40 Fruit Trees
We worked until 10pm planting 40 replacement fruit trees. In 2021 with an 11 day old Elden tied to my chest we planted 130 trees. I was more of the director, and we are forever thankful for my family who came in to help.
We lost about 30% of those trees to ignorance, drought, voles, and fire blight.
This year Elden aka tiny foreman helped by being master of the hose. He also loved searching for “weens” aka worms. In 2021 there were no worms. This year we found worms and healing soil in every hole. It’s so exciting to be here witnessing this place come back to life. The diversity of animals and bugs increase every year and tells us we are doing good.
Eloise helped me plant, spread amendments, and treat each tree with homeopathy.
Everett weed whacked, and helped Ryan come behind us and mulch each tree. He worked until 10pm with us, never complaining because he was so happy to stay up.
Ryan with help from our friend Brian dug every hole, then he came behind us covering the base in wood chips to hold moisture in the summer months.
I found the trees, made the plan, and put most of them into the ground. My worm farm turned farm waste into a plant super food.
When we say family farm we mean it.
Exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe how we felt at the end of the day. We ate take out in the orchard and worked into the night.
We took everything we learned over the last two years to give these trees the best start.
-We amended our clay soil (which was more soil and less clay than when we dug these holes 2 years ago.) with worm castings and gelsemium. Many orchardists say to not fertilize new trees. Worm castings are a fertilizer but not like chemical or isolated fertilizers. The good bacteria helps prevent disease and will help the trees get established.
-We pruned the trees upon planting to account for root loss.
-We treated every tree (both new and old) with homeopathy. Arnica for the trauma of being pruned and planted. Aconite to prevent shock. Silica to push out disease and pests. The studies on silica and plant growth are pretty incredible. This is called agrohomeopathy.
-We deep multched each tree with 4-6 inches of wood chips.
Our “small” orchard is 101 trees, 11 types of fruit and nuts, and 51 different varieties. Diversity like this helps confuse pest and disease, and will space out We planted rows by their ripening dates and we will get fruit from the end of June until October.
We had 0 orchard experience 2 years ago. My plan was always to have the money to pay experts to help us. Plans change and we adapted.
In 2-3 years we will open our you pick orchard for a few.
In 3-5 years we will have an abundance of better than organic fruit to share with our community.
We are working on a mission statement, and clearing our vision. We are still in the learning phase. Finding what things bring us joy, what we are good at, and our community needs. We still don’t have all the details but we know one thing for sure. We want to create the healthiest food we can, with an abundance to share. We want to share our healing stories so others can be inspired to use food to find deep and lasting healing.
~Learning as we grow. Healing as we go.~
I think I’ve found our motto.