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02/17/2007: "Pruning and Acceptance"

Today was an amazing day out at the farm! We invited a few people over to help us prune the apple trees. It was sunny and warm. We were all in our shirtsleeves. Most of the trees in the orchard are in good shape now. Maybe next week we can tackle the trees on the southern fence line.

I also received my first acceptance letter to law school, and boy was it a good one!

Here's Nate and Ellen getting started on taking the watersprouts off of one of the plums (remember those plum pictures, oh yeah!)


There are more pictures and stories....



Hank from the Organic Grower's Club showed up to help, and brought his dad, John, along. Hank and John have some great pruning skills, so we were very lucky to have them both out to help. I hope they enjoyed working together, because we enjoyed seeing it!


Here's Rebecca in one of the trees. This is one of the ones we hadn't worked on last year, so it was REALLY overgrown. Craig is on the left, working from the edges in.


Hank and Ellen consulting over one of the pear trees.



Here's the finished pear!


The wonderful Chris answered the call for help! I'm sure he was pleased that he wasn't lifting stoves 800lb stoves around this time. Here he is, with Craig, one of Rebecca's band mates. They seem to be puzzling over which limbs to cut and which to spare.


Here we all are enjoying the fantastic coconut-curry-carrot-lentil soup that Rebecca and her sweetie, Aaron, made. It was a bright sunny day and the first outdoor meal of the year!


The mail came early on Saturday. Nate saw the envelope from Willamette Law and I sat down to open it. It was an acceptance letter with a scholarship for $18,000 annually. That will cover the majority of tuition. Grant money and additional scholarships should cover the rest of tuition and most of living expenses. So it looks like my graduate degree could be had for less than the price of a used car! Yippie!!!!!


Finally, I'm still waiting to meet my neice, and I still think Violet is a great name!

Comments:

Hi Nate and Channa,

It's great to know the trees are pruned. I was really sorry not to make it up for the apple harvest last fall. I would love to bag some apples this year. Keep up the good work. Let me know when it's time to thin apples and perhaps I can get up to help out.

Dennis Thomas

Congratulations Channa, Way to Go! I'm sure you will do well at Willamette Law. See you next time I'm visiting Kurt, Ann, and the girls.

Kurt's Mom