Phillips Orchards & Cider Mill

The new year provides us a much needed chance to recharge after a long and busy season.  With our retail store now closed, we are released from that daily routine.  We'll have some time to work on our home, and many long cold days in the orchard pruning.  Those days spent out in the quiet, cold of winter are a chance to reconnect with the orchard.  See the trees response to last years pruning, and make decisions on how to shape the tree for the future.  The perennial nature of fruit orchards is one of the reasons I enjoy them so much.  The apples trees that I planted this past spring should be here on the farm after I'm dead and gone.  I think of the future of the orchard more each season.  Most of the apples we harvest today come from trees that my father and grandfather planted years ago.  Some of the younger trees that I've planted are now starting to bear fruit.  I try to plant some new trees every spring, knowing that it will be at least 5 years before we are able to have a meaningful harvest. When harvest is complete each fall, we turn away from the orchard for a couple months as all our focus is on selling our crop.  Then once we reach the New Year, our focus shifts back to the orchard again as we start building the foundation for next season's harvest.  We can see the buds that will burst forth with blossoms next May, and we can make changes to each tree to improve the crop for the coming season, as well as to guide the continual renewal of limbs and branches for the years to come.