When you're miles and miles away from a good doughnut...

No, they're not good for you, but every once in a while you just have to have a fresh ring of fried dough and a tall, cold glass of milk.  But when the closest doughnuts, mediocre at best, are a 30 minute drive one way and the really good ones are a little further, but cost an arm and a leg and there's a looming ice storm and blizzard and you MUST have them, you do what needs to be done.

You google doughnut recipes.

I am picky when it comes to doughnuts.  My favorite are chocolate cake doughnuts, moist but not greasy, with vanilla icing. I was out of baking cocoa, so those were out of the question.

Next in line for the crown are simple, plain, old fashioned glazed yeast doughnuts.  Now, I've never made doughnuts. I don't own a fryer, but I do have a large cast iron dutch oven.  My mouth watered at the prospect. So that was the plan, a vat of 350 degree oil on my gas stove.  That WAS the plan.  But when I dug out my clip-on thermometer, I discovered that it slid up and down in its mounting so what the actual temperature was at any given moment was anyone's guess.  Reeling in my disappointment, my wind whirled with other options.

The electric fry pan!  It wasn't very deep, but it did have an automatic thermostat, so that was good.  And if I was careful loading the pan and flipping the depth I could work around.

I scrolled through dozens of recipes to find one that wasn't overly complicated and for one that required ingredients I had on hand.

Bingo! Krispy Kreme Copycat from Genius Kitchen

The photos on the site aren't the best, as the doughnuts are over cooked.

I also used metal skewers to flip and lift the doughnuts. And I kept the glaze warm and after letting the glaze set, I dipped them again.

I used my 3 inch and 1 inch biscuit
cutting rings to form the doughnuts.
They looked rather sad.

Once they hit the oil, my worries were
over.  They puffed and filled out nicely.

Using a skewer for a quick flip.

Cooked to golden.

Draining on a cooling rack above a paper towel catch all.

Of course when you make doughnuts, you get doughnut ball!
I also made all the scraps into balls.

Glazed and ready to eat.

With the remaining scraps, I mixed apple, sugar and cinnamon
and pressed together and made apple fritters for Doc.

August Lost

The entire month of August has slipped by.  It not as if we were sitting idly by, lazing away the hours, languishing in the Air Conditioning while the hot summer sun beat down.  In reality, August was extremely pleasant.  We never once hit 90 degrees, which is unbelievable here.  Usually August is the most dreaded month.  The nearly persistent, howling prairie winds suddenly stop, withholding any and all relief that it would bring to any other summer day.  The air is so thick with humidity that you could slice it.  Breathing the moisture laden air is difficult enough, but the stifling heat sets the air afire and sears not only the flesh, but the lungs.  Early August is also haying season, adding dust and stirring up the pollen.   Smoke from distant prairie fires pile on the atmospheric particle load.  The rising moon in the evening glows shades of pink, orange, and salmon until it can rise high above the horizon.

This month the pollen and the smoke are present.  The dust still rose high above the prairie fields, following the haying machines.  The winds died, but the heat did not come.  This year's wet pacific weather pattern held, and blessed us with days, even low humidity days, in the mid and upper 80s.  It's been wonderful!


In comparison, the end of July, was BRUTAL.  Temperatures were in the upper 90s and UP, and the humidity was off the charts.  Of course this was the week of the Cornhusker Games.  It's a state level friendly competition for ordinary citizens of the state.  Think the people's Olympics.  I was entered into 2 events, standard pistol and olympic rapid fire pistol. Doc and The Boy were entered into the rifle competition.  I kid you not, it was HARD, made nearly impossible by the heat and unholy humidity.  The day of my competition started at 6am, 78 degrees and FOGGY.  By the time competition started it was in the 90s, and the heat index was over 115!  Despite that I came in 4th in standard pistol shooting and 1st in rapid fire.

The following weekend was the boys turn.  Of course on their day of competition it was sunny, DRY, and 78 degrees.  Doc pulled in a 3rd place in open sight rifle, and The Boy came in first in his division, open sight rifle.

Back on the ranch, August came in cooler and dry, with regular rainfall. Most of my compatriots were tending their late summer gardens and putting up tomatoes, pickles, corn and peppers, I was standing, hands on hips, shaking my head at my container garden.  Poorly, does not even begin to describe the level of success these specialty planters.  From three self-watering planters, holding 5 banana and jalapeno pepper plants, 4 cherry tomato plants, and two full sized plants, we harvested two handfuls of cherry tomatoes (those went to the birds) and a handful of peppers.  Nothing ripened quickly enough in any quantity to use for anything.  A "chilly" night in early August that sent us to 58 degrees, told the tomatoes to just give up.  And so they did.

I ripped out the plants and put in beets, carrots, and leaf lettuce in frustration.


It was looking like county fair season was going to have to rely on items canned last year after the fair was over, and I'd toss in some baked goods to top off the ribbon count.  I decided after last year's fair, that I was switching counties.  Here you are allowed entry into any county fair as long as your home county touches that county.  The fair in my home county is just too long of a drive to keep up with.  The downside is that you cannot win a grand champion rosette if you are not of the county, and only the rosette winners can represent the county at the state fair.

This year I entered several jars of pickles, apple butter, apple sauce, as well as a painting, a braided loaf of challah, and some Bavarian pretzels.  The great thing about this county is that they actually open and taste everything!  They even give comment cards with each item, which can be helpful, funny, or down right annoying- as you cannot defend your item to the judgement they make.  You just have to roll with it.  I wasn't at all happy with the pickles I entered.  They were fabulous in taste and texture, but were at the end of their shelf life at fair time, so yes, they had lost their crispness.  All of the pickles took 3rd place. Comments included - not crispy (I knew), not enough Alum (I don't use it), what's with the leaf? (I tried an old farm trick of placing a grape leaf in the jar to keep crunch- used to be well known trick.), use bottled water, not well water (I did.)

Cinnamon applesauce took 3rd place.  Comment was- looks to have molded. (UM no, the area they called mold, was a final sprinkling of cinnamon on the top so I can tell it has cinnamon in it.)

Apple butter took 2nd place - comment - Not enough allspice and clove. (UM, you are correct.  My family doesn't care for them.  I can to suit my family, not your's, judge.  So I'll live with the 2nd place ribbon.)

My painting took 1st place and a small rosette.  YAY!

The challah took 1st place and a small rosette.

The Bavarian pretzels earned a 2nd place.  Comment - not crunchy (not supposed to be), top is missing salt and is wet (Yup, you are right.  I dropped them off in a vacuum sealed bag, looking golden and salt covered, with moisture absorbing pads in the bag under the plate.  YOU opened the back and left them sit OPEN for two days before judging, where the hygroscopic salt sucked up every bit of moisture in the August air!)

A last minute entry of jalapeno peppers from the sad container garden earned a 3rd place.  Although small they were beautiful.  But sized must have been the determining factor here.

And last, but not least, a 2nd place win for my spicey and sweet kosher dill jalapeno pickle relish.

All in all a good year at the small fair.  Next year, we'll switch counties again, and be more prepared.

The second week of August saw the boy's 18th birthday.  OH MY, Oh MY....where did 18 years go?!

The entire summer seemed to fly by acting as taxi driver to our hard working computer intern.  I feel as though I wore a rut in the road driving to and from the city.

No sooner was the internship over, then it was time to pack The Boy up and move him to the University.  That was craziness in and of itself.  We clearly remember our days of moving in, the uncertainty of being ready, too afraid to admit you are scared to death, holding your breath as family drives away.  The incredible reality of growing up.  So far, so good.  He's getting along with his roommates, classes are going well, and oh ya, he's changing his major.  What freshman doesn't?!

Apple picking season soon followed.  I picked and tossed all the immature fruit from the young orchard early in June, or so I thought.  I missed two apple trees and one pear tree.  We let them go.

The apples on the Early Harvest yellow apple tree, never came of anything much. The 4 apples on the Liberty apple tree however, AMAZINGLY gorgeous and super tasty! They were both sweet and tart.  A real keeper variety.

The kieffer pears were harvested a week later, and while small, look amazing and are finishing their ripening on the kitchen counter.

We were under the path of totality for the great eclipse, just barely.  In an amazing turn for August, we were cool, and CLOUDY.  Doesn't it just figure?  Any other August we are frying under a blazing sun and couldn't beg, borrow or steal a cloud for shade.  The one day we want a clear sky, nope.  The clouds were thick enough to keep the temperatures down, but thin and high enough that the filtered glasses still allowed a clear view of the eclipse.  Totality was too faint for the filters, and because of the clouds, could not be seen without them either.  The chickens didn't care a whit about the dark.  They just kept eating as if a storm was coming and passing.  The clouds did offer us an amazing view of the approaching shadow.  It rolled in from across the country to our west before it enveloped us, leaving us in the dark with sunrise views surrounding us.  The clouds on the horizon to our north were far outside totality.  and being on a hill we could see past the great shadow to our south.  Once in a lifetime and we didn't have to go anywhere!

The girls wanted nothing to do with this massive 40 foot python.

August is also the time of the Great Molt here at the Station.  As this is a family friendly site, I shall spare our readers the images of half naked chickens running around the acreage.  Boy did they look sad.  Well, funny and sad.  Wykin and Nod are absolutely cockerels.  While they have yet to find their cock a doodle doos, they are betrayed by their saddle feathers and enormous feet and log legs.  Little Blykin is the most delicate and lovely Splash Ameraucana pullet.  She runs with the big girls and torments her brothers.  She reminds me of a little blonde sister, chasing after her big brothers- white dress and blue sash, pigtails flying.

Eggs, Pears, and White Bread

Now that we are into early September, the molt is mostly over.  They are back to laying, and the egg supply is flowing again.

August also has meant Doc has had a month of rare vacation time to use.  While he has had classes three days a week, it's left us a great deal of free time to catch up on the acreage work AND to take little day-cations here and there and around and about.

One journey took us across the great southern wind farms to an antique store featured on a local television show.  A long and scenic journey to a shuttered shop and a yard filled with no trespassing signs.  According to the village post office, the owner is hardly there, nor the shop hardly ever open.  Wonderful.  Upon leaving the village, we came across an amazing brickyard, where they not only make custom bricks for construction but carved brick art, and murals.

State Fair One Man Band

We have been to the state fair, where we saw giant cattle, had an incredible meal, walked for miles, and managed to stay away from the worst of the fried foods.

Topographic elevation map of the State.

Everything on a Stick

We wandered hither and yon, to and fro, just enjoying the day and visiting places and driving down roads we've never been down.  It's been really fun.

The old bee hive firing oven.

Long Horn

Time rolls on, and now we Welcome September.  We still have some painting to do on the new barn and some Fall chores to accomplish.  (We still do not have a fence on the pasture.)  But for the most part, you can feel the countryside winding down for season.  The early corn is being harvested, and the remaining stalks are starting to yellow.  Soon the beans will yellow and dry out and the fields will be full of harvesters being followed by the gulls.

Watusi

Crazy, Crazy Harvest Days

The season is upon us, the harvest season that is.  I was driving down the back road yesterday and saw my first harvester of the season taking out giant rows of dent corn, like a hornworm working on, well, an ear of corn.

Then on the way into work this morning, I passed my first double long grain hauler.  Sigh.  It really does seem like just yesterday it was all going in the ground.  Now it's time to start hauling it out and prepping it for the great Winter sleep.   The great garden at the station is no different.  The only things left "standing" are the great stalks of sorghum and the sleepy sweet potatoes.  The former has put up quite the effort against some wicked late summer windstorms, that howled constantly at 20 mph, and gusted to over 40 for several days in a row.  I think this is the weekend I will cut them down, hang the seed heads for drying in the barn, and lay the stalks out to rest before trying to milk them for syrup.  The latter, the sweet potatoes, are just starting to yellow at the ends of the vines.  When the weather cools this weekend, I think I will harvest them and put them in cool storage so they can rest and set their texture for winter eating and candying.

But until then, it has been a wild, and LONG week of canning, canning, and dare I say MORE canning?!

14 hour days over hot jars, steaming dishwasher vents, canning pots, lifters, and lids.  All that said, the ability to stand back at the end of the day, glistening in sweat and a dishtowel tossed over one shoulder, and admire those sparkling jars filled with jeweled treasure while they cool on the counter is worth every minute.  It takes me a good two months to grow fingerprints back, but again, worth it!

This week it was beef stew, chicken noodle soup, cowboy candy (sweetened jalapeño peppers), sweet corn, more tomatoes purée, and applesauce: sweet, delectable, mind controlling applesauce!

Applesauce

When the weather gets cool enough in the evenings to do THIS
(even if the days are still 90'),
then it's time to PICK APPLES!

I know not everyone has time for, the energy for, or the proximity to a U-Pick farm for fresh apples.  And that's OK.  But do check the U-Pick Farm listing to see if you are close. The answer might surprise you.  Pick Your Own not only has an amazing listing of farms, but also resources and recipes.

If you still are not able to pick your own fruit there is NOTHING wrong with buying, at a good price, from your local fruit market or grocer.  Mine will actually give me a case discount on whole lugs of fruits or vegetables.  It never hurts to ask.

Whichever you choose to do, be sure to get a mix of good, fresh apples.  Delicious eating apples, do not necessarily, make good cooking apples.

We used to pick at Kimmel Orchard, in SE Nebraska, but it is too far of a drive for me now.  Now we choose to drive up over the hill and frequent Martin's Hillside Orchard.  It's a mom and pop place that charges by the pound, not by the lug like Kimmel, but I still manage to do OK.

This year I was a little more clever, we chose the early morning on a day that was only going to hit 80, and the air was dry.  It was also a weekday, so there were no crowds except happy, apple filled preschoolers on a field trip.

  I also decided to take The Boy for the heavy lifting and for the heavy hauling.  Yes, I remembered the WAGON this time!

We picked 35 pounds of a mix of Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Gala Apples for this year's sauce.  I also added in 5 Granny Smith Apples.

Begin by peeling and coring your apples.  I don't bother with a fancy coring and slicing machine.  I use my 25 year old vegetable peeler, purchased from the North Dakota State fair.  I can get the peel off a large apple in under 15 seconds.  I then use my chef's knife to cut as closet to the core as I can in 4 fell swoops.  Then I simply cut those 4 large apple pieces into once inch slices and then in one inches cubes.  I toss the cores in the compost pile, and let the peels pile up in the sink.     

The apple cubes get thrown into my 6 qt mixing bowl which has a about two quarts of water and either .25 of a cup of lemon juice in it, or a couple tablespoons of Fruit Fresh mixed in.  Both methods keep your apples from oxidizing and turning brown.

When my apples are filling the 6 qt bowl to capacity, I drain them and add the cubes to my crockpot, which is set on high.

  This is when I decide whether or not I can cram a few more apples in the crock.  I can usually pack another two or three cubed apples in.  Packed tightly up to the lid.

After doing a lid fit test, I add 8 ounces of sugar free, or low sugar apple juice,

and 8 ounces of apple cider.

  You can also use plain water, or just juice.

 I let them simmer on high for two hours, stirring anytime I find myself walking through the kitchen.

 After two hours on high, I get out my trusty kitchenaid immersion blender and blend those softened cubes into what would be called a very chunky sauce.  STOP THERE.

See?  Still nice and chunky. And not quite cooked.  Turn down your temperature to LOW.  Add 4T of Lemon Juice, 2 3/4 cups of white sugar, and half a TABLESPOON of cinnamon.  ( yes, you can add less sugar.)

I simmer it on low for two hour and then with a screen lid (splatter guard) for one or two hours, depending on how thick you want it.  At the end of the cooking process, I taste it and see if I want to purée it more  (usually I do), and if I want to add more cinnamon (usually I do).

Then it is simply a matter of canning. You can water bath applesauce.  Leave a 1/2 of an inch of headspace in your jars.  Process for 20 minutes below 1,000 Ft and 25 minutes above 1,000ft.  I do mostly pints and some quarts.

Those peels?  DON"T toss them in the compost! Chop them up and toss handfuls into sandwich size bags, freeze, and save for the chickens.  What a wonderful mid winter TREAT!

The Orchard

I love apples.  They don't necessarily love me, but most raw fruit doesn't.  That doesn't keep me from breaking down every Fall and driving to the local U-Pick it farm.   Picking apples has been fabulous everywhere we've lived, except Florida and North Dakota.  The blueberries in Florida were wild, and you purchased a permit from the local park system and made sure you carried a bear bell, so you startled the bears away, before they startled you.  (At least that was the theory.)

 In Alabama, we were up to our eyeballs in peaches.

Not only am I allergic to eating peaches, but I am also allergic to their fuzzy little hides.  Sigh.  In North Dakota, the winter's are hard on apples, but great for fruits and veggies, unless you've planted your orchard in a protected coulee.  Everywhere else, it's been apples, apples, apples.

I grew up in apple country.  In grade school, we used to take day trips to the local historical park, pick apples all morning, start a giant cast iron kettle of apple butter, and learn to carve apple head dolls, while sipping tart cider, and singing apple songs.  Back when going to the orchard was less expensive than going to the grocery, my family would make trips to the orchard to pick varieties as they came available, some of my best memories EVER!  You wore your working clothes, loaded up on highly toxic bug spray that made DEET look like sugar water, tossed a bandana on your head so that ticks had a really GOOD place to hide and dig in, a thermos full of water and a peanut butter sandwich, lugged bushel baskets down the rows and placed them under your trees and started climbing. 

Not only did you pick apples, but you ate as you went, and no one cared.  The kids giggled.  Mom and great grandma told stories, and chatted, and at the end of a sweaty day, you loaded your bushel baskets into the back of the station wagon, paid the man and drove home, your torn clothes, muddy knees, and sunburned everything - a badge of honor for an honest workday of harvest.  We'd store the apples in a dark corner of the cellar.  Our guts so full of apples we'd swear you'd never look at another, let alone EAT another apple every again, usually as we were munching on yet another apple on the way up the steps to the shower.

 As adults, we lived along the Johnny Appleseed Trail, twice.  Sadly, the orchard experience is no longer the same.  Varieties are no longer of the hearty, flavorful heirloom varieties; Cortland, jonathan, granny smith, russets, winesap, the nonesuch, empire, or the orange pippin.  Many don't even have names because there is only the one old tree in grandma's yard that no one knows WHAT it is.  Now orchards are trending towards the magical genetic designer world of fancy apples; pink lady, Ambrosia, Alexander, The Grapple, Honeycrisp,  Zestars, Freedom, Lodar, Pinova. and Cameo.  There is nothing wrong with the newer varieties, heck, I'm first in line when Zestar is ready to pick.  They are bred to be more disease resistant, drought and moisture tolerant, take handling and storage better, and just be a better apple for today's market.  My problem is that the orchard experience is gone.  For one the price has gone through the roof.  Many times it is far more expensive to go pick the fruit that it is to buy the beaten up old storage fruit that arrives at the grocery.  When listening to visitors at the orchards I hear them reason, " well I'll pay more because it's fresh" or "part of the price is the experience of it all".  (Sigh and a sad giggle.)  The last time I was there, it was an honest-to-goodness nut house.  (My sister shares the same experience, but from an orchard over 1200 miles away.)  They have become a place for urban dwellers to bring children for an hour and pick apples.  Read that as:  tear branches, toss fruit on the ground when they see a bug, have a complete meltdown when they step in mud or a piece of rotting fruit, throw fruit at each other, or otherwise act like escaped zoo animals.  For the most part, the adults are no better.  Sure, there are a few of us who show up to get a season's worth of fruit to put up, but precious few. 

Last cherry season, not the cleanest of the orchard fruits, there was a woman there with her children and her husband who looked like they popped out of a J-Crew catalog.  Mom was in a white pair of slacks and was wearing heels...to a muddy orchard.  We had to hold the hay truck for them, while the husband was sent back to the SUV to get something for everyone to sit on as "hay is SO filthy."  You could hear the mom screaming at the kids across the whole orchard as they misbehaved and (shocking) got dirty.  The dad was having fits because there was no cell phone service "in the middle of this forsaken place."   Imagine what they looked like at the end of an hour picking cherries- juice dripping out of the bags they carried, down their legs, into their shoes.  I had to suppress giggles by popping fruit in my mouth on the ride back to the car.  I can only imagine them getting that hot mess into that pristine truck. It still makes me giggle. 

The little pay booth is long gone.  You know the type.  The rickety old cedar board shack that was little more than a two hole outhouse, minus the seating.  It was more or less for shade for the old man, the one who helped Noah load the ark, who worked there.  It usually had a little counter full of small bags of apples for those who just wanted to buy some as they drove by.  If you were really lucky, there might be a couple of pies there for sale made by Mrs Old Noah's Helper.  The cash box was a simple metal affair with a little metal handle, or was a plain cigar box.  In a few places we lived, there was just a little bench with an honor box: no attendant, no lock, just a rock to keep the whole thing from blowing away.  The little old man and his wife are long, long gone as well.

It's all been replaced with modern buildings that are markets in and of themselves.  They sell everything from jams and jellies, to pies, cakes, cookies, cider, soda, hamburgers, nachos, packaged meat, jerky, and fudge. Precious little of it made from scratch or at the orchard or from its bounty.  Blaring music from local bands screams from loud speakers on decks and porches, drowning out the crickets, cicadas, birdsong, and breezes blowing through the branches.  No longer does a large kettle simmer with the golden sweet aroma of apples and cinnamon, as it is drowned out by the propane jet cooking batches of kettle corn to supply the agri-tourists on their trips back to town, but only after they've spent the afternoon "tasting" wine at the wine counter.  The orchards even have massive displays of pre-picked fruit, of all varieties, just in case you've driven two hours and still don't want to get dust on your shoes.

I'm not usually one to wax poetic about "the good ole' days", but dag nab it, this is one of those things that's been ruined.  You many as well go the grocery store! Even the mom and pop orchards are leaning towards the tourism thing as apparently "that's what the public wants."  My favorite tiny local place here now sports a slushy machine next to the cash register.   I guess the way it was, is the way it WAS, and will never be again.  It's sad that kids will think that this is the way a fruit farm is.  Yes, I still go to the local fruit farms.  My trees are still babies, and if I want to put up cherries, apples, apple pie filling, juice, cider, blueberries, raspberries, (DROOL) apple butter, and apple sauce, etc. I'm just going to have to KEEP going for a few more years.  But I do try to go before everyone else gets up and going, and certainly not on a weekend, or during an orchard promotion party.  I'm certainly not knocking any of my u-pick orchards, but gracious, you just have to prepare yourself for a shopping and sociology adventure when you go!

So, back to MY orchard. 

For the first time, I not only had the space, but the TIME to start an apple tree and, pardon the pun, stay around long enough to see the fruit of my labor.  We've left a forest of trees behind us.  Every single place I've lived, I've planted trees.  Like the pioneers before, I like trees.  Besides our children, it is pretty much the only living thing that we can do that will outlive us, and give enjoyment to future generations, standing tall and silently bearing witness to history.  You've already read my entry about the adventures of older shade trees. Well, now it's apples.  Juicy, delicious, pectin dripping orbs of late summer delight. 

Most people don't know there is a trick to apple trees.  They need other apple trees, pollinator buddies I call them.  Think of them as field trip buddy.  You stick with your buddy, share lunch with your buddy, and hopefully you both make it back on the bus and make it back to school.  If you want your apple tree to produce the apple it was bred to produce, you need to make sure that somewhere nearby, there is a compatible pollinator.  This is usually a tree of a parental ancestor to that tree, but can even be a crab apple tree.  (This is also true of other fruiting trees.)  Sometimes the nursery stock will tell you right on the tag which other varieties you need to have, other times, you are on your own.  I find http://www.orangepippintrees.com to be a ridiculously helpful site.  It is mobile friendly, so it is right there in your pocket while you are shopping. 

I made sure I selected varieties that were not only on my checklist, but were suitable to this area.   I also had to be able to get ahold of these varieties.  After the great "Arbor Day Foundation" experience, I was back to square one.  I drove to many local tree nurseries and selected my varieties; yellow delicious, early harvest, red delicious, state fair, zestar (yay!), Haralson, MacIntosh, and Wolf River.  I had the trees.  I had their pollinator buddies.  I had the space, or so I thought.

My plan HAD been to plant them in the flat land of the lower meadow.  In summertime, they would have the full benefit of the full sun, and the slow runoff from summer rains to feed them.  In the wintertime, they would be out of the howling, freezing winds, being protected by the valley and the hedgerow of large old growth trees and shrubs on the cattle fence.  But one morning, before planting, I spotted a problem with that location, or rather, a whole HERD of problem.  It seems that a small herd of whitetail deer also like the shelter of the hedgerow, and use it for their nightly napping.  The game camera confirmed this in spades.  Even mowing down the high prairie grass hiding holes didn't deter them. So it was on to plan B.

I opted to move the whole party to behind and uphill from the barn.  I could reach it with the irrigation system if I needed to, admire it from the house,  and it would be - hopefully- close enough to people to deter the giant, four legged eating machines.  That having been decided, I sat down to figure out what tree needed which pollinator buddy.  That ended up looking like this...

I had the variety, number of trees, and the bloom time noted.  The arrow points to the variety needed for successful pollination.  MacIntosh is just about my least favorite tree, but since everyone seemed to like being its buddy, I bought one.

I now needed to figure out WHERE in the orchard to plant them.  I wanted to make sure everyone was within handshaking distance of their buddy.  That ended up being a game of cards that looked like this...

 Next was the really fun part.  I needed Doc to help me grid out this mess.  The trees needed to be 20 feet apart, the rows 20 feet apart, and we, absolutely had to do it on the windiest, coldest day this spring.  OK, that last bit was just a bonus. Because there isn't quite anything as fun as trying to manage a 100 foot tape measure on a windy day, wearing gloves, and trying to mark SEVERAL straight lines, dig holes, and rows.  We set aside an hour to do it, it took three.  Two engineers, one tape measure, two ideas on how to do things, the cold, and a shovel.....uh huh.  Needless to say, all the lines were marked, the holes dug, and Doc isn't IN one of them. (We actually DO work really well together, as long as we aren't hungry, or tired, or forget to communicate. LOL)

It was at this stage that I had an upper hayfield that now look like giant gophers from the planet Graph Paper had taken up residence, but alas I still had no trees.  Count them. Go ahead, count them.  There are 18 trees up there.  As you'll remember from the coop building series, I don't have a pick-em-up truck.  I have an SUV.  Sure, I treat her like a pick up truck, but she has this pesky roof and this really nice interior that tends to get in the way of my projects.  Notice I said "gets in the way", it certainly doesn't stop me.  So, stripping out the truck of all non-essential mom things, and spreading out my truck blanket, armed with a box of kitchen trash bags and some twine, I was off to the local plant nursery.  It took me two trips, but I now know I can get ten 8-to-10 foot trees into my truck.  The nursery people look at me like I'm nuts, but I'm used to that!

The survey crew and trainees making sure I was
doing it correctly.

Once home, I spent the next few days widening the holes, adding loose soil mixed with native soil, planting, watering fertilizing, staking, and tying.  The stakes are 2x2" cedar that I got from the trash pile at the local big box hardware store for 25 cents each.  cut to 4 feet long and then at a 45' angle on one end. 

The ties are tree links, which are so VERY easy to use and adjustable.  After a few days work, I could finally stand back and enjoy my orchard.  It was at this point I noticed something  a little off.  One side of a cherry tree was missing. D'OH! The Deer! ( HA! Get that song stuck in your head now! Sorry. No I'm not.)

The little monsters had already found their was to the orchard!  And by the little hoof prints in the mud they brought one of their limb munching progeny with them.  I KNEW it was going to happen.  I just hoped it wouldn't be this soon.  I was tired and needed a project break.  So three days before my birthday, I traded in my present, my dinner out, and my cake for electric fencing supplies.  Hey, what geeky girl wouldn't want half a mile of wire, T posts, insulators, and horse tape for their birthday?!  (I still need cake.)

Doc and I spent the next day making more straight lines and marking post holes.  This time it was windy, BUGGY, HOT, and HUMID.  Yay, what a change!  Everything else I can do on my own, but getting that fence square took two people.  I decided on a two-row, optical illusion fence.  Deer can jump high OR far, but not both at the same time.  Make getting over a fence an iffy proposition or difficult and they'll move on to easier food.  The outer fence is a high visibility fence that is 6 feet high, and the inner fence is 36 inches away and a visible 4 feet high.  To a deer, it looks like a place to get stuck in or on, and they move on.  It is also hooked up to an electric fence charger 2,000 volts.  They've tested it., I've seen the footprints - on the outside.  So far, they haven't gone in. 

I did decide to run a hot wire hook up to the ranchers' 10000 volt positive/negative fence for the summer (with permission of course).  This will train the deer that this space is NOT to be messed with. If it makes a full grown cow jump, I should be having venison for dinner if they try.

There you have it.  The orchard at the Station is in.  It is doing well.  The trees are leggy this year and suffering a little from cedar rust disease, but next spring before they come out of hibernation, I'll prune them properly and spray them.  It will take me a few years to really get to enjoy it at its fullest, but I promise not to wear a white pantsuit and heels to harvest!