The Apple Orchard is Gone

We finally had it with the apple trees, we have been raking apples since the beginning of June, yesterday we discovered a large crack in the trunk of the big tree so it's fate was sealed. We had already decided to take it down anyway but this made it more urgent. You can see the pile of apples here, this is what falls in about a week. I have to say this is the first year some of the apples are actually big enough to use.

Now to keep us busy we decided to get 2 projects on the go so we could switch back and forth, we needed to trim down the hedge in the front so here you can get an idea of before and after, a lot of work, the first half not so bad but my hedge trimmer got too dull and we had to do the 2nd half by hand.

Breigh and Riley had a great time, they had their choice of sticks to chew on.

The kids got in on the fun when they got home from school cleaning up the small apple tree by the entrance to the back yard.

Carrie managed to get up into the tree to inspect and make a plan on how to cut it down, we worked with our hand saw on day 1 waiting for Joey to come with his chain saw.

Day 2 while we were waiting for Joey we went back to work on the front hedge, I was playing where's Waldo, the hedge is so thick I can't cut it all from the sides and have to crawl into the middle to get it all. Plans are this side of the hedge will come down completely next Spring.

Thankfully Joey arrived and got me out of finishing the hedge for today but it created a bigger job.

We decided to take down a section of the fence because we were worried parts of the tree would crash through it.

I took a break while we decided what direction to go next.

Here are some of the apples we managed to get out of the upper branches...yummmy I'm thinking Apple Pie

Did I tell you it was a big tree! I would guess it was atleast 50'

One of those great moments when the boys thought I was really cool. You have to really enjoy those opportunities. They loved watching the big branches falling down.

The moment was over the boys found something more impressive...Styrofoam.

We were all shocked on how fast the tree came down, we really didn't know how we would make out and originally thought it would take a couple of days to get it down.

Poor Joey, he didn't realize what he got himself into, he was expecting a lot smaller tree but was a great help, we couldn't have got the job done without him.

About 4 hours after starting this is where we were, Joey is coming back to chop up the limbs for fire wood.

While we were cleaning up brush we found this huge spider, it was pretty freaky looking, I haven't seen one that big other than at the pet store. I have no idea what kind of spider it was either.