Wednesday, January 25, 2017

-Peach Harvest

Summer in the orchard doesn't leave much time for huge events, but we sure do love the small ones. We are so busy during the summer with harvest. By June we literally have peaches running out of our ears. The trees produced so many peaces and nectarines this year. We were shipping fruit up about every 3 days. Our fork lift broke down permanently somewhere during the peach harvest, so the guys built a dock to load the fruit in the semi using the tractor, or we would hand load it in using the baskets that we use to pick the fruit into. 

Gabe and Shea loading the fruit baskets onto the trailer to take off the field.



As the picking crew finishes up their baskets they stack them in the shade to help preserve them. The days are hot and the rule of thumb is for every hour the fruit is off the tree and in the sun we lose an day of shelf life. So we are running like crazy to get the fruit in the cooler as fast as possible.



Peach harvest is a bunch of physical work, and a blast! Most of the harvest it takes a couple people to bring in fruit, and working with my siblings in the orchard is the funnest thing about the job.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

July 29 - Wild Choke Cherries and Basket wash Factory

One of our favorite kinds of syrup is made from wild choke cherries. When we lived in Texas, we couldn't find any, as they like to be near water. We were thrilled to find that they grew all up and down the John Day river. Early this morning Momma, Gabriel, and I all headed out to pick. We found one tree and from that tree picked more than enough for what we needed this year.
Couldn't resist taking this picture of Conrad, he looks as excited about the berries as we were.


Chicken brooding is in full swing as well. This particular hen hatched out a clutch of 14 chicks early spring, this is her second clutch. 
 Meanwhile back at the office the boys had a washing system going for all the picking baskets in the orchard, getting ready for the major harvest. By the end of the day they had it down really good...and were soaking wet!




Summer is such a beautiful part of the year here. We absolutely love working all together as a family!

July 23-24 - Cousin sleepover

We had a fantastic weekend with some of the younger cousins! The beauty of it all was our family doubled in size for a weekend and half of them were all the same age. We had a picnic by the river, swam ourselves into exhaustion, made a cheesy movie, and just made a million memories!


Missi is showing everyone the new song she learned with Janessa.



For lunch on the 24th we all went down to the river and had a bon fire and roasted hot dogs with daddy.
Daddy is showing Amy the proper way to make hot dog sticks.


Missi and her first of many hot dogs.


Kacy and two of her little buddies taking turns at making hot dogs. 


Shea and Royal finally arrive to eat, seeing as Shea is still in a cast, these two went to go get the kayak, so Shea could play with us. 





The taxi service hauling it's first load down river. On this section of the North John Day river fork the deep spots are pretty hard to get to from the bank, so we either walk down river or take the kayak. 
Both of our families stay very busy so getting play days are pretty rare and cherished1