Thinning the thicket

Yes it’s time. Those beautiful buds have dropped from the branches and have produced the start of the fruit. Lots of fruit. Not much to say other than we need a lot of help to get these trees thinned so they will produce large juicy fruit and not small tough fuzzy things. The better we thin, the better the fruit. So the orchard needs help to thin. The weather is such that these have gone from small marble size to some as big as a walnut in just the last two weeks.

As always we appreciate your time you put into the orchard. It will be a blessing to so many who will have no idea of the effort made in their behalf.

The orchard service missionaries.

Thinning is about to begin

After a brief pause it’s time to get back to what is happening in our orchard. Youth nights have been extraordinary. The service missionaries have been busy doing the last of the pruning, fertilizing the trees, organizing and updating the barn, as well as the routine maintenance items like mowing grass and planting additional trees.
But now the thinning must start. So from May 22 until harvest the trees need to be thinned. Without thinning the fruit will be smaller than desired. After all the sun delivers only so much energy to the tree, and the tree divides that energy among all the fruit that is on it at any one time. When thinning we want to remove clusters and fruit that is too close to each other. To help with this the service missionaries are available during the assigned hours to help anyone with questions. We try to have several of the more knowledgeable missionaries at the drop off points to explain more when you arrive.

We appreciate all the effort everyone adds to this orchard and we hope to see you all several times over the next month or two.

Youth Nights Continue…

It’s been about five weeks since we finished the pruning and switched over to having the various Stake youth help us on Wednesday nights. Most of the work is painting the tree trunks, clearing rocks between the trees, or raking the cuttings from the trees into the center of the rows where they can be mulched. This effort by the youth is a tremendous help to the regular service missionaries. The clearing of the rocks are needed to prevent damage to our lawn mowers, the painting of the tree trunks protect the trees from any herbicides that are used to clear weeds between the trees. Keeping the area between the trees weed free is important because several times during the summer months fertilizer is tossed into the area of the tree trunk. Better to feed the trees than the weeds.
The youth will continue to come each Wednesday night up to at least when we start harvesting. The schedule for each stake is posted on the calendar for the orchard. Thinning of the trees will start on or about May 22.

Another Youth Night, Another Great Turnout

Last week I wrote about the great turnout we had from the youth. I didn’t think it could be much better. But last night surprised us with even more youth turning out to help with the orchard. In fact the turnout was so great and the number of cars trying to get into the orchard at the same time caught us flat footed. We just don’t always have enough service missionaries to do all the jobs that need to be done. That is why all you volunteers signing up is so important. We can better prepare. The sign up sheet when we printed it about 3 PM, had about 80 people signed up. In the half hour between 6:30 and 7:00 over 250 showed up. And what you did was absolutely great. All y’all (That’s Texas which means everyone, y’all is singular) finished “de-blooming” all the trees in the orchard.

De-blooming is needed on certain trees when the tree needs to have more ‘structure’ so it can be more and better fruit in the future. If the tree is allowed to blossom and grow fruit, its energy goes into growing fruit and not making a better tree. It is grand efforts like what happened last night that helps this orchard produce such an abundant harvest each year. So everything you do helps us. The orchard can be very demanding to manage and maintain so for all of us service missionaries, our heartfelt thanks to all of you for doing this.

And the ice cream was good too.

Thanks again. The orchard service missionaries.

Youth Night. Amazing Turnout.

Over 400 youth from the Farr West Poplar Stake showed up at the orchard tonight. An absolutely wonderful turnout. I’m going to compare some numbers from tonight, just 1 night compared to the total turnout of all Stakes for March. Now it’s not a completely fair comparison due to many factors including the time of the day for volunteering, the weather, and the challenge of pruining. So…

For all of March from all 16 stakes the total number of volunteers was a bit over 1000 people. These include those who took time off from work, mothers and fathers who brought their young children, and many who came several times. I’m now on a first name basis with so many of you because of that. And that’s not a bad thing. The pruning was done, done well, and the orchard looks good.

But in one night, tonight, we had 464 people from 1 stake. That’s almost half of the total for all of March. And how having so many was truly a blessing that is hard to express in words. So much more was done than we expected. Grass was planted in areas that really needs grass. Hundreds of trees were painted. This painting protects the trees from some of the herbicides that we spray to control weeds. Raking was done to help us add mulch between the rows. All of it needed. All of it appreciated.

So tonight you all are our heroes. You have lightened our load more than you know. And we appreciate it.

The orchard service missionaries.

PS. Charlie Brown really liked the snow cones.