking over. Similar in the photo above. Many old trees continue like this.




This tree might be original. These tall trees are a lot of work to prune and harvest.




Replacements for 50 years now have been on semi-dwarf rootstock. Production is similar with less labor needed.


I feel like I'm living in a park. Every part of the orchard is unique and interesting and I'm out there all the time.
The neighbor's vineyard doesn't look like it would be as interesting to walk in and I never see anyone. Come to think of it last time I saw them was when they ripped out their apples.

(Pictures removed)

Now I understand. 40 years ago I used to prune from a 20 foot ladder, now if I can't reach a limb from my 13 footer it gets cut off. I worked a couple of winters at an orchard when I was just starting out, we pruned about 100 acres on one farm and 50 on the other. In spring we planted a lot of trees as they were rejuvenating the stock. That was 40 years ago, now one of the farms lays abandoned and has a big self storage place where we had planted trees. The "Farmland Trust" bought the other and ripped out all of the trees, the last time that I went past there were elk and red deer grazing where we had planted the new orchard.

You have a nice looking place there. It's a lot of work keeping an orchard up like that. I hope that somebody coming behind you continues your labor of love, so that the farm is there for another 120 years.

 

[the old grind]

Folks around here buy 'dwarf' fruit trees, plant them to get max Winter wind and sunlight, and furthest from possible pollinators.

After a few seasons, the trunks are as tall as I am but they're pruned to be needlessly tall & narrow vs short & broad. (like folks do with lilacs :laughing

5-6' tall trunks with most growth a bunch of 10-12' water sprouts don't look like 'dwarf'. Many remind of that Slim Jim guy with the foot tall spike hairdo.

I'm old-fashioned and still read a lot. Sharing a pruning guide can be fruitless when facebook time doesn't allow perusing it.

California, thanks for the free tour. You're good with whatever you use for a camera.

 

[California]

Thanks all.

Before good phone cameras I carried a Panasonic Travel Zoom pocket camera for wildlife photos. 10x optical zoom x 4x digital zoom. Recommended! I looked up my camera to make that link and discovered its now considered Old Common Day to Day Technology just like the thread topic.

A couple more pix just for fun.

Weasel.

Bobcat at 200 yards. Zoom, enlarged, then cropped. So far away that I couldn't tell if he had a tail until I examined the photo.

The big old trees need a lot of propping and still lose rotten limbs every year.

I cleaned up a row down by the ravine that long ago was abandoned to blackberry jungle. Look how the branches were reaching out for sunlight!

Almost harvest time. Golden Delicious.

I hope this orchard stays in production for my lifetime but the industry in general is dying. I do the tasks shown in the photos - backhoe the stumps, water the new plantings, add to the propping, mow the areas not disced. A contractor discs and sprays (several passes each) with his larger tractors, delivers and spreads several truckloads of turkey manure, and brings as many as 20 laborers to prune, thin, harvest. He operates apples and small vineyards at several parcels. He's making a living overall, mostly from his own grapes, and I'm making a little. If he retires I have a problem. Everyone else around here is in big dollar vineyard operations.

 

[MossRoad]

... If he retires I have a problem. Everyone else around here is in big dollar vineyard operations.

On the bright side, if you ever have to sell, you'll get enough to buy a nice place in Michigan orchard country and pocket enough change to last you a lifetime.

 

[California]

On the bright side, if you ever have to sell, you'll get enough to buy a nice place in Michigan orchard country and pocket enough change to last you a lifetime.

Nah. My roots are here. All my ancestors were in California before the transcontinental railroad. (Think Oregon Trail etc.). I'm not going anywhere.

This ranch is a continuation of family roots. See the Redwood tree in the background? I'm older than that Redwood. Grandma and I planted it when I was little.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I'm reminded of the role that apples played in the development of this country; there were a lot of apple orchards, and were raised for cider. Yep, our ancestors drank a lot of cider. I can recall when I was growing up, a lot of the old abandoned homesteads still had fruit trees standing near the home site; not necessarily a large orchard, but maybe 6 or 8 trees near the house. My Grand dad had a peach orchard, maybe a half acre.

All About Apples - HISTORY

 

[California]

I looked to respond to the post with a two-legged ladder and don't see it. ?? I've never seen one of those ladders for real, only in stories about the old days. Do you just lean it against a stable branch? We use Tallman tripod ladders.

I would be afraid to go very far up a two-legged ladder knowing how many rotten limbs are in the oldest tall trees. Also its common for a ladder leg to sink into a gopher hole and shift the ladder if you forgot to jump on the lowest step to test the ground before climbing. Seems like you might end up dangling from a limb if that type of ladder shifts and revolves after you go up. Are they more practical than they appear? The lighter weight would be good for carrying it.

That sounds like a real labor of love working to keep that old orchard alive. Is there still a packing house there that pays enough to make production profitable?

 

[California]

I can recall when I was growing up, a lot of the old abandoned homesteads still had fruit trees standing near the home site; not necessarily a large orchard, but maybe 6 or 8 trees near the house. My Grand dad had a peach orchard, maybe a half acre.

All About Apples - HISTORY

My other grandparents had a 100 acre ranch a couple of miles from here, mostly for grazing cattle and sheep but with a small abandoned apple orchard up back on a hilltop and a quarter acre of Bartlett pears between the house and the road. I remember endless pear canning projects when I was little. And wonderful pears in syrup served throughout the year. Yum!

Interesting about the Fuji's history. Those are my favorite. And they keep amazingly well. It's mid-June and we are still eating Fujis in good condition from the barn refrigerator. I learned the secret to storing ripe apples from a neighbor who had a packing line: refrigerate to 32 degrees.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Fuji apples are good.
My dad kept a small orchard of about 10-15 apple trees, a few pears, lots of plums, few peach, various cherry.
We always used 2 legged ladder.
We made our own cider, I have the hand crank cider mill.