Backyard Chickens & Bees

Round two of cider-making took place this past weekend. I learned a lot about buying apples in bulk and what NOT to do! Also, I made use of my new apple grinder from OESCO to replace the garbage disposal one that I had built last year. That was easily one of the best investments I [...]

Two Sundays ago (or so, it was on 9/11) was the first day of pressing apples for this year. Of course, it was also about the second hottest day we’ve had in Portland so far (93 °F, or 34 °C if you prefer)! But that didn’t stop us from running 503 lbs of Gravenstein and [...]

Bins of apple scions at the fruit propagation fair. This past weekend, my neighbor Charles and I went to the Home Orchard Society’s fruit propagation fair. It was held at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds in Canby, Oregon. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, being that I’m fairly new to the orcharding scene, and was [...]

Last year, my parents put me in touch with one of the neighbors who rent out a property across the street from their house. The neighbor’s house has a nice, fully-grown apple tree in the front yard that, as far as I know, is an incredibly tasty Gravenstein. That fall I picked about 250 lbs [...]

So the cider that we made recently has fermented out to a nice dry drink! Last time I checked it, it was around 6.9% ABV and very dry, so I transferred it into the kegs. I ended up with about 12.5 gallons of that batch (single varietal Gravenstein). Of course, that wasn’t enough, so in [...]

So, a few weekends ago I went to my parent’s house and picked apples off a nice Gravenstein tree at their neighbor’s place. The tree is on a rental property, and has not been cared for or used for anything apple-centric in a long while (or so it seems). So we picked apples, and I [...]

The new apple trees are ordered! I went with Cummins Nursery in New York State, since they have such a wide selection of fruit varieties and are experts with rootstocks (Dr Cummins was a professor emeritus at Cornell University, working on developing new rootstocks for fruit trees). The apples I will get are all dwarf [...]

OK, so I guess it is time for something new. This past weekend during the CHIC get-together at our house, V and I were talking with Harriet and others about growing apples, and the difficulties of training grapevines. The subject was broached about pulling the grapes and planting apple trees instead, and since then, I [...]