Willamette Valley

The Willamette Valley. Except for the mountains in the distance it sure does look like Kansas.

Firewood Storage

This is how the Botners store firewood. The round metal things are decommisioned gas station fuel tanks. Work really well

Tractor

Nick is showing me how to operate his tractor. Tons o fun.

Favorite Vegetable

Ah Kale. What a good vegetable. They over wintered in the garden and are producing excellent broccoli-like florettes and sweet leaves. And so cool looking on that long stem.

Cherry Trees

A nights worth of grafting. Here they are drying after having the graft and cut end glued.

Spring Blooms

The fruit trees are starting to bloom and the days are getting warmer. I think it has ben in the 60s the past couple of days. I love it.

Apple Tree

Here's a picture of Sarah / Andrew and I 'hanging out' in one of their apple trees which we pruned while I was there. Fun times.

Seed Ambassadors

On Sunday I got to hang out with Sarah and Andrew who live on a farm outside of Sweet Home Oregon. They run a seed company called Adaptive Seeds. Very cool people. Check out their website.

Grafting Work

Here's Shaun Shepherd of the Home Orchard Society doing some customer grafts. A round of applause to all who made the scion exchange happen. It was a great time.

Portland Exchange

On Saturday Nick Botner / Fred Mills-Price / Steve Fuery and I went to the scion exchange in Portland. Amazingly we found some varieties Nick didn't have.

Feed Sacks

This is one of two feed sacks filled with spare scion wood ready to go to Portland Oregon. There the Home Orchard Society is hosting a scion exchange. I think they will be glad to see us.

Full Fridge

A fridge full of graded and alphabatized scion wood. Varieties from all corners of the world are there.

Grafted Fruit Trees

Here is Nick's work ready for the customer. There is water in the can to keep the rootstock from drying out.

Grafting Lesson

It's eleven o'clock at night and Nick Botner is teaching me how he grafts. He makes it look effortless.

My Grafts

Check out my grafts. They are two each of Maxine and Ubileen pears. Yeah baby.

Nick's Apple Book

Had dinner with Nick and Carla Botner and Shaun Shepherd from the Home Orchard Society of Portland. Here we are looking at a picture book of Nick's apples.

Full Tote

Check out what we collected. A full tote of scion. Just one of many.

Gathering Scion

Here's Nick gathering some scion wood. Just another day in paradise.