The cold snap is here, but it should be warming back up in the next few days. It snowed overnight and it’s currently about 30°F but that doesn’t really matter to us – we have a kick-ass wood stove and a lot of firewood. We haven’t really had much need for wood burning this winter, and have barely made a dent into the first cord we have stacked outside – not even touching the second cord yet. We ran a bit low last year and didn’t want to chance it this year, but it seems we’re pretty well off for this season and if the weather holds, we likely won’t need any more for next year either.
The snow did put a bit of a damper on my plans for today – I had looked up the trees I want to get for the property and had planned to mark where I wanted each one to make sure the spacing was sufficient, but I’ll have to put that off until this latest snow melts. I did also discover that the persimmons I want likely wouldn’t survive here, so I’m going to try grafting a few branches on a variety that should be fine in our climate and see if I can still get some of my preferred variety of persimmon.
I’m currently planning on 7 trees: plum (Toka), persimmon (American, then graft Hachiya and Fuyu branches in a couple years), peach (likely Belle of Grorgia or Snow Belle), two apple (Honeycrisp – need two to pollinate and fruit), and two cherry (White Gold and Black Gold – these will self fertilize, but having two will increase production and better pollination). I’ll likely need to get a beehive or two in a couple years as well, since I don’t want to leave things to random pollinators that visit.
Anyhow, time to start a fire and get some things done around here…
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