I wanted to share with you some pictured I snapped while walking around our place with Persimoni between the rain on Wednesday…The apples are really starting to get big now.  Things are looking right on track for an August 15th opening.   A random sunflower blooming on the south side of one of our sheds. Our newest rhubarb garden – should have rhubarb for sale at the 2012 Apple Blossom Days.  The pick your own garden of peppers and tomato’s seems to be doing nicely.  This years sunflower field isn’t quite as tall but it will still be fun! LOTS of delicious looking pears growing.   AND tons of those delicious peaches I had for the first time last year…   And now, some pictures of the cone flowers growing by the red shed.   Flower Kale… and I’m not sure what this is but it’s growing near the bell by my deck and I’m excited to see what it turns into…

I’ll keep you posted as more things start to bloom and ripen!

Now that we had the above ground building portion removed from the underground building – walls we weren’t expecting to collapse –did.  You can see in the above photo how the northern wall had fallen down (this was before the demo started).  So, we decided to just remove it all and grade it out.  

This time around we had BJ from Doherty’s Trucking and Excavating come over to take the underground portion out.  He showed up with a big excavator and went to work.  Grandpa, the girls and I enjoyed watching it and even managed to shoot a short video of the fun!          

And when he was all done – we have a nicely graded field…it’s weird that the old building is gone, but much, much safer!  Now we just have to figure out what we’re going to put here – picnic area, more apple trees, pumpkins?  Only time will tell…

I know I’ve bragged about how amazing my husband Jared is before.  But he really is amazing.  He looks at a problem and figures out how to make it better or more efficient.

Each year we plan on adding improvements to the orchard.  One thing we wanted to make better for this apple season was the sign by the road.  After analyzing how Jared wanted to make it he finally got to work.  I’m sure you can see by the pictures that he created a spectacular sign!  I think it’s exactly what we needed for by the road and I’m really happy with what he came up with!

Have you ever wondered how Sauerkraut is made?  Well – you’re opportunity to find out and even make your very own is here!

 

What:  Kraut Day

When:  Sunday, July 31st at 1:00pm

Where:  Lapacek’s Orchard, N1959 Kroncke Road, Poynette, WI

What’s Happening? 

• Help make the kraut (sauerkraut).
• Take home a bucket of kraut (about 6 quarts) to ferment at home.
  Fermentation takes 6 to 8 weeks.
• You'll leave with instructions to can or freeze your kraut after
  fermentation is complete. Or just put it in the frig and eat it over
  the next few months.
• Cost is $12 per bucket of kraut.
• Bring the whole family. Make one bucket or several.
• Please RSVP to lapaceksorchard at gmail dot com with your name and how many of buckets of kraut you want to take home.

While you're here, you can see what's new for 2011.
Check out the new kitties. (There are LOTS of them!)
Make some music on the new Music Wall.
See the new chickens. Those babies from Apple Blossom Days are growing up!
The store will be open. Sorry, no apples yet, but we'll have honey
and maple syrup, jams and jellies, jewelry and quilts.

We're always looking to add somethong new and fun at the orchard and I recently saw a music wall and decided we needed one.

I knew we had some old gates that Uncle Buddy had used in his barn back when he had sheep. He got rid of the sheep and he and his son, Shaun, are converting the old barn into a winery. So these gates were headed for the burn pile. I thought they were too good for that. so they've been hanging inside the lean waiting for the perfect use.

We got a couple of the gates down and tied them to some T posts out by the tractor tire playground. We figured this was the perfect place......not too close to the store...

Now for just the right color scheme. I asked Jared to find me some paint and he pulled out all the exterior colors he had hanging out in his basement. Perfect!!! Now we have brightly colored gates waiting for the music to be added. We've been scouring the farm looking for assorted items that will make great music. Stay tuned to see what we found.

  Every year we try to make some improvements to the orchard.  A high priority on this years list was to do something about the underground building.  Due to poor drainage, the walls were collapsing in on themselves making this building unsafe.  You can really see the wall issues in the picture above. The really unfortunate thing about having to demo this building is that it was a really neat piece of history for the orchard.  You can see that the peak of the building is barely out of the ground here.  Underneath it is a concrete room built into the side of the hill.  This is where the apples were stored before they had big coolers for them.  But, we did have to take it down so we could eliminate our worry that someone would get hurt in it.  Our buddy John of JZ Enterprises came over to help with the initial demolition of the building. 

Below you can see a freeze frame progression of the building coming down.     

Here is Jared and Capri checking out what’s left of the underground building.  Our initial plan was to create some sort of picnic area hear and still show of the underground building.  Unfortunately, once the building/roof was taken off this area the wall you see on the left collapsed and the interior walls of the underground building started to crack and buckle – again, not safe.

 

I’ll share with you Demolitions Day TWO soon so you can see what we finally decided had to happen.