What is THIS all about?

Thanks for coming to my Blog! I am a Daughter of a King, Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of five, MomInLaw of four, and Gram of four. Designing and creating feeds something inside of me! This blog will be sharing about my faith, my family, my life, my creations and collections. I am on a journey to learn balance and will be sharing about that as well. Enjoy!

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Springtime In the Orchard

I love springtime in the orchard. 
The trees are beginning to grow and get leaves and bloom!
I took these pictures a few weeks ago in the Apricot orchard near our home.


The trees on the left are Apricot trees and the trees on the right are Fuji Apple trees.
The soft fruit blooms earlier than the harder fruit, it will be a few weeks
before the Fujis bloom.


These blossoms are mostly white with a hint of pink and being in the orchard
when they are blooming is just heavenly! The scent they
give off is so sweet and relaxing to me.  This year the trees were
pruned before the blooms popped, and the orchards look neat, tidy and beautiful.



I love this view down the rows, it makes me just want to walk through the orchard 
and enjoy the sunlight and scent of the blooms.


You can look closely at the individual blooms and see the bees working
and polenating the trees. We have a Honey Man bring hives of bees to the orchards
to make sure everything is polenated well.


All these hives will be put in different locations on the farm over the course of the next few weeks.
Look closely. All the black dots you see, even on the dirt, are bees. I was hoping to get 
a closer picture, but there were so many bees, I decided I didn't want to get stung! 
There were at least 30 bees on my car when I got into it after taking this picture.

This year the weather was good, breezy but not so much wind and rain that the bees 
 stayed in their hives. When it is cold and wet, the bees want to stay dry in their hives
and the orchards are not pollenated very well. We have a smaller crop that year.

 We always get some honey from the Honey Man and it is yummy!


Hubby needed some help one day last week to move the bees into the peach orchard
on a different location on the farm.

I drove his pick up down to the bee hives near the Apricots with a bin trailer behind it. 
He used the forklift to place the hives on the trailer and we drove them to the Peaches. 
We also grow other soft fruit in this small block. Nectarines, Plums, Saturn (doughnut) peaches,
Apriums, Pluots, Plumcots (yes, those are real fruits!), white flesh nectarines, white flesh peaches, 
varieties of peaches. I didn't know there were so many varieties of fruits!
and we don't grow nearly all of them!





Peaches bloom pink! At least the variety that is in bloom now! The scent these give off is different from  apricots, but it is just as wonderful to walk in this area of the orchard. And not as many bees around here as over by the hives!

You can hear the bees buzzing and humming and it just sounds like spring to me!




Aren't the Peach blosoms just gorgeous?

I hope you've enjoyed my springtime on the farm pictures. I pretty much love the farm, whatever the season!

Hugs and happy spring days to you!

Betsy

8 comments:

  1. I thoroughly enjoyed your photos, Betsy :) Thank you for sharing some lovely Spring with us and may you have a beautiful week! Hugs

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  2. Pięknie u Ciebie w ogrodzie i ciekawa opowieść o pszczołach, zapraszam do mojego ogrodu, Beata:))

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  3. I LOVE, LOVE this post!! Looking forward to one day having an orchard and keeping bees. We'll be starting a hive or two this Spring to get our feet wet. xo

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  4. First let me say that your girl photos are out of this world! What a treasure with Grandma in that fabulous chair in the trees! You took such beautiful photos - I was sure you hired someone. The tea party photos, up close, are so precious too. I am in love and want to do my own tea party in such a great setting now.
    The trees are so beautiful. I didn't know that you had to place bee hives out and about. How interesting to learn.

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  5. Hello dear Betsy,
    What a wonderful and interesting post about your farm and orchard. I love it. The way you tell this makes me also feel and smell Spring !!
    Thank you so much for sharing. Hope you are doing well !!
    Have a blessed Easter, you and your family !

    Hugs,
    Wilma.

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  6. Hello Betsy.
    What a gorgeous post. Rarely do we get to see so many fruit trees blossoming like this. I love the sweet pinks of the peach blossom so very much as well
    as all those wonderful bee hives - there are so many! Does this land all belong to you?
    We have about 5 hives at present and like you we get to eat the REAL honey and can trust what we are eating.
    So so beautiful this post!
    Hugs dear friend. How are the tags coming along?
    Suzy x

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  7. Hi Betsy, love your journey through the orchards how wonderful & those blossoms are some of my favourites too! Hope you had a wonderful Easter with your family!
    Hugs & best wishes, Kerry

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