THE  FARM:  THEN  AND  NOW

One of our first tasks was to try and save the apple orchard. Planted over three decades ago by Bob's grandfather, the apple orchard had been neglected in recent years. Choked by weeds, shrubs and vines, the trees were slowly dying. After getting rid of all the weeds and cutting off dead wood to make room for new growth, the trees show promise in terms of regenerating. Hopefully in a few years, we will be baking apple pies made from the fruit of these trees.

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Initially our thought was that the grapevines Bob's grandfather had planted between the apple trees would have to go. They had grown, over time, into the trees themselves and were choking the limbs and crowding the fruit.  The vines however are in great shape and so we're doing a bit of an experiment, stretching the vines to the outside of the orchard, burying part of the vine and hoping they might reroot in a better spot. Too soon to tell if our experiment will work. But the vines have survived our attempts at trellising and we even saw a few clusters of fruit.  Time will tell...

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Check out our Blog entitled "Saving the Orchard" for the full story on how we're trying to save these trees and this living bit of history.