Orcharding

Yes we still do orchard. Actually quite a bit has been happening and this could be shaping up to be a good and exciting year for us. The Farmer cleared about a half acre of trees, mostly cotton woods that were taking up usable and valuable land for cherry trees. The Farmer has a new found dislike of cotton woods.

There was a lot of trees lost to gophers and voles from 2012 planting, yes voles not moles. So The Farmer pulled all of those trees both dead and alive. Then he condensed down and replanted the ones that were alive. That also gave him the opportunity to easily inoculate them with this fungus called mycorrhizal, which causes the trees root structure to grow more. We also got more trees planted, this time it is a different variety. This helps us because it has a later ripening date which enables us to harvest and process the cherries ourselves.

go bees go 

Speaking of processing ourselves, probably the most exciting thing for this year is we will be building an automatic sorter. The design is with an engineer right now getting all the details drawn out. That will then be sent to a fabricator to get the pieces made then we (The Farmer) will assemble it. There will still need to be people on the line to pull damaged fruit and separate any fruit that is connected still. But all of the sizing will be done by the machine and loaded into boxes. I just have to say woot woot! That was soooo time consuming last year. I'm sure it won't go as fast as it could this year since we will be learning the machine but it will be significantly faster then last. Which is good because there were an astonishing amount of blossoms this year and as long as our bees did there job all those blossoms will be cherries. I do love it when the trees are in blossom, it is so pretty.

The Farmer as also been busy keeping up with gopher blasting, mowing, weed burning and spraying has just started up. 

It is very exciting seeing the trees grow.

13 Weeks

Wow we have already made it through the first trimester. The biggest thing I noticed about the first trimester for this pregnancy is how tired I have been. I have felt like I could just fall asleep any time of the day and by the evening there is nothing left. I am still waiting for my energy to turn that supposedly does in the second trimester. I have also had to be much more diligent about eating every couple hours otherwise I will feel nauseous. Plus I have been more sensitive to what I eat, many things don't sound or smell very good. Overall though I am blessed with relatively easy pregnancy and even though I've had a few more challenges so far it has still been great.  

18 Months

Well Jane is over 18 months and quickly coming up to 19 months. We have had her check up and she weighs 22lbs 12oz and is 32.75 inches tall. She sure is growing quick! Her language development seems to changing quick too. She is speaking much more, always saying new words and will repeat most words you ask her to. Some of her more used words right now are:


Mama or Mommy
Papa
Micah (which is dah-dah)
Jane
Nana
Opa
Joe
Grandma
Grandpa
Beth
Please
Thank you
Read
Amen
Up
Down
More
All done
Baby
Necklace
Hi
Bye
Teeth
Get you
Blankie
Play
Milk
Snack
Breakfast
Bike
Socks
Shoes
Hat
Light
Sit here

Bible
Book
Spoon
Bite

Wow I guess she is talking a lot because there are many more words she says and she will attempt to repeat most words we ask her to. Jane is so fun she makes us laugh everyday. It is a joy to start to see her personality emerging more. She still continues to enjoy being close to me and I right now I will take all those moments with my little girl.