Sunday Morning 8.30am.
It’s been a busy fortnight, kiwi fruit pruning started last week, and I’ve basically been leaving at 6.30, getting home at 5.30 – 6 pm, eating, and sleeping. Unfortunately, I can’t see it lasting.
We finally got our contract rate on paper today, $115 per row, pruned and tied down, less $1.50 for every metre without canes. The rows are 120 metres long, it’s taken me till today to get up to speed and finish pruning a row in a day, I managed 1 ½ rows, still to tie down though, so there goes another day in tying the leaders to the wires. For $115.
I’m driving 96km each day, watching the petrol gauge instead of the speedometer, the gauge moves faster the speedometer. Luckily we have been on hourly rate till today, so whenever that comes through I may cover my travel costs.
Even the usual pruners, from the last few years aren’t happy, due to the mess some of the contract pruners from last year left. They pulled canes from one side of the trellis to the other, tied down late season growth, pruned out the good wood, or didn’t leave leaders for this year. So it makes for a slow process getting the orchard back into shape. As an indication of the poor pruning last year, the yield from picking this year was 40% down on last year, due to the lack of fruiting canes.
Heres a few pics I took this morning, showing what we are doing, from the unpruned rows, to what we prune back to.
I’m still working on the 2 private gardens, Sundays at the moment, but after I finish at the orchard tomorrow, I’ll do more fulltime there until milking starts in August.
Other than the above, there hasn’t been a lot happening, well, not that I’ve had time to notice, apart from the white herons over wintering at the estuary near Onekaka and along the coast here.
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