30 Aug Sat 2014
It was a tough winter!
I'm sure you noticed that the winter of 2013-14 was a tough one! Many of the shrubs by our house had significant dieback, and you may have experienced that as well. Even more disheartening for us was that we lost many of our apple trees to winterkill. Sadly, when you look down the apple tree rows this year, you see many dead trees interspersed with the healthy ones. We lost nearly 20% of our trees.
We've been working on removing the dead trees, but they won't all be gone as we begin the fall season. We've already ordered replacement trees to put in next spring, but as you know, with apple trees it takes a few years to get them into production. Just one of the ongoing challenges of food production (especially in Minnesota!)
We're confident that we'll have plenty of apples for the season because some of them did really well this year - the Zestars and SweeTangos, for example look fantastic! It's still going to be a great year because the apples we have look wonderful. There just might be some other varieties where we won't have as many for pick-your-own opportunities.
We always look forward to reconnecting with our customers after another year, so hope to see you soon!