A woman that inspires me

Joann Grohman inspires me and I'd like to share this excerpt from her blog, heifer diary. I love how she writes and in particular how her experience, hands-on know-how, and love of her farm come through in these lines.
Joann is in her 80's now, and I first learned about her through her popular book "Keeping a Family Cow", which I read when we first got our cows. I've been following her blog on and off for the past few years, and I am always inspired by her energy, her outlook, and her love of life.

Enjoy this excerpt from her blog:

Friday, October 4, 2015
Apple Tree Recovery
This is how I saved my Wolf River Apple tree. I planted this Fedco tree about 1980 and failed to remove the wire tag. I then neglected it dismally for the next twenty years during which it grew up and nearly died of strangulation. I was struck by guilt for the poor thing about 2013. It had managed to put out a couple of wizened little apples much afflicted by codling moth. I looked up on the internet how to bring such a tree back to health with organic methods. All authorities agreed that without using pesticides it was going to be a slow process taking several years. I decided to invent my own method.
Here are the things that Sally and I employed. The first thing I did was train my free range chickens to come down to the tree and work over the ground so they would eat the codling moth larva. I did this by dribbling a trail of chicken feed about 150’ long which trail they followed, where they found additional grain scattered around the base of the tree out to the drip line. They came every day and scratched around. This was in the summer of 2013. I also tied scented drier papers in the tree to deter the moths. I also sprinkled generous amounts of diatomaceous earth all around on the branches and around on the ground and on the trunk. I also carried down whatever whey I could spare. I also tied little mesh bags of Irish Spring soap into the branches to deter deer. Later when snow was on the ground Sally took several cargo sled loads of composted sheep manure and put that around it, this was repeated in 2014. She also worked on pruning. No poisons were used at any time. The following summer of 2014 the tree rewarded me with a few clean apples. This year, 2015, the tree was loaded with hundreds of large perfect apples. Admittedly this was a big year for apples in Maine but the production of this tree was dramatic. I am thrilled with my crop of exceptionally large well-flavored fruit. We don’t know which of these strategies was most important to success- we think they all worked together