Bloom!

It happened on May 4th! The site is amazing. The orchard is full of fragrance and the buzz of bees. The fragrance is mainly from the wild plum and crabapple trees. The buzz of bees is from several hives we have gathered from neighbors. We weren't able to gather enough hives, however, we most definitely can afford to have a good portion of the blooms not pollinate. The challenge will be in thinning the fruit sufficiently so that we can get good size fruit and a descent crop next year. This year the tree will also be producing fruit buds for next years crop. If too much energy goes into producing fruit this year, the crop yield will decrease significantly next year. For now, we enjoy the bloom and we will deal with the chemical thinning as soon as the fruit approaches nickel size.