| Hello Everyone! We would like to introduce to you…Cooper Vodraska! Our new puppy! Chris and I drove to Virginia to pick him up and bring him home this week! I am sure there will be MANY more photos to show you later, but we wanted to make an official introduction on our newsletter. Needless to say, it’s been a busy week getting ready for this new puppy. We shifted rooms in our house and made Abbie a playroom so we can shut a door and prevent some puppy damage to her toddler toys. We are excited to bring this ball of fur into our home and look forward to sharing him with all of you! Other than a new puppy, not much is going on out in the orchard besides pruning, pruning and some more pruning. A lot of people have asked about organizing a pruning class. We are not able to accommodate that this year, but I am going to try and get outside, maybe next week, to film Chris pruning with his team. We hope you have a wonderful week! So far, I have kept up with my ‘newsletter a week’ goal! Yay me! Small victories are celebrated here. 🙂 Take care, Amanda, Chris & Abbie |
A Farmer Chris Update
We get asked all the time what we do in the winter. Well, our store is open all year. Amanda and our staff do a great job handling that. My winters are spent about a third on bookkeeping/ taxes/planning the upcoming season, and two thirds on pruning. We have thousands of trees and a small team to take care of them. It takes a really long time. Most nights I’m out until dark. I post a lot of sunset photos on social media. I fit a lot of the bookkeeping in at home after Abbie goes to bed at night or when the weather is really bad. In this photo, I am working on pruning Braeburn.
Pink Lady
This is my current favorite apple! Pink Lady has the distinction of being one of the first apples to be marketed under a specific brand name rather than by its variety name-Cripps Pink. It was developed in 1973 by John Cripps at the Western Australia Department of Agriculture. It is a cross between Golden Delicious and a dark red Australian variety called Lady Williams.
What are Seconds?
We get a lot of messages asking if we have ‘seconds.’ Does everyone know what this means? I didn’t before I starting working at the orchard!
A bag of ‘seconds’ are apples that are not quite perfect by our high standards. They are NOT the apples that fall on the ground around the trees. They are a wonderful option for those of you who love to make applesauce or apple butter!
They are always first come, first serve at our orchard and we don’t always have them. It depends on how the apples are sorted by our staff in the warehouse. But they are a great deal and perfect for cooking and snacking!
