Morning pictures

I took my camera along on my early morning walk around the farm today.

Just snapped some random pictures - here are some of them...

Our farm is right next to the railway tracks. It's the main CN line through Niagara and quite active. It's just a single track now, but when I was growing up it was a double track plus a siding on either side where they would park train cars and leave them, sometimes for weeks on end. Both the tracks and the empty train cars were favourite playgrounds for us as kids.

It continues to be a very busy track with many freight trains each day, 2 daily VIA trains, 2 Amtracks (Toronto to New York and the return), and now the GO trains on these summer weekends.

CN Rail no longer does much maintenance along the tracks so they are very overgrown

and a haven for groundhogs and other such creatures.

It's been plenty hot these last few days - excellent growing weather for the tomatoes we planted last week. If you think those rows look long now, try picking them in July!

The new plum trees we planted barely 1 month ago are also growing well. We'll be enjoying plums from these trees in about 3 years. Grass has been seeded on the orchard floor and has sprouted - along with weeds.

The sweet cherries have begun to thin themselves. Notice the smaller ones and the coloured ones. These cherries will fall off soon - the June drop we call it.

Here's a sad picture - the end of an era, you might even say. The last of our old wooden ladders piled in a heap ready to be burned. Many of them have been around for more than a few decades and are showing their age. They are unsafe to use for picking fruit anymore. And besides, the pickers much prefer the newer aluminum ladders which are very light and easy to carry compared to these old brutes.

But I'm sure that before we light the match, a few ladders may have found their way back to the barn - if just for old time's sake!

Who knew we could get sentimental about ladders!?