Harvest is fast approaching
We can't quite believe that is officially Summer already. We finished doing our vertical selection a little over a week ago. As you might remember, we do "Kona Style" pruning where we remove the oldest vertical each year. Then as the tree produces new shoots, we make a pass through the orchard at least once to them out and later go back and choose the strongest one that is in the best position that will replace the ones that were pruned. This way we always have new growth to bear the fruit in the future. This also keeps the tree pruned so that each vertical gets plenty of light and space to grow strong and able to bear the weight of lots of cherry.
We've had some dry months this Spring so we have irrigated quite a bit. Over the last few weeks we have been getting more rain and afternoon cloud cover which helps the water bill. This past week we had another minor flowering. We have trees in the orchard with red ripe cherry, developing green cherry and flowers on the same branch.
We talked to Esteban, the leader of the picking crew, this afternoon and he will stop by this week to take a look at the orchard. He expects we will start picking in about three weeks.
We got a nice email with a photo of our coffee with a medical unit in Afghanistan. Check it out here.

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