Orchard Update

 

It might not be as cute as the kids but we have had some milestones reached in the orchard. We so far have two planting years, 2011 and 2012. The 2011 now in its third growing season we knew was going to have some fruit. Though since it is its first year producing fruit we were not planning on harvesting and sending the fruit to market. We would just pick and enjoy it for ourselves and share it with friends and family. As the cherries were coming on we were noticing that there was a lot more on the trees then we were expecting. Before we could harvest for market there were a few hurdles to jump. Getting boxes (ordering them would mean 1000's more then we needed), finding pickers, figuring out sorting, figuring out how to cool and keep then cherries cool once picked and most importantly a buyer. It become quite obvious that the Lord wanted us to harvest this year, all of those things we answered very easily.

When the day came we started at 6:00am and it took the pickers 4 1/2 hours to pick all the cherries. It took us much much longer to sort. We loaded the boxes into the car and The Farmer parked it in a friends cooler for the night then drove into Portland in the morning. By morning I really do mean morning, he delivered the fruit at 7:00 which meant he left here at 5:15.

 The first load brought in from the field.

My parents started out checking and making sure the trailer of totes followed along with the pickers. Every time a picker fills a tote they have to check it in because they are paid per tote. The totes move with the pickers so they do not have to walk fare to check and pick up another tote.

 The Farmer getting ready to take a load to the barn, this was a slow and careful ride.

Let the sorting begin! The fruit are in ice water to bring their temperature down. Sorting involves pulling the damaged and bird pecked fruit, pulling the small fruit (only a certain size is accepted in market) and pulling the cherries without stems (stem less cherries don't sell no mater what the size).

 The first box weighed and ready to be loaded into the car.

 Future farmer/future free labor :)

Jane joined us in the barn too.

The biggest blessing of harvesting this year was how much we learned. In particular better ways to sort, or at least that we will need to have a more efficient way to sort next year when we will have more then double the amount of fruit. We owe a big big thank you to our family for helping us sort this year! God is truly great and has blessed us immensely in this harvest and with our family willing to sacrifice time (and sore muscles) to help us.

What For

 

You know how every kid enters into that "why phase" where there seems to be an endless string of questions all starting with why. Well Micah has entered that phase but his version of why is "what for". Here is a recent conversation between him and The Farmer.

M: Papa what are you doing?
C: Weed wacking.
M: What weed wacking for?
C: To knock down weeds.
M: What knock down weeds for?
C: To keep the weeds out of the trees.
M: What keep weeds out of trees for?
C: To reduce disease transmission.
M: What reduce disease transmission for?
C: To grow higher quality fruit.
M: What grow higher quality fruit for?
C: To have better tasting fruit to sell.
M:Oh

10 Months

We have enjoyed another month with Jane. A development that actually happened more around 9 months is she will say "mamamama" when she is wanting me. We still continue to have a very close bond, of course we are still nursing so that makes sense. She knows her name now too, she might have learned it earlier but I have noticed it much more lately that she will look when you call her name. Jane has become quite chatty, there are times she will try to repeat words like hi. She will also wave hi and bye. She is not walking on her own yet but she is making progress, cruising has begun and she is starting to stand without holding on more often. For play Jane is liking putting blocks into a box. And not quite as helpful, she likes to pull toys and books off of the shelves. She has also learned how to clap. We have found Jane to be very ticklish, especially under the arms, which makes the game round and round the garden fun for us all. This girl is always on the move and wanting to explore. Getting a picture of her on her blanket was near impossible, I have a lot of shots like this one catching her in mid roll over.

Yesterday we had a scare with Jane. I was in the kitchen cleaning up lunch and she wandered into the dining room and discovered an old can of sterno (sterno is methanol). When I went to her there was dried out crystals around her. Since I wasn't sure we assumed she ingested some. The Farmer called poison control and they instructed us to take her to the ER. Jane was looking fine and the doctor was pretty confident she that even if she did ingest some of the crystals it was very unlikely that there was any methanol left. They did do a blood draw to test. We were sent home to wait results. The carrier would be coming from The Dallas or Portland to pick up the sample and then take it to Portland for testing. Ridiculous, I wanted to ask if we could just drive her to Portland. We got a call from the doctor around 7:15 that there was zero methanol, praise God. It was a relief to get that call, though I am still dealing with guilt that it even happened.