Our farm year starts in late January or even February, with the annual pruning of the apple trees. The ultimate goal is to prune every tree every year, and the goal is met most years. When we first needed to do serious pruning, Farmer Bill invested in a battery-operated backpack pruner that made the job much simpler for whoever got to use it (mostly Bill himself). That original pruner has since worn out and been replaced by 2 backpack pruners, 2 handheld battery-operated pruners and 2 mini-chainsaws, along with manual pruners, loppers and full-size chainsaws. Pruning happens on 'nice' winter & early spring days when the sun is shining and the temperatures are bearable. Sessions are 2-4 hours long, depending on what staff is available. This year the main pruning crew has been teens, an especially good group of young people who work hard and willingly. They have been inspirational and exhausting for Farmer Bill. He has a hard time keeping up with them, but always welcomes the challenge.
Also during these months, on days when it's snowing or too cold to work outside, machinery is getting pulled out of winter storage and readied for the summer.
The Reigi is a weeder/de-thatcher that is prized by produce growers in the know. It's a simple machine that attaches to the PTO with a series of pulleys & belts that turn 2 discs fitted with tines. It's super great for weeding new strawberry plantings. One person drives the tractor down the row and a second person sits on the seat of the Reigi. Two handles allow the second person to move the turning tines around new plants, tearing out small weed seedlings; it can be used as often as staff and time allows until the new berries send out runners. It is also used to uncover the straw mulch from the strawberries. In that operation, only one person needs to drive the tractor down the rows with the Reigi tines held in place close together. The turning tines flip the straw off the plants and into the aisles, leaving the emerging strawberry plants uncovered.
The multivator is a great tool for creating a loose, even planting bed before transplanting strawberries (among other crops). It works like a powerful rototiller, powered by the PTO of a tractor. Multivators come with a varied number of heads, but our has four. The driver goes up and down a field that has been plowed, disced and/or dug and the multivator heads churn the clumps of soil into loose bits. After the strawberry harvest, the multivator is also used in the renovation process. Strawberries are cut off close to the crown of the plant and the multivator is used to turn under the straw in the aisles and narrow the rows. Left unchecked the strawberries would send out runners and fill in the aisles, making a huge matted field of strawberries rather than the orderly rows needed for a pick-your-own operation.
Straight River Farm has two John Deere gators. Ours have 6 wheels and dump beds and are used for more tasks than can be easily mentioned. However, both of them are old now and have been dinged & dented, repaired and jury-rigged until their workings hardly resemble the originals. But we are hopeful that we can keep them running yet another season - they haul people, supplies, boxes of berries & apples, brush & trash to the burn pile, and so much more that they'd have to be replaced with something.
The farm has five tractors: two John Deere 790s, two New Holland 4430s, and an International 340. The 790s are used for the multivator, Reigi, boom sprayer, and rotary cutter, among other tasks. One New Holland is used for heavier tasks, plowing, discing, digging, blast spraying, and running the irrigation pump. The second New Holland is called 'the project tractor' because it doesn't regularly run. When it does work, it gets parked down by the river to power the irrigation pump, leaving the 'good' New Holland free for other tasks. The International is our 'poor man's skid loader.' It has a lift on it, with forks like a skid loader's and is mostly used to move pallets. When supplies are delivered on pallets, we have the drivers park at the end of our driveway and use the 340 to unload the pallets to the road, because it's virtually impossible for a semi-truck to turn around in our farmyard. Farmer Bill also uses it during the winter to lift a platform to the roof of the machine & apple sheds, allowing him to rake snow off the solar panels.
We have two lawn mowers. One is a 6-foot zero-turn mower and the other is a 4-foot zero turn. The 4-foot mower has a bagger and is used in the raspberry and blueberry aisles to avoid spraying cut grass and weeds into the plant rows. It also gets used to pick up leaves in the autumn. A rotary cutter is used to do rough cutting - chopping up the small brush after pruning, and cutting grass when we, inevitably, fall behind in mowing. It's also helpful for mowing the edges of fields, which are often too rough for traditional mowing, but need to be kept mowed down.
All of the machinery needs to be greased, tightened, blades sharpened, belts, cylinders and hoses inspected, etc. so those are tasks that are done in the autumn before machinery is put away for the season, and if time doesn't before the snow falls, then done in late winter/early spring before the farming work heats up.
Bumblebees - added for the first time in 2022 - are ordered. Bumblebees will fly in colder weather than honeybees and are actually more efficient pollinators. They are scheduled to arrive in early May when we hope there will be enough weeds and wildflowers emerging to feed them while we wait for the apple trees to blossom. Last year we had a very good pollination rate and we believe the bumblebees helped with that, so we're bringing in a couple of colonies again this year.
Our participation in an Apple IPM data group is set up. We will put out traps in the orchard to monitor for 7 insect pests and the serious fungal disease called apple scab. A data logger, with an attached leaf wetness monitor is put out on April 3. Normally it would go out on April 1, but we had a serious snowstorm on April 1. The logger tracks temperatures and degree days. The leaf wetness monitor tracks how long the orchard is wet. Scab spores are activated by warmth and wetness and the tracking information will tell Farmer Bill when it's time to spray for apple scab. That one spray may be enough to keep the disease at bay for the year, but at most he'll do two sprays.
Future posts will detail other work and activities. This year I'm determined to get photos and videos of some of the specialized equipment and processes as they happen. I've already missed using the Reigi to uncover the strawberries, but there may be a touch up uncovering done at some point soon, so I'll try to get it then. And Farmer Bill is planting one last strawberry field this year, so the Reigi will almost certainly get used to do some initial weeding.
