The Birds

Walking through our fields makes one feel like they are trapped in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The amount of robins is astounding.

As I mentioned previously, I was working to post up pinwheels on bamboo stakes to deter them. The method seems to work well in personal gardens, but we wanted to try it on a larger scale. The goal is to deter the birds from pecking and eating our berries.

One of my bird deterrents.

Moving in the mud

As I mentioned previously, one of our projects was to move all of the Patriots from the rows adjacent to our ditch system into the Patriot field to fill in the gaps. Over time some bushes get damaged and there are a lot of gaps. Moving them will be beneficial in a few ways:

• Being more susceptable to "mummy berry" the patriots along the ditch are the biggest targets. The lack of space on the one side means we cannot spray as completely for the fungus.
• We want to create a visible separation between the varieties for ease of pruning and organization.
• Getting them away from mixed rows with Blue Jays will allow them to thrive without being overwhelmed by the faster growing Blue Jays.

Blueberries on the brain

Time for a big work push.

Pruning is quickly coming to a close. Josh and I are putting in as much time as we can on the weekends to contribute, while Marc plugs away at it during the week as our full-time farmer. We have a few big projects coming up these next two weekends.

This weekend we are making the push to move the remaining 15 bushes from the row we started to move. The original goal of moving well over a hundred bushes was a bit too lofty given the time needed and the weather that has been slowing the moves down. We will aim to move another row in the fall. We should be able to get this done.

Next weekend will be a big work party. We will be raking, burning, and doing shavings all in one weekend (God willing). We have recruited our church's youth group for the task, as well as any friends and family who can come out for some hard work. We are only aiming to do shavings on one field, but raking needs to be done on all three.