August 17th, 2011 Here We Go

And it begins…

We’re just getting our ducks in a row to open on Sunday, August 21st for the 2011 apple season.  Today’s activities included: first pie-making extravaganza of the year –although with only 100 pies, it was a bit of a soft start, 175 lbs of caramel, crop insurance audit.  Then at 1:00, the high schoolers arrived for field work.  Unfortunately for them, they were mandated to the blueberry field almost immediately for weeding.  We cleaned the bin dump, picked the State Fair up in the organic block, did a TV interview for News Channel 8, attended the Trempealeau Chamber meeting, updated orchard management records, and here I sit, finally dedicating a few minutes to starting this blog after an unacceptable period of 13 months post this site going live.  Well, as they say, better late…

My goal is to keep posting bi-weekly.  We’ll see if that happens.  Apple growing is a wonderful and wonderfully painful experience as we’ve come to well know over the past 18 months.  I’m going to try to keep a record of our triumphs and complete failures, if only for myself.  Most days it’s a total chit show around here and maybe documenting the insanity will help bring some humor to the tough moments.  Hopefully, we’ll only have to learn the hard lessons once.

Today’s Irony:

So the crop insurance auditors roll up to inspect the crop before picking.  They immediately ask for a Gator (John Deere “all terrain” vehicle, kind of) to cruise the orchard for the auditing task.  As they are not farm help, they are not covered under our current policy to drive that vehicle.