TODAY IN THE ORCHARD
Japanese style hand-held sickle
All the weeding of the young trees around the old house and the BRC is complete. The farm is suffering from the heat wave, now in its eighth day. Leaves are curling on apple trees and bean plants, and tomato flowers are dropping off the plants before setting fruit. It appears as though we won’t get relief any time soon. Still it’s great to be out with the trees, checking the trunks for borers and trimming back the comfrey, blackberries and bracken ferns that are threatening to take over the BRC. I crawl into the jungle engulfing each tree with my Japanese sickle in hand and hope that I’ll find my way out sometime before dark. The sickle has a very stiff thick blade that attaches to the handle at a right angle. These sickles are not easy to find for sale (try Hardwick & Sons), and they are sometimes not easy to find in the orchard either. If you aren’t careful you might bury it under a massive pile of weeds, never to be seen again. Cammy painted the handles of our tools bright yellow. We recommend you do the same.