The main farming year is now at an end, so this is a time when we catch up with all the outstanding maintenance jobs and hopefully use the darker evenings to finish a little earlier than usual! To say it’s the year end is probably not the best way to describe it, as working on the land is a continuous cycle, but this is certainly the quieter time of the year.

Apple harvest finished in the second week of November and the final amount of fruit sent to Sandford Orchards for processing was over 550 tonnes!  As soon as all the apples had been picked up, and before too many leaves had dropped, the trees were given a foliar feed to encourage fruit set for next year’s crop.  

Once the trees are bare, they have a dormant period, and it is during this time that they are pruned. The aim of winter pruning is to maintain a cone-shaped crown and encourage new growth which will bear fruit in the seasons to come. This allows light to reach all parts of the tree and ensures good air flow through the canopy, resulting in better quality crops and fewer pests and diseases. 

Each individual tree is pruned by hand using extremely sharp hand held and pole mounted saws, so with around 6,000 to do, it’s a pretty long and laborious process!  With just Sam and Robert on the job, it would be tricky to get it all done alongside the other work before the new growing season, so we employ an outside team to prune one of our two orchards.  Thick gloves are always worn, but it’s rare to get through a complete pruning season without the odd minor cut!  It’s hard on the shoulders and depending on the weather, can be a pretty cold and miserable job – Hazel doesn’t like it much either!

Occasionally pruning starts before Christmas, but having had the small matter of Sam and Hetty’s wedding last weekend (of which more another time!) it will wait until January this year. 

That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty to do!  Sam has been carting the stored corn into the milling company in Crediton, and is now catching up with all the small jobs, which include checking the sheep every day, carrying out machinery maintenance, and topping up the wild bird food to add to the seed grown in the field (pictured above).  He and Hetty are heading off to the sunshine on honeymoon next week for some well deserved rest and recuperation, so Dad will take over all the farming jobs and we’ll have two extra canine companions to stay!