The journey from blossom to bottle is on.
It's one of our busiest, and favourite times of year on the farm.
The first blossoms we see on the farm are the wild plums. You can see them from the road, back 40 acres above the tops of the other trees. At the first ridge of the property we have what we call our lost orchard, which was probably a settler's orchard dating back to the 1800's. Back then pears, apples and even plums grew throughout the hedgerows and were spread across farms and then tended to by the families living on the land. It’s a wild and relatively untamed place, buzzing with biodiversity.
Wild Plum grove in full bloom
Beside the plum trees, we've got a grove of wild pear trees. There are 4 different types of tall spindly trees that tower above us 50 feet in the air. The majority of the wild pear grove here is at full pink, with a few early varieties in full blossom. Of all the blossoms in our orchards, these are my personal favourite. they're the last to bloom and we're often harvesting in the first snowfalls of November.
Wild Pears at Full Pink
Although we definitely had a cold slow start to the season this year, it was a quick burst to bloom the past two weeks. On May 17th, most orchards were just bordering on tight cluster. At the same time in 2017 and 2018, the first of the blossoms had started to open, while in 2019 most orchards were at tight cluster/bordering on pink. With the warm spell last week, our orchards barely had a chance to reach tight cluster before pink showed up. This week with all of the heat and sunshine, the trees have burst into a beautiful snowball bloom.
For all this we give a shout out of gratitude to the bees, who have been busy and pollinating in this relatively short amount of time. It wouldn't happen without them!
Cider apple trees in full snowball boom
