Pruning

Fantastic day spent at Chester Farm where with other volunteers I learnt how to prune the apple and pear trees in the orchard.

However before I write about that I must mention some excitement I had on Monday whilst working at the Northamptonshire Records Office.   Once a month I have been going to 'Finds Marking' where everything that comes out of the ground at Chester Farm, whether it is bone or pottery has a reference minutely written onto it so if it falls out of its bag we will know where it belongs.  Also working at this time are the Records Office volunteers and one lady was working on these -

What beautiful handwriting

This is a Manorial Roll written in Latin covering an area in the County and dated 1610 during the reign of King James 1.  It is written on vellum and I asked if I could touch it, which I did.  So old and yet it could be read, if you understood Latin!!  So exciting.

Anyway, back to pruning

after a short talk we were let loose on the secateurs, loppers and little saws, plus an assortment of long saws and loppers.  If you follow this link you will see a chart of the trees and I decided to have a go at No 6, the Nouveau Poiteau. 

But before I started I had to remove the growth at the bottom

Apparently the original rootstock sprouting

Removed

So then I started clipping and chopping, aware that the leaflet we had been given said only to remove 25% of the tree if it has not been pruned for years, as I didn't want to send it into a terminal decline!! However once Adam (who was in charge) came along he really went to town on it and by the end this tree had been chopped back more than 25%!!!

Hardly any tree left!!

Meanwhile the other trees were also being similarly dealt with -

Tree 8

 Adam thought that the trees planted against the wall were originally espaliers, but had rather outgrown the wall!!

Trees 2, 3, and 4

Adam removing the top of No 4

.. and here it goes

  

The ladies watching him!!!

Tree 10 almost pruned

After lunch we wandered down the fields to see the Snowdrops in front of the house

A wonderful display

We saw progress being made on the Archaeological Resource Centre and some of the buildings in the background are being re-roofed.

 
I discovered that the bark stripping that I saw last week was probably done by rabbits

but it doesn't matter as this branch was sawn off.

My partner in this pruning exercise found a small skull

probably a rabbit

One illusion was shattered though;  if an old tree is covered in lichen it is not good for it and will probably kill it.  I thought that this was good!  So lesson learnt is always try to remove the lichen covered branches so the tree will survive.

A great day out with lovely Spring sunshine and lessons learnt.