Forgive me y'all....I've had this sitting around in my "draft" section for almost a month.
We've been working (slowly) on building an orchard. It started at the 9 acre lot with a couple each of plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, apples and pears. That was all good until we put the lot up for sale. Most of the trees we dug up and moved to the 5 acre lot. Good thing too since we just sold the 9 acre lot (celebrate!!!! sort of, I still have some mixed feeling about having sold it). Not all of the trees we moved survived and I think we might have one or two more that still could die off.
Anyhow, so here in a couple weeks or less, my big Stark Bros order should arrive. I added about 6 more apples, an asian (some call it an apple) pear, more cherries, beach plums, paw paws (or Indiana banana) and a few other odd ball items. I couldn't be more excited to dig a bunch of holes! That brings our complete orchard up to a total of 13 apples -mostly dwarf, 4 pears, 4 plums, 5 peaches, 1 nectarine, 1 apricot, 5 cherry, 2 paw paw, 2 honeyberry....I think that's all of it. Anyhow, so when I include the berries we've already planted, that means we will have fruit from Mid-May through early November. The season starts with honeyberry and strawberries and ends with granny smith and pink lady apples. This satisfies one of my homesteading goals :)
I think we are going to scale back the chickens and other birds as we get closer to having enough goats to produce meat as well as milk, plus we want to add rabbits.....we are finding that birds are messy and hard to contain and while we like them, scaling them back as we bring in mammalian meat sources makes more sense. This is our evolution.
We've been working (slowly) on building an orchard. It started at the 9 acre lot with a couple each of plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, apples and pears. That was all good until we put the lot up for sale. Most of the trees we dug up and moved to the 5 acre lot. Good thing too since we just sold the 9 acre lot (celebrate!!!! sort of, I still have some mixed feeling about having sold it). Not all of the trees we moved survived and I think we might have one or two more that still could die off.
Anyhow, so here in a couple weeks or less, my big Stark Bros order should arrive. I added about 6 more apples, an asian (some call it an apple) pear, more cherries, beach plums, paw paws (or Indiana banana) and a few other odd ball items. I couldn't be more excited to dig a bunch of holes! That brings our complete orchard up to a total of 13 apples -mostly dwarf, 4 pears, 4 plums, 5 peaches, 1 nectarine, 1 apricot, 5 cherry, 2 paw paw, 2 honeyberry....I think that's all of it. Anyhow, so when I include the berries we've already planted, that means we will have fruit from Mid-May through early November. The season starts with honeyberry and strawberries and ends with granny smith and pink lady apples. This satisfies one of my homesteading goals :)
I think we are going to scale back the chickens and other birds as we get closer to having enough goats to produce meat as well as milk, plus we want to add rabbits.....we are finding that birds are messy and hard to contain and while we like them, scaling them back as we bring in mammalian meat sources makes more sense. This is our evolution.
