Spraying poison ivy in Salamandar's Orchard

I went out to Salamandar's Orchard to spray for poison ivy.

He had recently mowed it and it looked great.

I wonder if he came down with a case of poison ivy because the stuff was everywhere.

This picture is from April and was snapped from almost the same place as the photo above.

I sprayed between the trees. 

This crop will break the branch.  I need to remove about 1/3 off the end of this limb.

Two-thirds of the trees are carrying heavy crops.  My intention is to catalog and label the trees with regard to variety.  The few records that exist tell me that the original planting contained Jerseymac,  Liberty, Empire, Cortland, Jonafree, Golden Delicious, Melrose and Ida Red.  They should be different enough that we can make reasonable guesses.  Of course, the deer don't care what variety they are munching on.  It is more to satisfy curiosity than anything else.

Three-quarters of the top of this apple tree was removed.

This is what it looked like on May 9.

This is what it looked like after it was pruned.

This is what it looked like before it was pruned.

The flattened grass to the right and beyond the sprayer is where a deer had been bedded down.  This is a classic place for a deer to bed.  It has a panoramic view down-wind (to the left) and is on the cusp of a hill where the breezes will diminish biting insect pressure.  Security and comfort.

I took a slightly different way home today.

A seven foot tall Turk's Cap Lily standing in the sun.

Most farmers used to "hog out" swamps and swales to kill off the snakes.  That practice was devastating to plants like Turk's Cap Lily.  TCL has a large bulb that the hogs gobbled right up.  As an ornamental, the TCL cannot hold a candle to most of the modern hybrids, but it lightened my heart to see three of them hanging on in an out-of-the-way low spot.