Harvesting Galas and more Goldens

We started harvesting the Galas at the Gilbert block on Monday. The crew had to shut down after a couple of hours of picking because of rain. We knew that was a possibility because of the forecast but we decided to forge ahead since we have so much fruit yet to harvest.

Here you can see the Gala block on the right hand side of the tractor. Bill is working at filling that ditch to the left of the tractor. He has an ongoing deal with a local contractor who brings rock and  debris from job sites to dump it here. It's a good arrangement for both parties. Eventually we'll top it off with soil and plant an additional acre of fruit. You might be able to see the compost piles on the other side of the ditch? We continually create compost through another ongoing deal with a lawn care company that dumps their clippings & leaves on our piles. We enrich the pile with cow manure from Farmer Dave's fine herd up the canyon. 

Ta da! Here are our Galas this year. Aren't they beautiful? We are so proud of them. This year they have excellent color and size. In years past our size hasn't been that great because of our spray thinning program. The objective in spray thinning at bloom is to keep the king bloom and remove the rest. The king bloom is the center blossom and represents the biggest apples. Bill achieved this by waiting 2 days longer than his usual spray date to ensure the kings had set. Voila! It worked. We added the reflective cloth in between rows this year to see if it would help color. Voila again! It worked.

Our truck driver Paul is loading the Galas. A full truck load is 20 bins. He stacks them 2 high and loads 10 and each side of the trailer. He straps and cables them and hauls them to Chelan Fruit where they are received in the Stemilt building. Paul does a great job. I've only hauled a couple of apple loads. Apples are a little trickier than cherries because they weigh so much more. The trip down Boyd road has to be much slower.

Here is our picking crew. We finished the Galas on Tuesday and moved down to the Lake Goldens on Wednesday. Although we have a good crew, it's too small. We need more pickers! Rodolfo had some good ideas for me. He suggested an ad on KOZI's Spanish Radio Program on Sunday and a sign on the side of the road before you get to WalMart by Friday. The weekend is a big shopping time for the Hispanic community, so if we can get our sign up by Friday we should get some calls. I just happen to know the Spanish radio host Gilberto, and I've asked him to announce our ad on Sunday. Hopefully by next Monday we'll have 30 pickers to start the Honeycrisp at Triangle C.

That's me having lunch with Bill under a Golden tree. Nice view of the lake, huh?

Here's a better picture of the view. This is our 22nd year of harvesting here. Natalie was just a wee babe when we started farming here. Getting this acreage was key to our farming start up. Bill's dad had daily breakfast with a local group of farmers. He connected his Bill to the owner of this block, Bill Peebles, and it all fell into place. To begin with, we were just going to farm his reds, then in the spring Bill Peebles' son in law quit farming the Goldens so we took that on as well. We didn't have a crew yet and BC (Bill Clark) did a lot of the work himself. I remember the red block was on a steep hillside and BC used hay hooks to drag the wooden bins up the hill to be in place for harvest. What a work out! BC had amazing upper arm muscles. Tyler Clark referred to them as "Uncle Bill arms." The money we made here in 1991 allowed us to start building our house. BC's arm muscles were also handy for building our house.
Bill Peebles died in his sleep the fall of 1992. We were harvesting the reds by his house and I noticed the door to his house wide open. Bill Peebles was in his 80's and I was afraid of what I would find so I told my Bill. Bill found Bill in his chair. It appeared he had died in his sleep. Bill Peebles had been going strong up until he died. He would come up and help us in the orchard with his tractor. He was a good friend and business partner.

When Bill died, his property was sold. The reds stopped being profitable in the late 90's, and they were removed. We have continued farming the Goldens with the new property owner. In 2008 it became organically certified. The production has been inconsistent so we're thinking this will be our last year with this lease. Bill is having second thoughts. The packing shed Columbia does very well selling organic Goldens and these Goldens this year look really good.

It will take us through Saturday to finish harvesting this block.
Wow, that was a lot of information! Now it's time to play the Farm Quiz game. Are you ready?
What does Grandma have in her shovel?

                                     
a. Rattler
b. Lead rope
c. Arvid
d. Cobra
Answer: Stay tuned tomorrow!
Hint: One of Grandma's many talents could be snake whispering!

Chelan Falls Golden Harvest

We picked 2 acres of Goldens at Chelan Falls on Saturday. This is the last harvest for these trees.

The Golden market shrinks every year because more and more consumers prefer Honeycrisps. There is housing at this block for Cuco and his family so we decided to change varieties. Now that the fruit has been harvested, we have begun the process to replant.
The crew has pulled out the props, and the water system is on for a couple of days to prepare the soil for a fumigant called Vapam. We'll pull out hoses and sprinklers, and then spray with Vapam. Jim Harding will come out with his excavator and pluck out the trees. Hopefully, all this will be done soon so that everything will be done by the time snow falls.

These are the Aztec Fugis we've been growing next door in preparation for the replant. Next spring we'll move out every other one. We had a few trees that died from last year's November freeze so those are rootstock that were recently budded again with Aztec Fugis.

Bill wants to segregate the rootstocks so they can be treated differently. They might be a whole year behind so they'll need different care. Rootstocks like these that have been growing here another year will grow quickly with this new bud. Because they have so much energy from the established root they may catch up with the other trees.

Here's another view of the "nursery."

New address for Dexter!

Dexter finally arrived in Mississippi last night. He had been rollin' down the highway since 1:00 am last Thurday. Debbie, the trucker got a late start so she arrived in the middle of the night a week ago. Luckily it was a full moon and we had some natural light. Debbie's truck was a 2 year old 1 ton Dodge 4-door with 300,000 miles. She was pulling a Feather Lite 6 horse slant load huge ass trailer. Her only companion was a German Shepherd Taffy that was in heat. Debbie told us she makes a trip like this each month hence the miles on her truck. This business of horse hauling is supplementing her champion performance horse ranch in Oregon.
She knows horses and got Dexter to cooperate even though he just wanted to sprint off into the night without looking back. When she pulled out, there was so much drama. Mom's mules were racing around and calling to Dexter telling him he was the best boyfriend ever. Dexter was stomping in the trailer calling back to say he would never forget them no matter how lovely the Southern mares are.
So Shyla called today to say Dexter arrived last night to Christine's farm. She had seen him 2 times already and he looked really good. The girl who will be leasing him came to the farm signed the papers and took lots of pictures. Everybody is excited so I'm excited! Yeah!

SweeTango Harvest

I learned something new this week while we were harvesting the SweeTangos. Until these apples are packaged to sell in the market, they are called Minneiska 1914's. Just in case somebody asks you, they are a cross between the Honeycrisp and Zestar apples. I have discovered that I love them even a little more than Honeycrisp. They're so juicy, crisp and sweet tart.

Here we are harvesting. That is Luis picking and me checking for bruises. Minnieskas bruise super easy but Luis is an exceptional picker.

Bill was very excited about our first day of apple harvest so he ran up on the Knob to take this picture.

That is Rodolfo on the left and Teodolo on the right. Bill likes to call Teodolo Diablo because he thinks those names sound the same and it ALWAYS makes Teodolo and the rest of the guys laugh. Notice how I'm still working and Bill is not?

This is the view above the Minnieskas. Overall harvesting this block went very well. With the limited amount of sunburn damage we ended up with, we aren't feeling the need to install an overhead cooling system yet. We had about 10 - 15 % russet that was severe and another 10 - 15% that was slight, so that is something we'll continue to problem solve. We met with two of our fieldmen to discuss testing results on the Galas and Goldens. Sounds like we'll pick the Chelan Falls Goldens Saturday then move up to the Galas on Monday & Tuesday, and then start on the Goldens on the lake. We're having another round of hot weather in the upper 80's this week. It really still feels like summer!

Union Valley Project

The first order of business to expanding our farming into Union Valley is to get one of our best employees settled there.

This is Mike St. Louis's former home site. Here's a little history. There were two brothers that lived in Union Valley. Raf lived 1/2 a mile down the road and Mike lived here. Both were bachelors and both lived here all their lives as far as Bill knows. They were there when Bill was a kid.
The interesting thing about Mike and Raf was that they did not get along. Rumor has it that Mike set off some dynamite under Raf's porch. Raf didn't forget about it so when Mike ran off the road once in his car, Raf just drove right on past. Another little tidbit is that property where Raf lived belonged to Chris St. Louis, Raf and Mike's brother who was also Bill's uncle. Chris married Lavina, Bill's dad's sister. During the 50's through the 70's, Mike and Raf were two of only a handful of people living in Union Valley.
Henderson Highland bought the property in the 90's. Soon after, Bill's cousin Sari Agan and her husband Rick substantially upgraded the windows, plumbing and electrical. However, they moved out approximately 10 years ago and it has been vacant since.
Everything in the house is in remarkable condition considering the lack of occupants. One exception would the well house where a long line of rats took up residence.

Unfortunately, Bill and Rodolfo didn't have any pictures of the well house before it was cleaned, but Bill can tell you the whole house was full of twigs and stuff that the rats had brought in. Bill was most worried about this because you could not see into the well house, and he worried maybe the well was filled with twigs and rat stuff. This is what was removed from inside the pump house.

After several hours of pulling debris out of the pump house, Bill and Rodolfo were able to determine the pump house had a concrete floor. At lunch time Bill came home and got the 4-wheeler with the 15 gallon spray tank and the shop vac. He mixed 2 gallons of clorox with 13 gallons of water and headed back to the pump house.
After Rodolfo scraped and vacuumed the entire pump house, they sprayed  about 10 gallons of the solution throughout the house. After completing all of this they were finally ready to lift the lid to see into the well.

Drum roll. What were they going to find???? It's hard to see in this photo but inscribed in the concrete next to the lid was "MSL 1950." That of course stands for Mike St. Louis.

Much to their relief inside the well looked really good with maybe 10 feet of standing water at the bottom of the 30 foot well. The water was blue and clear enough to see gravel at the bottom. Bill and Rodolfo spent several hours trying to problem solve the pump and finally decided it needs to be replaced. Not too surprising considering it hasn't worked as a pump for 10 years.
On Sunday, Rodolfo mowed around the acreage and his wife Susy worked on cleaning inside the house.

SweeTango Review

Our fieldman Tom reported to us that the SweeTango's starch level is at a 4 so we can pick them on Monday. In this picture you can see some of the russet we have this year. Last year we had significant russet that we attributed to the lime sulfur and fish oil that we applied for thinning. This year we did not apply it since we heard it's not needed for thinning and will cause russet. So why do we still have some russet? It's not as severe overall as last year but there is an occasional apple that is severely effected and lots of apples some.  

As you can see, there isn't a lot of canopy to protect the apples from the sun. We applied Surround (clay) on the SweeTangos to protect them from sunburn during the hot spell this past week. I'm curious how well it protected the fruit? We'll find out Monday.

Here are some second pick SweeTangos at the Mathison orchard near Ephrata. Yesterday we talked to the manager Scott Driscoll about the fruit finish. These were conventionally grown, and no russet control sprays were used. They use overhead sprinklers for cooling and have found at 70 degrees outside, the flesh temp of the apple can be at 104 degrees. At 104 degrees internal temp of the apple, they begin the cooling system. We didn't see any sunburn in the bins and Scott reported minimal sunburn in their first pick.
Did I tell you how wet and muddy their orchard was? It was really wet and muddy! I had borrowed Natalie's really cool white converse tennis shoes. I was going for form over function. Sorry Nat. I did my best to keep them white!
We did see a little russet so we asked Scott about it. He said last year they didn't have any. This year they have a little so he's attributing it to the moisture at bloom this year. Just certain parts of the block were effected so maybe those parts had more humidity?

The picker in this picture is using a picking bucket. Scott said they moved to the picking buckets instead of the bags to protect the apples from bumping during the picking process. They have seen that this variety bruises very easily and the bruises turn black in storage. There is just one knot on each of the ropes attached to the bucket. They observed that additional knots running through the apples when the fruit is unloaded causes additional bruising. 

Oh good you can't see my shoes!

Scott told us they want to keep the bin weight at 700 lbs to minimize bruising from weight pressure. This is achieved by filling up to the top of the small air slats on the sides of the bins. On another note, we were impressed by Safe Quality Foods signage at the orchard. Looks like this Mathison orchard will pass it's SQF audit. Nice sign that can do double duty by flipping it up so the other side is visible.

Check it out.

Impressive!
In addition to the terrific signage Bill just had to comment on the handy toilet trailers. He guessed that someone on staff is building the trailers for all of the Mathison acreage? We're going to inquire and if so maybe we could purchase some.
Hey, there is so much to blog about but it will have to wait until tomorrow!

Diamondback Orchard Tour

Bill accompanied me on my codling moth checks on Saturday so he shared some fascinating farming facts. Here I am in the Galas. The Mylar on the ground is reflective material to help with coloring. This is the first year we've put it out for the Galas. Our Galas are the biggest they've ever been before thanks to the following practices:

1. Lots of fertilizer - even more than usual this year, excess of 100 lbs of total Nitrogen per acre applied multiple times since spring
2. Early thinning - blossom removal and whole clusters, hand thinning when apples were very small (size of fingernail)
3. Something different this year was a later chemical thinning application of lime sulphur and fish oil - First application was at full bloom and second application was at post bloom. The idea was that the king bloom should have been well set before putting out the chemical thinner. Based on the size of most of our Galas, this was achieved. Bill cannot explain why they are typier (longer) but its also a good attribute.

All we need is color! Our best guess for Gala harvest dates this year is September 20-23.

Here are the Reds at Last Chance that we grafted to Honeycrisp last spring. They are growing really well and just recently received some training.

One shoot from each graft is bundled together on each leader of the tree with electrical tape. There were 2-4 grafts on each leader depending upon the size of the leader. The workers chose the shoots with the best angle of limb. This winter they will remove everything that is not wrapped. Next year the growth will be amazing. We expect a good crop on year four/2014.

We have some grafted Honeycrisp trees producing fruit at Last Chance as well. Grafted Honeycrisp trees can grow some really ugly fruit to begin with because they tend to be overvigorous (the engine is too big for the amount of fruit produced). This apple is showing bitterpit which makes it a cull.

Here is an example of sunburn. We've had about 4-5 days of unseasonably hot weather. As a result, we'll have some sunburn damage. Every year we have a certain amount of sunburn damage. Usually we have our hottest weather in July and August. This year we didn't have the heat until now. Since it's so late in the summer now, the hot temps only last a few hours of the day.We apply protective sprays to minimize the sun damage on our most valuable crops.

Here is a picture of a cherry limb with aphids. Can you see the ladybugs? They are dining on the nasty aphids. Apparently not fast enough! We have more aphids than we like right now. Oil is really good at snuffing out aphids when they first appear. Bill is planning on 2 applications of oil, either one this fall and one in the spring or two in the spring. The problem with a fall application is that the coverage isn't as good with the leaves. In the spring, there are no leaves when oil is applied. Last year we did not apply an oil in the fall and only applied one application in the spring.

New growth has emerged through the aphid attack. The ladybugs earned their keep here!

Here are some ladybug pupae. Yes, we bought gallons ($50/gal) of ladybugs this summer to organically conquer the aphids.

Here is a ladybug larva.

Mini Vacation in Winthrop

We've just returned from a few days of vacation time at Winthrop. We found this cute cottage on the Methow River through a search online. It looked like the perfect retreat since it was close to Chelan, close to the river and private. You can look it up at cottonwood-cottage.com. Monica gave us a special deal because some people had cancelled.

We've been experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures so this private wooded lot was very comfortable. Lots of deer thought so too.

If you look closely at this picture, you'll see large Spring Chinook Salmon. Turns out this is the time of year that they return from the ocean to spawn. It was quite the show to watch. The water was fairly shallow and still these large fish were swimming upriver no matter what. Sometimes they would leap forward out of the water. It looked like you would be able to touch them by wading out in the river. So of course we had to try!

The water was pretty cold and the rocks were pretty slippery. Still we persevered because it would be so cool to get close to a Spring Chinook!

Only these type of Spring Chinook let us get close. There were several since this is what happens after they spawn. We talked to a couple of Fish and Wildlife employees who were collecting data about the spawning fish. We're now spawning Spring Chinook experts so ask us anything!

One of the things the F & W people check for in the deceased remains is whether the fish still have their eggs. In this case, the salmon didn't make it to it's spawning grounds.

All of that learning required sustenance. Here is Dad cooking gourmet Brats on the "BBQ."

Doesn't Dad look like a guy on Doctari Safari? We took an afternoon to hike around Buck Lake. It was a toasty 90 plus degrees and very dry. This trail emptied out onto a dirt road going straight up the mountain. Dad was the first one out, and we stopped for a minute to check out the road. Then all hell broke loose! He bent over to slap at a large insect on his leg yelling loudly in pain. I'm thinking of a biting fly and wow he's a whimp. Then he moved his foot and we see a hole where huge bees are streaming out and swarming Dad/us. He's grapping at the inside leg of his shorts so I infer he has them up his shorts. I try to help him to remove his shorts but the bees are swarming us so we RUN down hill. Wow, the hill was really steep and I was running way too fast down it. I thought I might wipe out. We make it to the bottom of the hill and determine the bees from hell are back in hell. We assess Dad's stings and determine he has several but only one bad one. Yep, the one that was in his shorts. So I began worrying about 3 things: 1. Would Dad have his first episode of anaphylactic shock since it was a sting from a devil bee?  2. Would the road we were on lead us back to our car or just get us lost? 3. If there was a forest fire, would we be able to run to Buck Lake in time?
Good news. Worrying was a waste. We made it out and had to buy some Bud Lite Lime to be a cold compress for Dad's sting. Of course beer always requires pizza, so that is what we had for dinner by the river at our cottage.

Yay! Isn't it beautiful? Now it's back to farmin'.