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 12 - He is Healing!

Today is the big day! Shea finally gets to get the pins out of his arm! We are beyond excited that this part of our summer is almost over! Before he went to the hospital we got these pictures of his cast. We, of course, all wanted to draw on it, but when we started with a silver marker, Shea thought he would draw his x-ray on it.  

If you look at his wrist area there is a black stripe through the bone, that is where the break was. For all who know Shea will understand the sense of humor behind this cast. His excuse was it kept him from getting bored.

Dad's encouraging message to Shea!

He is so happy to move his hand normally!

School field trip...at least that was what Garrett said for his reason to go to town.

They are out! Praise God we are all done, and he had a perfect healing! We ended up not having to do any physical therapy because he was active enough!

June 27 - Lots of Help

Some very good friends came out to get some cherries today, they have 7 kids, and immediately 6 of them wanted to help me on the tractor. We had a blast, and I don't believe I have ever loaded the semi so fast! I had all I could do to keep caught up and take pictures at the same time.

June Cherry Harvest

One of Janessa's many job descriptions for the orchard is photographer. She takes all manner of pictures of the fruit on the tree, harvesting, fruit in the trailer getting ready to ship and some pictures of our life and certain projects that are going on. She has an amazing eye for a good picture. I have gathered a few from cherry harvest for your pleasure. Please enjoy!

The cherries have to get cool as soon as possible, so we lay them across the floor of the semi 6 or 7 in a row, by the next morning they are down to 32 degrees. Let me tell you a freezing cold cherry on a hot day is one of the best treats you can have!

The fun, challenging part of the harvest is keeping count of each one of these totes, it took me a week or so before my count was right every single day :D

After the cherries are cool, we stack them into these bins. Each bin can hold 30 totes of cherries.

My all time favorite cherries are the Rainier, I ate way too many. There was about 3 times more Rainier cherries than any other variety.

This plant is one of our worst enemies in the orchard, Poison Ivy/oak (depending on who you talk to).

During cherry harvest, there are literally millions of wild daisies blooming all over the orchard!

Dad getting ready to prime the pump.

Garrett and his big puppy, they sure do love each other!

Here are some of the earliest apples.

A mixed load of cherries.

Garrett, Gabe, and I spent the morning cleaning up the mess we made on the day before, then moved on to making another one.

Garrett is doing his "weight lifting", he has 40lbs in each hand, it's surprising how fast this trick becomes the easiest method of carrying the totes.

Our fork lift died the first week of cherry harvest, so we had to do a little bit of double stacking by hand.