Springtime In the Orchard

I love springtime in the orchard. 

The trees are beginning to grow and get leaves and bloom!

I took these pictures a few weeks ago in the Apricot orchard near our home.

The trees on the left are Apricot trees and the trees on the right are Fuji Apple trees.

The soft fruit blooms earlier than the harder fruit, it will be a few weeks

before the Fujis bloom.

These blossoms are mostly white with a hint of pink and being in the orchard

when they are blooming is just heavenly! The scent they

give off is so sweet and relaxing to me.  This year the trees were

pruned before the blooms popped, and the orchards look neat, tidy and beautiful.

I love this view down the rows, it makes me just want to walk through the orchard 

and enjoy the sunlight and scent of the blooms.

You can look closely at the individual blooms and see the bees working

and polenating the trees. We have a Honey Man bring hives of bees to the orchards

to make sure everything is polenated well.

All these hives will be put in different locations on the farm over the course of the next few weeks.

Look closely. All the black dots you see, even on the dirt, are bees. I was hoping to get 

a closer picture, but there were so many bees, I decided I didn't want to get stung! 

There were at least 30 bees on my car when I got into it after taking this picture.

This year the weather was good, breezy but not so much wind and rain that the bees 

 stayed in their hives. When it is cold and wet, the bees want to stay dry in their hives
and the orchards are not pollenated very well. We have a smaller crop that year.

 We always get some honey from the Honey Man and it is yummy!

Hubby needed some help one day last week to move the bees into the peach orchard

on a different location on the farm.

I drove his pick up down to the bee hives near the Apricots with a bin trailer behind it. 

He used the forklift to place the hives on the trailer and we drove them to the Peaches. 

We also grow other soft fruit in this small block. Nectarines, Plums, Saturn (doughnut) peaches,

Apriums, Pluots, Plumcots (yes, those are real fruits!), white flesh nectarines, white flesh peaches, 

varieties of peaches. I didn't know there were so many varieties of fruits!

and we don't grow nearly all of them!

Peaches bloom pink! At least the variety that is in bloom now! The scent these give off is different from  apricots, but it is just as wonderful to walk in this area of the orchard. And not as many bees around here as over by the hives!

You can hear the bees buzzing and humming and it just sounds like spring to me!

Aren't the Peach blosoms just gorgeous?

I hope you've enjoyed my springtime on the farm pictures. I pretty much love the farm, whatever the season!

Hugs and happy spring days to you!

Betsy