No wait, I changed my mind….don't tell me.

These are apple trees.  Neglected, overgrown and so in need of….well, something.

I am NOT an expert on apple trees by any stretch.  Heck, until buying this farm I can't say that I've been around too terribly many.  But I do know that you can't leave them like this.  Duh!  So I decided to take a stab at "pruning" some of them.  Thankfully, I did read some information on pruning prior to this so as not to get too crazy with my chopping.  What has resulted was this…

Most of the dead branches I was able to crop off, however I needed the chainsaw to do the biggest ones and my husband at that moment was working on some other trees.  So, I'll have to save that for another day.  But I did clear all the underbrush away from the bottom and cut and cropped a lot of the lowest branches.  Immediately, it began looking so much better and even healthier.

The funny thing was that while I was doing this my youngest daughter comes down to the orchard and asks if she could do something.  We were almost done for the day and I was finishing up, but I thought for a moment and said…."why don't you go and count all the apple trees we have in the orchard".

I had just finished cropping and trimming 4 of them when she comes bounding around the corner saying…."guess how many apple trees we have?"  To this I can honestly say, I had no clue.  Never not once did I think to count them.  They're trees.  It certainly didn't look like too terribly many.

So I said, "25".

"Nope".

"35".

"You'll never guess this one, Mom."

"Okay, I give.  How many?"

"62".

Thumph.  I had to sit down for a moment.

"No wait, I changed my mind….don't tell me."