We grew willow before I ever even considered using it to weave a basket. A handful of years ago, when I spent a summer growing cut flowers in addition to our fruit, we planted decorative willow purchased from Vermont Willow Nursery. Curly red willow, fasciated willow, a few varieties of very large pussy willow, one variety that grows 10-12 feet each season and can be even used for garden stakes once dried. For a few years, the willow grew on our farm, providing beneficial habitat for birds and insects, and early food for bees, since willow is one of the first plants to flower each spring. Only after becoming fascinated with willow basketry on Instagram did I realize how useful the willow...
And that's a wrap! Just like that, it's mid-November, and we have finished harvesting our fruit for the year. We just closed our farm stand, and are grateful for everyone who has supported our farm this season! We had the best pear crop ever this year, especially our Bosc and Asian Pears. It has been a challenging year due to excess rain, but we made it to the end and can't wait for next season. Follow us on Instagram @underthetreefarms to keep up with our farm work over the winter, and @underthetreeithaca to keep up with our leather/pottery work. Scott harvesting Olympic Asian Pears this fall on the farm We had a wonderful crop of Crimson Crisp apples this season!...
Another apple season at Under the Tree Farm is underway. We are opening our fruit stand very soon (stay tuned!) and we have apples for sale each weekend at the Ithaca Farmers Market. Right now, we are picking Akane apples, which are a gorgeous and delicious Japanese apple. The Akane is a cross between a Jonathan (American apple) and a Worcester Permain (English apple). They are the perfect mix of sweet/tart and are firm and crunchy. If you were lucky enough to swing by the Ithaca Farmers Market this season, you probably saw that we had stone fruit this year! Peaches, cherries, plums. It has been a rough season with so much rain that our August peaches are succumbing to brown...
It's been a while since we've posted on here since it's been a busy year! It is already garlic season, and we harvested about 3,000 heads of garlic yesterday and hung them up to dry. We will be selling garlic all season at the Ithaca Farmers Market, in our farm stand this fall, and possibly online!
2020 has been a year of challenges on the farm. We had no stone fruit. We had a hard freeze during apple and pear bloom, and many flowers were killed. The freeze also killed most of our outdoor strawberry blooms, even though they hadn't opened yet. We had a summer-long drought. Foxes, yes, foxes, ate a good deal of our remaining strawberry crop. Cucumber beetles and squash bugs destroyed our multiple successions of cucumber plants, despite our best efforts to keep them at bay. Turkeys ate our grapes. Potato leafhoppers killed our potato plants. Despite its challenges, 2020 has also been a wonderful year. We are farming new land! We cleared honeysuckle and fenced 8 acres in the sweltering July sun....
