Orchard Update - January 27, 2014

Well it's winter time in the orchards. All the trees are asleep but there's still a lot going on. Every year the trees grow quite a bit. There's a lot of new growth on these trees and a tree is always trying to reach the sky. It's closing up the windows and filling the space with wood. One of the most important things we do, especially this time of year, is to get in and remove the extra wood, take out problems, get limbs out that are too big, and look at where that fruit is hanging. So we're building the structure of the tree. Even on trees like these that are really close to filling their space, we always have to be taking out weaker wood and renewing the wood and looking at how we can shape the tree to grow the most perfect apple possible. There's other things going on right now too. We're doing a lot of planning. We're looking at what the results were of last year, how the fruit quality is stacking up. We're going through all our equipment looking for problems, making sure it's ready to go. We don't want to have things break down as soon as we start the season so we're working through tractors and sprayers and everything it takes to keep the season going next year. We're also establishing some new blocks so we're putting irrigation systems in and getting everything in place so as soon as those trees are planted we can get some water on them. So though pruning is the most important thing we're doing, everything has importance as we're moving ahead.