Once upon a time there was a huge apple orchard that covered much of a country section (660 acres) in this neck of what is now woods. When the orchard failed to make a profit the parcel was divided up and the place I have now was the home of the former orchardist. He turned it into a hunting camp and guided city folks in pursuit of white-tail deer and bear. My garage was once part of an animal barn where he kept his horses and tack. Remnants of the old buildings remain here and there. His lands were divided again and again until my 34 acres passed on to me.
Walking the fields and woods near the house and garage we came upon a few scraggly old apple trees still sprouting from the old root stock. One winter, Mark, being unemployed at the time, started to clear the brush, saplings and pines away from many of the apple trees behind the garage and to the west in what we called Phase One of The Great Apple Orchard Recovery Program.
The following summer he took the brush hog and cleared out the small sapling stumps that remained after the snow melted. Low and behold, the grass took over and a park-like area emerged from what was a waist high thicket of young firs, poplar saplings and a brush I think may be Labrador Tea. And a few of the apple trees started to produce small apples.
Phase One of The Great Apple Orchard Recovery Program.
Several large brush piles were created from the slash of clearing the orchard. This is one of the larger ones. It stands almost six feet high and covers an area of about 15 feet by 15 feet. It provides cover for all kinds of small mammals from rodents to weasels as well as snakes and other critters. Burning is out of the question and hauling it all off to dump in a hollow area on the far side of the property is time consuming so here it will stay until time, snow and insects reduce it to so much humus.
Phase One went so well that Phase Two has begun. A chunk of the area behind the barn and cabin has had some pine trees removed and the honeysuckle thinned out. I’ve started brush hogging the remaining stumps and Labrador tea. With luck, in a year or two, the grass will be growing beneath the apple trees and the damp moss that spread disease that weakened them will be a thing of the past. (The pines really hold in the moisture as does the thick Labrador Tea. Air circulation about the base of the apple trees is vital to their health.)
This swath about 6 feet wide was brush hogged out on Tuesday afternoon. There’s still a lot more to cut behind the brush pile on the left and even among the trees on the right. (There’s one of the apple trees in the right rear of this photo.) When it’s done, the grass will show up in a year or two. Then it will be mowed by mower not brush hog.
This is what I'm calling Labrador Tea. It does have a nice spike of white flowers in the spring but it is tough to walk through. It's woody stems cris-cross and will trip you up. Plus the leaves hold lots of moisture even if it's just dew so walking through this waist high stuff will leave you soaked.
Here's a section I hope to get cleared on Thursday. It's to the west of the open, park-like area in the first photo. It’s mostly “tea”, poplar saplings and small fir trees. This is where I'll have to keep my eyes open for blueberries.
While clearing some of the “tea” in the area of the photo above this one I came across this fairly large patch of blueberries. (Actually there is another a short distance away.) They aren't the big ones you find in commercial fields or even in the NJ Pine Barrens but they are sweet when ripe. There are a few ripe berries already but in a week’s time I’ll be fighting the birds for many of these. (Hopefully the bears will be elsewhere!)
So, I’ve got my work planned for the next few days at least. I’ll be walking behind the brush hog most of the time if the weather permits. Tomorrow is supposed to be cool and breezy which will make the job much more comfortable than the high temps and humidity of yesterday. I did get some work done with the brush loppers today and the chainsaw. The showers of around noon time didn’t reappear until just after 8 PM this evening and I can feel the temperature falling as I type this.
Well, that’s all for tonight. It’s time to check and see how the Mets are doing and then head off to sleep. (Those bloody birds awaken me at 4:30 AM! At least Chester waits until 6 o’clock.)
2 comments:
Hello,
I have about the same situation. I am renting about 43 acres in Lycoming county PA. We discovered that it has an orchard with about 600 trees that where planted in the 1950's. They have since been allowed to grow wild. I was just curious if you has any tips that you can give me to bring this orchard back.
Jesse
Jessie, all I can tell you is to thin, thin, thin. We cleared all the brush between the trees and then trimmed the trees themselves removing all the ground suckers around the trunks as well as much of th elong, leggy branches. Then I attacked the weeds that grew between the trees. Two years of doing that seemed to revitalize the trees that remained. Favorable weather (mostly the timing of the spring frost) helped.
Unfortunately, I had knee replacement surgery in the summer of '13 and back surgery in the winter of '15 that kept me from doing what I should have been doing both in the field and around/in the cabin. As a result, I just sold the place.
Best of luck with your reclaimation project.
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