The work keeps piling on for me here and I am so thankful to have Justin, the new intern, here to help. These weeks are by far the busiest of the year for Jerome and I look forward to the ease of summertime harvesting, watering, mulching, and relaxing. I feel right now as though I am working at more of a nursery than a farm. Hundreds of starter seedlings flood the greenhouses and outside hundreds of more fruit trees are being lined up. Jerome has been ordering rootstock from a variety of nurseries and today we got some blackberry and elderberry starts that were potted up. Tomorrow we are getting grapes in and next week more fruit varieties. All of this nursery has either been pre-bought for the CSA Farm School project in carbondale or will be sold throughout the summer. 

Besides the nursery work there has been multiple outside beds to mulch and get ready for planting and pruning of all the fruit trees that need it on the property. 

The steps for pruning go as follows:

- Understand the internal process of the tree. This means understanding that in the spring the tree is moving stored energy in the roots up the tree into the leaves. If a tree is pruned correctly than more of the rising energy will end up in the fruits, rather than in branches.

- First remove all dead wood from the tree. (Easy to identify)

-Identify and remove branches impeding growth of other plants around the tree or branches on the tree. Remove branches impeding a human flow zone. 

- Remove branches that are inferior to other competing branches.

Pruning is not necessary and unpruned trees can produce beautiful fruits, but by pruning a tree we are generally able to consolidate the trees energy into more fruit.