Growing Stuff

On Sunday I made a quick stop by Wisteria Vineyard to drop off an article that was in last week's Post about the Norton grape. Apparently the food editor has researched and written a book on this grape, known as Virginia's only indigenous grape. Wisteria has a vintage of Norton, so I thought that Moussa and Sue might enjoy the article.

I also used the opportunity to sneak into the barn and check out their lamb. He was a little wobbly, but his aunt came over and nosed him while I was snooping around in there. All is well with the little fellow. Sue told me she thought they might have another lamb or two soon, but it's getting late and "maybe some of the ewes missed the window" last fall.

Also, from the looks of things, we are going to have a banner year for apples.  The fifty-plus year old tree at the Hawksbill Cabin is so laden with fruit this year I am afraid that we may lose it from the weight of the apples. 

It was a three-trunk tree until we lost one in the snow this year.  I had planned to get it pruned in March, but we postponed due to the loss of basically one third of the tree.

We still have some branches that are breaking in the wind, probably weakened by the winter storms.  Mickey came by to mow and took one of the large branches down last week - it left all of these baby apples behind.  This branch was maybe six feet long and two inches in diameter - if it had this much fruit on it, you can imagine what we will get from the rest of the tree!