A couple of weeks ago, the crew started the process of prepping 2 acres of the Union Valley Golden block for grafting to Honeycrisp. This involved cutting out small limbs with loppers a portion at a time. Then beating it up with the flail mower and doing it again. The flail mower is a real beast, but smaller bites makes it a lot easier. It took three passes through with loppers before the trees were ready for the chain saw. The top was cut down with a power pruner, an extendable chain saw, and the small wood was pruned off with the loppers for the final pass. All work was accomplished from the ground.
Eventually enough was cut out of the tree to cut the trunk at about 6' high. The trees will be cut off again before grafting to a height of about 3' to 4' with remaining lower scaffold limbs at 6" to 1' long. I asked Bill why the 2 step process of cutting the trunks? He said to aid in the logistics of getting the larger diameter wood out of the orchard.
Victor is taking the flail mower down the row to beat up the wood. At the winter GS Long meeting, Tim Smith recommended pushing the beat up wood into the tree row to provide a natural source of nitrogen to the trees as the wood breaks down. We'll leave the chipped up wood in the row where lays because we need a clean tree row for the weed badger.
The crew is getting Honeycrisp wood from the 1 year old grafts at Last Chance. This wood will be used to graft the trees in Union Valley.
In preparation for frost season, Bill hired Bill Ott to service all of Diamondback's wind machines. The windmachine in the Sweetheart block at Gilberts needed a new upper gear box.
The last stage of the job. The new gear box with the old prop attached.
Down at Chelan Falls the crew is transplanting the nursery stock to the permanent location a few yards away.
Last fall, we fumigated half of the acreage receiving the transplanted trees. The other half will be fumigated tomorrow. We've heard a lot of hard luck stories about growers battling replant disease when they've skipped the fumigation step. We'll have to put the trees in cold storage while we let the fumigation dissipate. In a month we'll plant.
Bill got to use the backhoe to pick up those rocks and set the anchors and posts for the trellis. We need to name the backhoe, any ideas?
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