Barn almost finished

Construction on the barn is nearing completion. Here's the inside of the apple room (with a bit of husky tail). The walls are metal siding and we left the ceiling open wood, painted white. Flourescent lights. The room echoes quite a lot and I'm thinking about ways to quiet it a little more. We haven't moved the equipment from the garage yet, but I think that'll happen next week.

Below is the half of the barn that isn't finished, where we can park the tractor and keep the spraying supplies and feed and the like. It now has a nice gravel floor, which should keep it cleaner for at least a while.  

Yesterday we finished pruning all but two of the Rome trees. The wind was high and the tops were just too hard to reach. We still have work to do on the oversized trees, Jonathans, Red Delicious, and Winesap. I've abandoned the McIntosh, which are so big we can't possible reach even their middles. But it looks like we have the bulk of the pruning finished before everything blooms. So far our pruning time totals about 104 hours, 72 for me and 32 for Tom. He did most of the Romes.

Next week we're renting some bees to be sure the trees get pollinated. At 80 degrees, the trees may bloom pretty fast.

In the Yucatan, Mexico, earlier this month, we learned that beekeeping was an important commercial activity for the ancient Maya. They traded their especially sweet honey widely in Mesoamerica. The bees are stingless. I think we got a photo of one. Well, at least it's a bee...

And we bought some honey there, which is indeed very sweet and a little less viscous than the honey we usually get here.