Back On The Fruit Circuit

I believe we now have our most pesky of raccoons under control, and the most notorious of the crows chastened by the dead one swinging from one of the branches. So now the main herd has decided the fruit is ripe enough to grab some.

Even the calves have begun to walk the fruit circuit.

They usually begin at the crab apple tree and snarfle up any of the marble sized fruit that has fallen over night. They move down the field a bit and swing by the miracle pear tree that is loaded this year (first year in 20 years of growing that it has more than a handful of pears). The fruit on the pear gets heavier with each day of growth and the limbs are beginning to droop. The older and somewhat more savvy adult cows reach way up to bump the tree branches to drop fruit and then it is a scramble to get to the fruit before another critter edges into the frenzy.

Across from the pear is the leaning Golden Delicious apple tree. Beavers had tried their best to gnaw off the tree about 10 years ago but we nixed their fun when we painted the bottom half of the tree with oil based paint that was quite a bright shade of pink. I don’t know if it was the color or the flavor of the paint but the beaver left it alone after that. The tree is very disfigured and one of these days will fall over completely, but in the meantime it is simple loaded with apples every year and the cows enjoy them tremendously.

Down to the far end of the field are a couple of heritage apple trees of unknown variety. They were old trees when we bought the place in 1978 and keep producing every year. We have never pruned them or cared for them in any way since they are not particularly tasty (to us humans at least) but the cows love them.

Then the critters head to the thicket of prune trees that have been hit hard by the raccoons and crows. We are hoping there will still be fruit left to share with friends and neighbors even after all the feeding of critters takes place. It should be only about a week before they are are their very best, just past the crunchy stage and sweet beyond belief.