Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton

Here is a list of the perennial plantings we did this spring.

Apples, 136 trees, disease resistant stock

Pears, 95 trees

Peaches, 130 trees

Raspberry, 870 plants in a seven-tier round hedge arrangement

All of the planting is done! 960 apple trees, 365 blueberries and 100 raspberries. We now have 74 varieties of fruit growing.

You may have noticed some big changes on the land this winter. We have cut down over 1000 of the huge old trees to make room for new plantings.

Don't be alarmed. This is a regular operation in an orchard. When one door cloese another opens, and the new stock that we will plant is of much better breeding and has much better disease resistance.

The long story is that while there were many benefits to having the land fallow for fourteen years, the old trees grew out on the top and shaded their lower limbs. On most of the big trees the first live branch was out of reach. Additionally, the blocks had been laid out for chemical management, lacking the airspace and even surface needed for organic management.

We honor the big old trees and thank them for feeding so many over their years. And we promise much better is on the way!

Here is a list of the perennial plantings we did this spring.

Apples, 118 trees, disease resistant stock

Plums, 12 trees

Sweet Cherry, 24 trees

Bush Cherry, 12 trees

Raspberry, 800 plants

Blueberry, 165 plants

Blackberry, 30 plants

Asparagus, 300 plants

We took possession of the orchard on Thanksgiving day 2007. After some amount of cleaning and scrubbing and assembling a table and donated pots and pans we had the best First Thanksgiving ever.