A rainy day in the orchard

The rain did not keep us indoors today. The weather is damp but not torrential. The light is bright for a rainy day. So we donned our mud boots and raincoats and headed outside to putter. Last weekend we were simply excited to hang our laundry outside instead of indoors. One week later we have had summer temperatures. The snow has completely melted from the garden. Some of those leafy herbs; catnip, horehound, mint, have started showing new spring green.

I have discovered that I have matured as a gardener. I poked my trowel in the soil of the cold frame, moved a little soil around and tossed a few spinach seeds in there. Otherwise I have resisted the very great temptation to do too much else in the veggie patch. I know that although the earth is waking up from her long winter's sleep, she may decide to go back to bed for a little while longer.

I've had my nose buried in garden books this weekend. I've been excited to start planting guilds under the fruit trees this year. I began with planning last fall by transplanting a couple of volunteer comfrey plants under a granny smith. I mulched a ring around the tree's drip line, the furthest point where the rain drips off the tree. My plan was to plant bulbs along this line. But I have a good amount of bunching onions seedlings started, so I think I will start with those instead. Around the base of the tree I will plant nasturtiums. This will help deter borer's.

So we headed out to putter in the rain. I started picking up the branches we trimmed from pruning the apple trees this past month. Mark and Evan were picking up brush from other areas. Evan was mostly playing in the mud.

I looked out into the orchard and noticed that it could also use a good raking. A clean orchard is a happy orchard. So I started raking up the leaves and laying down mulch and some defrosted compost to continue my work in the guild. I will not till the soil when I plant the guild so having some killed sod will make the ground nice and soft for planting. I read in Gaia's Garden, by Toby Hemenway that placing a few small piles of stones around the guilds is also good for attracting snakes and frogs.

While toiling away in a happy frame of mind my thoughts wandered to the trouble spot behind me. It will be a challenge. There is a forsythia planted too closely to another granny smith tree. Mark cut down some overgrown chokecherry bushes there. The whole area is crowded by wild blackberry bushes. I love picking wild berries but I also know that paper wasps like to build their nests in overgrown patches like this. The patch is just on the other side of veggie garden fence. There are some big boulders buried in there. There is another very interesting looking chokecherry tree that will stay. My long term plan is to build a small bench for this area and perhaps plant a few shrubs for attracting beneficial insects. Butterfly bushes, maximillion sunflowers. I will plant everbearing raspberries from Fedco this year so the berries will be replaced.

As I ponder all this stuff I look up at the apple tree I have been working under. There is a small bud of white. At first I thought it was just the rain dripping off the limb. A trick of the light. But no. It is an apple blossom breaking free from its winter coat. I know something this tender bud does not. I know that night time temperature will reach the low teens in a couple of days. I know that apple trees should not be blooming this time of the spring. I walk around to check on the other trees. The green varieties are starting to bloom. The reds are still nestled deep in their coats. This is not good. It could mean that if those blooms have been coaxed open by some warmer temperatures that those trees will not bear much fruit this year.

This is what I know, we had a warm winter, and an extraordinary stretch of summer weather; which started before spring had even arrived according to the calendar, that shattered all sorts of records for temperatures for this time of year in Maine. This is just weather. But when we think of climate change we have to pay attention to the variability in the weather. Climate change can be seen in the extremes in weather we have been experiencing. This has all sorts of consequences. For our small homestead it has meant that this warm weather slowed and then stopped the flow of maple sap so that we did not get as much as we did last year. If the apple blossoms come early, before the pollinators, and then get zapped by a hard freeze we won't have many, if any, apples to put up next fall. For farmer's this can have harder consequences. They grow the food that we eat.

I know that every gardening season is a bit of a gamble. Sometimes you get a good tomato year, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get a lot of rain, sometimes it is dry. But what happens when all those interconnected species of flora and fauna are thrown askew. Pollinators need the food they need when they wake up, migratory birds need the food they need when they arrive. It really is an interconnected web. When one piece of the web missing it has a cascading effect.

In my way of adapting to the changes we are experiencing I will probably try to make some more fruit syrups to replace the maple syrups. I will probably buy some maple syrup or honey to supplement our shortage this year. If we do not get many apples here, perhaps we will find an commercial orchard that will might have a colder micro-climate. I will hope that other crops will have bumper years to balance out what we have already lost this year.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to work on that apple tree guild. I know that my work this year will benefit my garden for years to come. Even if we do not get apples this year.

I place my hope in those little bunching onions.

Early Spring

Our spring chores have begun early this year. It is still winter by the calendar but thelight has change, the days grow a little longer and it just feels like an early spring. A sign of the strange winter we have had here in Maine. Winter was late to arrive, barely sat down for a cuppa tea before it decided to leave.

Temperatures have been warm and the snow fall has been scant. It is always tough to admit that I might actually enjoy this season as it is. It sure has made our winter easier. We did not have to start our trek from the road to our house, about a 1/4 mile, until January. Last year we were trekking in in early December. We have used much less wood than last year. In general, the way of our life has been easier than last winter.

But there is always a flip side. The flip side is that mud season has arrived VERY early. For us this means that the road we live on has suffered that ravages of frost and thaw. It is all rutted up. The town posted the road a full month earlier than last year so that large trucks can not travel on the road. The early mud season could mean one of two things. Mud season could be short. Perhaps the road will dry early this year and the town will have it grated by the end of March. Or mud season will last a lot longer and we will be trekking in from the pavement, about 2 miles or so, for a lot longer than we had to last year.

The warmer weather has meant that we are tapping our trees for maple syrup earlier than ever before. Usually we tap our trees that last full weekend in February. Maine has a school vacation the week before. Mark is usually home so we take some time to organize our supplies and boiling operation before he goes back to work. With the warm days and cold nights we have been having we decided that perhaps the sap would be running already. We could have a short season and miss out on getting enough syrup to put up. Last year we put in 30 taps and we were able to get 4 gallons of syrup. It lasted until December. Last year was an unusually good year. Two weeks ago we put in 15 taps. The sap has really started to run this weekend so we will put 15 more in this week.

At the same time we start sugaring I also start pruning our apple trees. I am still learning how to take care of the orchard. Last year I only got four of the twelve trees pruned. Sugaring season was that crazy. After the pruning the trees put out a lot of apples last year. I was a bit timid in the pruning last year. A pruning class I took a couple of years ago suggested pruning 30% of a tree that has been abandoned. Last years trees lost 30% using only hand tools; loppers, hand pruners and a hand saw. This year those 4 trees will have the chain saw taken to them to open up the top of the tree. This will allow more airflow and sunlight to get into the interior of the tree. It will also make it easier to harvest apples that are not 50 feet in the air. Mark will help me with that part of the chore this week. In the meanwhile I prune the other trees with a little help from Evan and Cheddar dog. The snow on the ground is just high enough for Evan to climb into a tree or two. So the first day we were in the orchard pruning, Evan picked up small twigs that fell to the ground from pruning and brought them over to his tree to build a bird's nest. Cheddar dog offer his help as well by sneaking sticks to chew.

It always makes the chores of spring easier when you have help like this:)

Closing the Loop: Sheep

Caring for sheep was never on our radar when we thought about homesteading. We were excited to just have chickens. Mark was a paid solo singer for a Christian Scientist church. One Sunday, Evan and I were waiting for him in the nursery with another parent. I was knitting. The other parent said," So you like to knit, do you spin?" I said "Yes I spin but I am still a novice." "Would you like some sheep? We'll give you our sheep."

And so we had sheep. Three, sorta wild, shetlands. We built them a shed and then a barn. We bought a solar electric portable fence. Mark took a shearing class offered through the cooperative extension.We chased them around the yard plenty of times. They mowed our lawn for us and we had a source of manure for the garden.

Since those first three sheep came to live with us we have been given more sheep. Mostly elderly sheep who needed a retirement home. I have used their fiber. Mark has earned income from shearing. Our compost pile is rich in sheep poop. According to the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening by J.I. Rodale, each ewe can provide a ton of manure. They will clean up overgrown areas. But when I think about closing the loop the sheep have to be an integral part of our homestead. The sheep need outside inputs in the form of feed, hay, some mineral feed to supplement those minerals that are not available in our Maine soils and diatomaceous earth; for preventing parasites. In the last closing the loop post I discussed how we are growing mangle-wurzel beets as one source of winter fodder. For now, we will buy hay from some farming friends. But long term we would like be able to grow some of our winter hay. This year we will plant a pasture mix of grass in the orchard

In the summer the sheep graze on our yard. In past years we have simply moved the portable fence around the yard wherever there was tall grass;which is most of the time because we do not mow, much;) This year Mark puts the girls out on pasture and scythes up grass for the boys. The boys do not go graze too much because Leroy Brown goat is more of a garden/orchard pest (he jumps the fence).

The girls grazing is a little more intentional now that we have an orchard to maintain. One key to good orchard maintenance is keeping a clean orchard. A clean orchard is less likely to be a source of disease and pests. So our ladies' fence is put under the trees. They eat up any fallen leaves. After fruit has set small apples fall to the ground. These small apples become a source for the larva of an insect that lays its eggs in the fallen fruit and then as a mature insect infest the mature fruit. The sheep also fertilize the trees at this time. In this way we do not need to bring in outside inputs to control this pest or feed the trees.

Our girls are getting old. We are thinking that next spring we may get a lamb or two. One of the considerations for these lambs will be that they will be a breed that can provide both fiber and meat. In this way the sheep will be integrated into our food chain; another loop we hope to close.