Preparing Apples

Quintin Snook is still an apple producer and is wasting no time taking advantage of a long awaited sunny warm day trimming his golden delicious apple trees. “You get the water sprouts off And then you kind of look at the tree and you try to cut your way into it and then you open up the inside of the tree and let light in for the apples and you open it up so you can kind of get in here to pick. If you had all these branches out here then you're fighting your way.”

 

Along with the yellow apples Snook will have a peach and cherry crop if all goes well this spring. Whether these things bloom out and then they freeze. Well it's not going to be good. But

over here we're kind of protected. You don't get that early morning sun and that sun goes down in the spring soon. So this is kind of a shady little strip.

 

With spring coming on, Like all farmers Snook is the eternal optimist. Take care of your crop and come fall. All will be good. “These will bloom in mid-April and then we'll get our apples and then we'll come through usually first part of July, end of June.

Then I'm gonna come through and thin the apples off. And then after that you just water and mow and come third week in September. Around there's it’s time to pick apples.

 

With snow finally in the rearview mirror and green up beginning farmers in the Treasure Valley appear to be two to three weeks ahead of farmers elsewhere in Idaho still buried in snow.