Archive for the ‘Crops – Fruits’ Category
September 7, 2008 – Plums!
This is the year for the plum tree in the front yard next to the driveway – the tree is now about 20 feet tall and up until this year, had not produced fruit – I was ready to give up on it and replace it with something else.
But this year it has come through with flying purple colors – baskets upon baskets of plums – plum sauce is put up for yogurt and ice cream, whole plums, plum preserves, and plum and vodka soaking in the basement.
one year ago…”Photo Friday – Purple”.
September 6, 2008 – Plum Harvest
Sometimes it’s nice to have a boy who likes to climb trees – especially when there are plums to get near the top of a tree that might not hold the weight of a full-grown adult.
You can see Martin’s head peeking out from the middle of the tree. He’s a bit cautious as he wanted to wear his bike helmet.
one year ago…”Raspberries and Apples”
August 20, 2008 – Peach Basket
This basket of peaches was just too beautiful not to share.
We can now see the end of the peach season. This picture is also a bit of food for thought for all those naysayers that told us central Iowa was too far north to grow peaches!
one year ago…”1st Day of School for Two”
August 13, 2008 – What to do with Peaches?
Ok, we’re almost ready to say uncle with the peaches, but there still might be half the peaches left on the trees.
Here are the trays right out of the dehydrator.
The contents of each tray fit nicely into one bag in what I call the “suck and seal” machine. It’s always a bummer to see how small the fruit gets after drying.
Canned peaches and blackberry jam on an intermediate canning day. The most we’ve done this year is 28 quarts of peaches in one afternoon. We’re packing them in quarts, pints, and jelly jars for single-serving jars for lunch. Emma is a gifted peach and tomato skinner. She has great hands for removing the skins from peaches and tomatoes after blanching.
one year ago…”Restored Marshall County Courthouse”
August 12, 2008 – More Fruit!
The fruity season continues in full swing.
Martin with one haul of peaches.
The plums are so thick they look like grapes. This tree is propped up with many boards to keep the branches from cracking under the weight of the plums.
one year ago…”Iowa State Fair Day”
August 8, 2008 – Cherry Leaf Spot
We’ve got a bad case of what I think is cherry leaf spot on some of our cherry trees.
The leaves become spotted, turn yellow, and fall off the tree.
This cherry tree looks like October instead of August.
One of the recommended cultural practices is to remove the fallen leaves to decrease the amount of disease that overwinters in the soil to reinfect the trees the next season. I’m hoping that the fact that the first six months of 2008 were the wettest on record contributed to this disease that is mainly spread through rain splash and wet leaves. Our north star cherries in another location do not seem to be suffering from the same problem – I don’t know if the difference in susceptibility is due to a different variety, or location on a southern slope instead of northern slope that .
one year ago…”Claire to Boston: Part 1″
August 6, 2008 – Luscious Peaches
It looks like a GREAT year for peaches!
Just look at these guys hanging on the branch – and there are hundreds more. This year we will surely get our fill of canned, dried, and peach applesauce. I just hope we don’t get a big windstorm to damage the trees with the extra weight.
one year ago…”Step into another World”
July 27, 2008 – Apple Pickin’
Martin is using the fruit picker to harvest the last of the apples from the tree that was laid down on the ground during one of the spring storms.
The tree is literally hanging on by a thread and we’re hoping to get it through this year so we can grab a graft next spring to continue the tree – it’s an old variety that ripens in mid-July and is good for pies and sauce.
one year ago…”Another Summer Thundrestorm”
July 16, 2008 – Fruit on the Verge
While the cherries are still hanging on, the next batch of fruit is getting ready.
The peaches are very plentiful – we’ve been culling a lot fruit off the trees to keep the branches from breaking.
The blackberries are in the third year and lookng extremely good this year.
one year ago…”New Tractor Tire”
June 29, 2008 – Late Cherries
The cherries are late this year, but they are here – a welcome sight after last year’s late threatening frost and this summer’s rain. The weather service announced that the first six months of 2008 were the wettest first six months of the year on record – we’ve never had a Jan-June stretch of wetter weather.
This is a North Star cherry tree – the other variety – Montmorency still has green balls for fruit. This tree has already been picked a couple of days and has plenty more cherries ready to pick. These cherries make great pies and jams.
one year ago…”Welcome Facets Readers”
June 16, 2008 – Strawberry Season
It’s finally strawberry season, albeit a week or so late.
This is the daily haul – we’re almost getting tired of eating them – I think the rain has been berry, berry, good to the strawberries. We’re getting this much every day.
one year ago…”All Dressed Up (Kind of)”
June 5, 2008 – Enough Already – Battered by High Winds
Last night about 1:30 am I awoke to the power blinking off and on and finally off for good. I went downstairs to find a battery radio to find out what was going as it was an evening of many tornadoes and we’re all a bit edgy after Parkersburg. The lightning was very intense and I had a bad feeling that a huge line of storms was heading our way after taking out a power line to our west – but before I could wake up everyone else, the storm hit and we scrambled into the basement – when I got into Emma’s room to fetch her, the open window on the south side of the house blew rain all the way across the room to the opposite side of the room! Any window that was open even 1/4 inch on the south side let in a torrent of water and it was so intense it even leaked through the floor and dripped out of the ceiling in the living room.
We huddled and found out a tornado was in the neighborhood less than a few miles away. I didn’t sleep very well the rest of the night and when we surveyed damage this morning, here’s what we found.
Our biggest casualty was this 60 foot spruce tree just north of Claire’s bedroom and near Martin’s playground. When we saw the big hole in the sky out Claire’s window at night, we new something was up. We shined our flashlights out and saw the tree had fallen. Claire was a bit shaken, thinking the tree could have fallen on her while sleeping!
Our one and only summer apple tree that bears fruit in July is also a victim of the storm. The chair was by the garage, about 50 feet away when we went to bed.
Maizie’s doghouse also got blown away a bit.
This is most interesting to me – we had placed black landscape fabric between our tomatoes and covered them with heavy hog panels – the wind picked the panels up off the ground and wrapped one around some tomato stakes. I literally sunk in 4-5 inches in the mud in the garden.
Even the hay wagon was kind enough to blow up from its usual resting place by the barn to up near the fallen apple tree to aid in cleanup! We were lucky the shed doors didn’t blow off, but they did blow out on the bottom.
The ground is littered with fruit that was ripped off the trees. These are cherries.
This white pine looks a lot different than it did yesterday – it looks like all of last year’s needles were stripped off the tree and mainly this year’s clumpy new growth were undamaged.
We weren’t the only ones – here’ s the view at a neighbor’s directly 1 mile east of us – they lost this pine and others as well.
Our neighbors immediately to our north had the most hassle as one branch is resting on the house, another limb took out a power line and they lost some shingles and siding as well.
Here’s a picture of nothing! You can see the cement forms which were part of a cattle feeder that usually has a building over the top of it – the cement remains and the building is gone. This is on the blacktop about a mile away near the big curve on E63.
Some of it is up to 3/4 of a mile away – the wreckage is strewn throughout the field – the farmstead that it came from is in the distance.
This barn was in sorry state before, but now it’s worse!
The pile of lumber to the left was in the garage, part of which is on the right! This is at the first house immediately to our north.
A part of an outbuilding roof ended up on the roof of another shed on this place, just about a half mile away. Right now we are feeling grateful and heard from our neighbor at the Sheriff’s Office that they think it was a tornado that didn’t quite touch the ground.
You may be wondering about the wind turbine – it’s up and running this morning!
one year ago…”Farm View Series #2 SE Corner”
May 12, 2008 – Peaches!
In addition to Reliance peaches, we recently planted some “Iowa Peaches” which are evidently smaller and white-fleshed. They bloomed for the first time this year.
The blossoms of the Iowa Peach are much larger and deeper pink than the Reliance peach.
Here’s a “starter” bird nest. It’s nestled in a sturdy place, but at about 18 inches off the ground, probably isn’t in a very safe place from cats and dogs.
one year ago…”Putting the Lambs to Work”
May 10, 2008 – Glorious Spring
We’ve reached a spring day worth living! Most of the fruit trees are in full bloom, the weather is beautiful, and it was dry enough to get some onions in the ground today.
The pinks and whites of the emerging apple blossoms are hard to beat.
Of course, the shy little violets tucked under the apple tree do their part to announce spring as well.
The cherry blossoms outdo nearly every other tree is sheer volume of blossoms.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #71″
