This week has been such a gorgeous week. I recently came back from a good friends wedding in Michigan. I've only been gone for about a month and half, but it was good to be home even if it was just for a little bit. It's astonishing how quickly things can change with-in a weeks time. The orchards are in full bloom with fruit buds everywhere. The landscape has turned so green compared to how it was only a few weeks ago. All of the trees have started bearing groups of fruit buds, some more so than others. Thinning season just started here and we're putting all hands on deck to eliminate competing buds from the king buds. King buds is the term used to describe the dominating bud in a bunch. Its not hard to to tell which one it is because it will always be the biggest one in a bunch.
Its only been about 2 and a half days of thinning at the time of writing this blog post and we've only finished about a single block of pear tree's on the main orchard. We still have a lot more work to do on the other two orchards. Up to this point i haven't really done a lot of physical work on the orchards. I've tried my hand at spreading and staking trees down. I wasn't able to try out spraying cause you need to know how to drive a tractor and it takes a bit of practicing to get it done properly. Thinning though is a fairly straight forward process. Remove the competing buds of tree leaving 1-2 buds per bunch. The only thing you have to think about is how big do we want a particular fruit to grow. This is actually something thats determined by the market and consumers . You have to think of it in the sense of the old children's tale "Goldilocks" lol. No, but it really is that simple. Most people don't want a fruit too small or too big but just right. Some fruits that grow too big require us to leave 2 king buds in the bunch. so that we don't have a fruit the size of your head. Honeycrisps typically don't grow very big so its okay to leave a single king bud.
The next time you hear from me, Hopefully i'll be an experience thinner and can pull off an entire tree in a few mins. In reality, I'll be banned from doing this job cause i've either killed too many fruits and or jumped off a ladder cause i saw a spider or (insert creepy looking bug here). I'd probably be better off just doing what i do best, Making photographs and being as non destructive as possible.
Well enjoy some of these previews. stayed tuned for a mid week blog post. I have an update for first release prints i'll be offering up either in the blog or on a new social media account i have set up.