It's been unseasonably warm and dry on the eastern slope of the Sierras, so it's time to deal with orchard maintenance before buds break. In this case the client has an orchard of biennial bearing trees that are more than a century old, and they're looking to maximize yield during this "on" year. Rather than bringing in a crew that would simply pollard the trees (and thus reduce or eliminate yields for perhaps three years), Jen "The Apple Lady" and her crew are carefully removing dead wood and overgrown areas in order to open up the tree to light and air, while still preserving shoots that will form replacement branches in the future. We'll be back next year (the "off" year for these trees) in order to further clean things up -- and yes, scion was collected so that the owner will have replacement trees as these slowly give in to advancing age.
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