I have been remiss in the timeliness of my updates. My appologies. Here we are at the beginning of November already. The pears have all been harvested, stored and packing is ongoing. The Bartlett have all been packed, shipped, and enjoyed by many of you who have taken the time to send us your kind words of appreciation for our products. Most of the Bosc and Red D’Anjou have been packed and shipped and upwards of a third of the Green D’Anjou. The harvest, while not the largest ever, was a very full crop with unsurpassed quality this season. The sugar content and maturity, (read excellent ripening capability), is exceptional this year. I must say that we were blessed with the volume and quality of all the crops we grew on the farm this year. Three crops of hay in the barn rain free, 700 pound calves off the range, ready to be weaned and sent to market, vegetables all harvested and eaten by our local customers, our own larders full and ready for winter.

We are just finishing up readying the farm for winter. Irrigation equipment picked up and stored, pipes all blown and winterized, final mowing to reduce rodent habitat for the winter, winter feeding grounds for the cows readied, harvest equipment cleaned, repaired and stored until next season. The leaves should finish dropping soon, which signals the start of the dormant pruning, probably the most time consuming job on the farm. The importance of a quality pruning job, however, cannot be over emphasized. Tree vigor, crop load and harvested quality all starts with how well the pruning is done.