Wolf River Apples

September 2, 2020 - Wednesday morning

53 degrees/clear skies/windy

Pentoga Road

It appears we'll have some sort of apple harvest this year, more than many of our neighbors. 

Most of the area apple trees were in blossom this past spring when we were hit with a nighttime temperature in the low teens. Naturally, that froze everything, including any apple blossoms. Thanks to heavy foliage at the time, all three of our apple trees have fruit on the lower halves, but none towards the top due to freezing. 

You might remember that the Wolf River tree was heavily damaged by last winter's heavy snow and all but one limb was broken. 

Thankfully, the limb was somewhat upright and with careful pruning, it's now become the main trunk of the tree. If it doesn't crack under this year's snow, I think the tree may be salvageable.

The good news is that we'll have a partial harvest. The bad news is that the Wolf River, Macintosh, and Honey Crisp, are late summer/fall/winter apples and won't be ready to pick for at least another month or more.

Oh, and after picking gallons and gallons of marble sized blueberries the past several years, we had only a handful this past summer, again, casualties of a late freeze.

Darn global warming about killed us this past spring.

Tuesday morning's walk to the Barn and back was most enjoyable. As usual, I was greeted by one of our many friendly does. I think if I'd carry a pocket filled with corn, I could have them eating from my hand with little effort.

Sargie has been getting ready for winter and was hard at work washing the upstairs windows. Thankfully, the second floor panes are fairly accessible and all can be done from inside.

I fiddled around in the garden for a bit, plucking a weed here and there and checking on the progress of the winter squash.

The first planting of most of our seed crops failed due to the cold and wet weather. None-the-less, if we can get through the next two weeks without a frost, we should harvest a few squash and pumpkins.

That's a nice orange pumpkin peeking through the heavy foliage

 Sargie's friend and beautician, Melinda, arrived for a visit. While the ladies did their thing and gabbed inside, I started cleaning the barn and filling the trailer for a today's trip to the dump.



Several trips were made to the storage container, more above the shop. Paper was burned and a trip was made to the burn pile with wood scraps. There's still work to do, but the barn is slowly being made ready for winter.



It's almost daylight, time to strap on the hikers and go for my morning walk. Honestly, it's still dark, windy, and chilly, out there and I'm not in any rush.

On today's agenda will be the trip to the dump and to finish cleaning the barn. Our shallow well water pump in the basement is making horrible noises and I'm trying to find a plumber to make them go away. I don't need a crystal ball to see there's a new pump and pressure tank in our future.

It's just money. Doesn't it grow on trees?

Yeah, on someone else's. All that grow on mine are apples.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

White cosmos in full bloom