When we first bought our property I was so excited to finally have a place to live out my homesteading dreams.  We quickly bought our chickens and it wasn't too long before we got our goats too.  We gardened and divided up our land for appointed uses.  But when it came to planting our orchard we hit a snag of modern proportions...  We couldn't find it in us to buy something that we had to wait for so long to bear fruit.  Looking back, our faulty logic of thinking that since "we couldn't have a harvest now we should just wait until next year to get started" was plain stupid thinking.

      I don't know exactly what spurred us to take the plunge and get our orchard growing but I'm glad that we finally realized that the longer we waited to plant, the longer it would be before we could be eating our own chemical free, fresh fruits.  It will still be a couple of years before we get enough of anything to put back for the winter but  I can guarantee that for now we will be watching for the little that we do have to ripen up to be quickly devoured.  I still have visions in my mind of my husband and children standing around my parents Concord grape vines eating fresh grapes for hours on end.  Believe me, they remember too and check the progress of our own vines daily. 

baby grapes

ripening blackberries

      Currently, our orchard consists of:

• 1 Granny Smith apple tree
• 1 Yellow Delicious apple tree
• 1 Jonathan apple tree
• 1 Redhaven peach tree
• 1 Reliance peach tree
• 1 Flat Wonderful ornamental peach tree
• 1 Whitegold Sweet cherry tree
• 1 Royalton Sweet cherry tree
• 1 Sweetheart apricot tree
• 1 Bartlett pear tree
• 2 Pawpaw trees
• 4 Concord grape vines
• 4 misc. seedless grape vines (won't be seedless since they are planted along with the concords.  Live and learn!!)
• 12 misc. blackberry brambles
• 6 misc. raspberry brambles

     We have, in addition, scattered around the property 3 plum trees (2 are mature), several mature black walnut trees, many hickory nut trees (we have never used any of these nuts), 2 almond trees, 1 filbert tree, 1 sugar maple, 2 mulberry trees (something I loved as a child on my grandmother's property) and lots of strawberry plants in our garden area.  We are hoping that these will all be enough to sustain our family in the future without having to buy produce from the store.  Some of my children lament that they may be grown and gone before many of these trees bear big harvests but I console myself that Grammy's house will have many treasures worth coming to visit for. 

     In a later post I will talk about all of the wild edibles that we are discovering and plan to cultivate.