Dear Frog Hollow Community,
Thinning fruit…definitely our most labor-intensive thing we do here on the farm. Every single piece of fruit on every tree must be looked at by a crew member, and either removed or left on the branch. There are a whole lot of judgment calls, in the quest to leave only the best fruits on the tree, and in just the right quantity to balance the crop load with the tree’s carrying capacity.
We wait to start thinning each fruit variety until most fruits are about thumbnail size. By then, the fruits on each branch have grown enough for the crew to see which ones are bigger, and to remove the smaller ones. They can also see any with cosmetic defects and remove these as well. Spacing the good fruits out on the branch is another criteria, so that fruits aren’t competing for nutrients. We also don’t want them touching one another when they get big, ripe and juicy!
Apricots, our first fruit to harvest, are the first to be thinned! This year, we have been thinning Apricots since the first week of August, and we are just about finished with the process. As soon as we are done thinning our Apricots, we move into our peaches and nectarines. Thinning is a big job, and it takes time and patience. We have 44 acres of apricots, with 200 trees per acre. That means 8,800 apricot trees need our love and attention! Each team member should be able to thin about two trees in an hour. That means it takes our 38-member Tree Team working eight hours a day a total of two weeks to thin 44 acres of apricots, and that’s just one crop!
Not only does thinning require time, careful observation and good judgment, but it also requires physical strength. It is ladder work, and the ladder is heavy and extremely unwieldy when it needs to be moved, which is often. Then balancing on the top rungs of the 12 foot, three legged ladder, they must stretch to get that hard-to-reach fruit on that very high branch in the middle of the tree. You have to be nimble and strong.
Needless to say, my ladder-work days are a thing of the past. But it still gives me a thrill to be in the orchard at thinning time. I hear the sound of the laughter, chatter and sometimes singing as I approach a crew on my cart from a distance. The ladders make a unique sound as they are moved; a vibration that goes down the third leg “tube” that adds to the symphony of sounds of this particular task. The volume of voices dampens for a moment as I enter the fray and I can hear the clatter of hard green fruit raining down on the aluminum ladders, and also the crunching of it beneath my tires. It is the sound of summer coming.
Abundantly Yours,
Farmer Al
