The storm that we had on Wednesday night did considerable damage to the orchard. I'm not quite done yet with the clean up, but when its all done we will have around 2 dozen trees damaged or destroyed. And the amount of apples that have been ruined is even higher. I would say that we have close to a pickup load (or more) of apples that have been knocked off from either the trees being destroyed or the wind. The little wagon above is 1 of several so far with more to come. The Zestar crop is about 80% gone. The Honey Crisp crop is about 50% gone. The remaining varieties have all lost some with some being very bad to others which got lucky and lost very little.
In the bigger picture, we were lucky that our house was not damaged and I know some whose houses were. We are also lucky that we will still have apples this fall, so in the end, it could have been much worse. I'm thankful that it was not worse and lets hope that the bad weather is over for awhile. The summer is about half gone already and the apples are doing fine, considering. The last batch of storms we had left quite a trail behind them. We lost about a dozen trees and conservatively a half a truck load of apples. Between the windfalls and the broken trees, it was a mess. Luckily for us, the apples that were left behind look great. Had those storms came about a month from now, I could have made cider with the apples that fell. I'd say that all in all, the trees look great and the crop should be good as well. The State Fair starts in just over a month and thats when we should be ready. Keep your fingers crossed and I'll keep you posted.
|
Archives
October 2020
|