It turns out that we have far fewer apple trees than we thought. The whole orchard area contains only dead or dying trees; we need to get in there next year with a chainsaw and make ourselves some firewood of them.

A few trees around the periphery, however, have produced loads for apples. I spent several hours on Saturday collecting them from the ground - from a single tree. There are many more apples to pick up, but we need to confirm they're safe for making cider before collecting any more. (We just learned that there may be problems with bacteria.)

We now have about 12 bushels of apples in boxes and anticipate making some 35 gallons of cider from them in a couple of weeks, provided it's safe to do so. Far less cider, though, if we can use only tree-picked fruit: it's rather tiresome and slow to gather apples that way, just a couple at a time after rooting them out with a small basket at the end of a long pole.



Shelley's wearing Celia while picking apples and minding Kelley, who's eating one.




Looking across Beebe Lake on campus Friday morning on the walk to work.




A different tree on campus along my walk from work on Friday afternoon.