What's in the Orchard

 You can just scroll past this post. It's just a list for our information. We wanted to document what we planted in the orchard and backyard. The nursery owner, Jaimee also asked us to record it for her since many of these trees are heirloom trees. We have a hard copy and a map, but I wanted to keep a backup here.

                                                            

1. Pomogranite (planted behind the house)

2. Heirloom Pear - 2 varieties: Lower Orchard & Lemon Hogan on a Quince rootstock

3. Heirloom Pear - Jaimee's Big Sweet

4. Stella Cherry

5. Montmorency Cherry - pie cherries

6. Tartarian Cherry

7. Contender Peach

8. Red Haven Peach

9. Heirloom Cinderella Peach (Krymsk 1 rootstock)

10. Heirloom Peach - Brill + 2 other varieties (to be planted in September behind the house)

11. Santa Rosa Plum

12. Heirloom Stanley Plum x Krymsk 1

13. Heirloom Plum & Pluot (to be planted in September)

14. Sweet Gem Apricot

15. Heirloom Apricot (to be planted in September)

16. Jonathon Apple - applesauce & apple cookies

17. Jonamac Apple - applesauce & apple cookies

18. Honeycrisp Apple

19. Heirloom White Cloud Applè x M7

20. Heirloom Black Twig Apple (Salazar Canyon) x Bud9

21. Arkansas Black Apple

22.  Letizia Fig - planted behind the house

23. Heirloom Apple (Antenouka) (planted behind the house) with 4 varieties:

 Black Twig (N) Beechie -Rio Ruidoso Watershed

 Greer #3 (S) Bonito 

 Sawmill (W) Beechie - Rio Ruidoso Watershed

Northwest Greening (E) Old Greer Orchard - no DNA verification. Possibly Fameuse or Montgomery Apple.

Whew. Hopefully we can put our shovels up for a little while. The waiting season has arrived. Waiting...we're not very good at that. 😉

Orchard Progress

 OK raise your hand if you're tired of orchard posts. LOL. I'm sorry, but this has been a big project for a couple old folks. There's a lot more to it than just putting trees in the ground. Seventeen trees are now settled into their new homes. The fig and pomegranate were leafed out when we picked them up so we'll wait until the last frost before we put them in the ground. They are temporarily living in our bathroom and they may end up in the backyard as we're running out of room in the orchard. 

Three more heirloom trees will be added in September. Jaimee's just waiting to insure the grafts will take.

Our son, DIL, and granddaughter were out 2 weeks ago. It was all hands on deck.

Our DIL works remotely and she's been putting in a ton of overtime and was ready for some downtime. Alas, downtime around here looks like this. She's a good sport and not afraid to get her hands dirty.

Around here everyone has a job 

We try to make work fun

Just add water.

The next day, DH welded caps on the open pipe to keep wasps from making nests

DH dug ditches for more pipeline while I was at his folks' Thursday and then we both got behind shovels to fill them in on Friday

 I'm working on a schematic to map the varieties in each location as half of these are heirloom trees from old orchards on homesteads across these mountains.

Then yesterday we spread grass seed and strung out more pipe to set up a flood irrigation system

And I promise not to write an entire post when the first leaf appears, but we'll be cheering behind the scenes. LOL

An Official Orchard

 Last week, DH and I layed out the pipe that will supply the orchard with water. 

We rolled out 280' from the orchard to our spring and plumbed it in

We're still researching watering systems for the individual trees and will add a few more hydrants, but we're leaning towards a drip system. This project will be a work on progress.

He also dug the holes for the trees 

and then we went to pick some of them up from Jaimee on Monday

I took her some eggs and she gave us a bottle of Mesquite Bean Syrup. It is so sweet and good. She said it is excellent on pancakes and that she uses it as you would use honey when you run out of honey. It is high in iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium, and I've now added that to my list to make.

She is grafting some specialty trees for us, but they won't be ready until September

DH wanted one heirloom apple tree that will be bigger, in the back of the house so he moved a few rocks

Dug a hole

And brought in a load of manure

We mixed  it in with topsoil and fertilizer and potting soil from Jaimee

And we have our first tree! 

And an official orchard!

Well, there are more to plant, but we got 6 in the ground on Tuesday.

Lots of time behind the shovel and that's about all I can handle. We're sore and tired, but excited about the possibilities

and hopeful that our project will one day bear fruit.

Progress Inside and Out

 Good progress is being made on the orchard

DH and I got the fence up on Wednesday

My shoulders and hands were toast on Thursday

but our son was out again so they got it stretched and hung the gate DH made.

I helped some more - mostly as a fence-holder-upper and puller. Then I trotted back to the house (just 1/2 a mile) and put together a Taco Pizza for dinner. (an old picture from when I first shared the recipe)

Special K Cookies for dessert

And then I treated myself to some time in my sewing room. I am making progress on the pink quilt for little E. She did a good job picking pinks from my stash.

I sewed and pressed and trimmed 100 flying geese (started them on Tuesday and worked on them some Wednesday, finishing them on Thursday). Then I cut everything for the 4-patches and started piecing those on Thursday.

E and  Skeet and I drove down to supervise the boys on Friday.

And to inspect their work. E exclaimed it to be excellent!

And more sticks were added to the mountain of trees DH cleared

Then, back at the house, I was hoping to get all the blocks together, but looking at the pattern, it emphasizes that this design is not block based. Instead, it is constructed in rows. Oye. E is excited to help so I saved some of the 4-patches for her and let her pair them up and run them through the machine as she sat on my lap.

Then she wanted some paper to write her own 'structions' for her next quilt so there's hope. 😉

Heard in the sewing room:

Gram: Oh, I've lost track of time! We'd better get crackin!

E: Oh, I wanna help crackin!

😂

The Orchard Project

 When we were looking for property a few years ago, one of the things on the list we looked for was something that included an orchard. We didn't want anything big - just something small. This place didn't have one, but there were a few fields down by the old homestead that was a perfect spot. It was kind of terraced and it looked like something had been planned there at some point.

DH bought a load of pipe last fall and cut it for an orchard fence and our son came over last week for a few days and they got it pounded it into the ground

We've visited with friends about fruit trees and learned of a nursery about 90 minutes away, tucked into the mountains, close to a little mining ghost town community called White Oaks and we made an appointment to visit there last Saturday.

We were there for 6 1/2 hours. LOL. Jaimee, the owner was absolutely lovely and SO interesting. She and her scientist husband live on the property completely off-grid.

Off grid facilities

She bought the raw property 25 years ago and has built a thriving business. She has crawled all over these mountains searching out historic orchards and gathering stories, photos, and root stock and growing fruit trees with history.

These heirloom trees are proven and hardy and have thrived for a hundred years + in our challenging environment, often on abandoned homesteads, without care.

Jaimee also hosts a farmers market on Saturdays - March through November and I'm looking forward to visiting then.

DH and I spoke maybe 10 minutes of those 6 1/2 hours and at the end of the day we felt like we'd completed a graduate program. 

We were completely fascinated and overwhelmed and had a huge case of information overload by the time we climbed back into the truck. 

DH looked at me and said, "Don't talk. My ears are tired." 😂 My brain was tired. 

And Jaimee is doing all of this at 72 years of age! All while taking care of her husband who has stage 3 kidney disease at home. Here she is picking us wild celery that she grows

She has work study students on occasion, but she really does all of this on her own while growing a garden, doing all of her cooking on a wood stove, and trying to heal and take care of her husband. She also has horses and competed in endurance races and still competes in ranch sorting events.

We will go back and pick up some trees as soon as we get holes dug and fence up. Jaimee is also grafting us some trees that will be ready in September. 

We are planting 3 apple trèes, 2 peach, 2 plum, 1 apricot, 1 pear...and we may try some grapes. We'd like a few cherry trees, but she said the birds and bees usually get to all the fruit first and she's in the business of making sure folks can feed themselves. We may try anyway although they won't be heirloom trees. And when we go pick up our trees, we drive right by White Oaks Pottery...sounds like a must-stop to me. 

Jaimee lost all of her chickens so I'll take her eggs and this time I'm bringing a notebook so I don't have to file everything in my brain. I can't keep up with this special lady!