Cider Day

November 23, 2015November 23, 2015 / kimagardener / Leave a comment

In a good year a small orchard can produce fourteen million apples. We have about 25 fruit trees (I say about because a couple are questionable after being mutilated by deer) and this year was a good year for fruit.

One of the greatest things about an orchard is making fresh cider. We make cider in the fall with a cider press. The cider press is one of the greatest inventions of all time. My handy engineer husband built the press several years ago after spending some quality time researching designs. For many weeks we received strange packages in the mail. I called my husband at work to ask him if he ordered a drive belt for a volvo. He assured me he had and that he needed it for the cider press. Eventually after much banging and welding he wheeled a cider press out of the garage.

We pick the apples, smash the apples and press the apples to make a beautiful nectar called fresh cider. The best cider (IMHO) is made from a blend of apples and pears. We have several old pear trees (not sure of the variety) and four different types of asian pears that we mix with the apples. Some of our apples are ‘variety unknown’ but we do have gala, fuji, red and golden delicious. They all blend to make fabulous cider. This year we pressed all fourteen million apples.

Aaaaaannnndddddd…More Stumps

November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 / kimagardener / Leave a comment

Stump day. That’s what we call it when we work on stumps. Today was a big day because we got rid of 3 stumps.

My burning stump method worked great on my rotten stump. I started a fire inside of it with match light briquettes and general twigs and branches that I scavenged. This stump was pretty rotten down the middle and it was very dry because I covered it to keep the rain out.

My fire got going pretty quickly and I got lucky when a hole burned through near the bottom of the stump (from the inside to the outside) providing good air flow to my fire. If I had been thinking I would have brought my leaf blower which would provide A LOT of oxygen. Next time. While this sucker burned, the husband got to work on a really, really big stump.

We have a professional arborist chainsaw. It is an Echo and it works great. The only issue is that it has a 16 inch bar. This means that it is not going to cut a 3 ft diameter stump all at once. Luckily the husband likes to tackle the big jobs.

Making a series of what seemed like a million cuts, the stump was chunked up a little at a time. Tedious? Yes.

Eventually the stump was taken down pretty much flush to the ground. I will put a really big scoop of soil on top and feather it out. Probably in the spring I will forget it is there and break my leg trying to plant a tree.

We got rid of another smaller stump and I was able to clear around several more.

Stump town is looking good, even with my finger in the way!

Stump Town part 2

October 30, 2015 / kimagardener / Leave a comment

We are still clearing the future orchard. Even though we had significant help from the bull dozer there is still a field of stumps. Stumps are expensive to have removed with heavy equipment because each stump needs to be dug out of the ground with a backhoe. Since we already paid for the bull dozing we decided it was in our best financial interest to remove the stumps ourselves.

Stump town is beautiful but stumps don’t really lend themselves to a lawn mower. There are about 20 or so old growth stumps in this approximately 2 acre field. We would like to plant fruit trees in this field and underplant them with grass. I have already seeded this field with grass seed and some of it is sprouting. In order to mow the grass the stumps have to go.

Since the stumps are old growth many of them are 3 feet in diameter! Obviously we can not dig them up due to their size, so our best bet is to get them cut off at ground level and dump a scoop of dirt on top, plant grass and call it good. Cutting them at ground level would require a really big chainsaw, bigger than our current chainsaw. So we got creative.

My first thought was to burn the stumps to ground level. This is much more difficult than it sounds. My first attempts were met with mixed results. I tried the teepee method where I piled up branches around the stump and lit the whole mess on fire. This basically just produced a charred stump. Not a particularly effective method.

Here is the husband pouring water on the stump. The fire actually caught a root on fire that was under the ground.

The next sump I tried to burn I decided to drill holes in first and fill them with used motor oil as a fire accelerant.

I used a drill and a wood boring bit to create the holes. BTW this stump is HUGE! I piled on some match light charcoal briquettes that were on sale to really get things going. My goal for this stump is to burn a hole down the center of it and use my tractor to bash in the sides so it kind of collapses in on itself. If I was able to keep the fire hot enough for long enough I believe this would be a good method. Unfortunately, a steady rain popped up and eventually put the fire out.