I’m friend with a guy who use to be CEO of the largest/successful hedge in Europe, he certainly has the money to hire people even now in retirement, but his wife does all the gardening last I checked on FB.
How about get some consulting for helpful knowledge, this is why I hang out here, lots of people with experience growing fruit.
I’ll pm you. I’m not far from you and have a tree care business.
I agree with what others have said with plant things that thrive in your area. For years I tried to grow things that do not grow here and all failed bad. I tried growing bananas, citrus and other exotic plants in CO. I have also tried growing things that require acidic soil such as blueberries and cranberry. Things like a fig that suffer low pest/deer pressure can more easily be done here but I have learned it will still going to be much harder than a Warren pear that will live in my zone and live with my natural soil while being disease resistant. I have also started to steer clear of dwarf trees and go semi dwarf or standard like Clark said. I also agree 4 years is early for trees. Most trees require 3 years to even produce a fruit let alone a yield. Many people will tell you that the questions is not really when it produces at first but when will it first produce a sizable yield and when will it taste like an amazing fruit. Those two questions I asked take much longer than 4 years. I have also learned my extension has amazing articles and there is typically news stories or famous trees for things that grows here well. You can find news articles and CSU articles on growing plums, pears and apples in CO. There are famous apricot trees from CO like the Montrose Apricot tree. If I hike in the woods I can find many brambles like raspberries growing here naturally so I choose to grow a lot of brambles. What you want is to buy fruit that grows in your area like a weed. Something low care and hardy. My “experiments” often have a hard time and get pulled while the ones other have had success with seem to do well. If you train things right, get the right rootstocks and get the right plants it should be easy. All I had to do this year was fertilize and water once every 1-2 weeks after planting my trees and bushes.
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I hate blueberries, fussy bastards… Heck Haskaps taste better and at least here are a whole lot easier to grow, all they want is for you to keep the weeds at bay. Well that and netting or else robins would take them all.
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Mulberries are much better than blueberries for my area, for years I bought lots of blueberry plants and they don’t last here, barely produce anything.
You could potentially get rotating “interns” for your orchard through WWOOF in exchange for room, board, and possible pay: https://wwoof.net/
Everything kills blueberries here where I am. The wind during winter here is too dry for the buds and the soil being normal kills them. By having soil that most plants love to grow in it literally kills blueberries.
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Yes, small scale agriculture is not a hedge against famine, but in the direction we are going neither is industrial scale farming. As we are seeing, supply disruptions of inputs (water will be a big one), extreme weather conditions and of course the processing storage and distribution of food, all very energy dependent on a large scale, can disrupt supplies of food, not to mention wars and monetary factors. Commodities are more about money than food. So, those who want to provide some hedge for themselves and others on a small local scale should develop the skills necessary or try to support a local food system.
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Can’t disagree. But the way things are changing weather wise I’ve come to wonder what will survive any particular year. In the long run the prediction is that even Vermont Maple trees might be gone.
We know what we have to do as weather changes to be more dry and it gets hotter. Plant more towards the higher portion of your growing zone and use drought resistant rootstocks. The people who may be boned are going to be the people like my mother who planted back in the 1970s when we were still zone 4 and planted varieties that are for the colder parts back then. Those people may have to restart their entire garden. Those who planted things that need ample water will be boned too. Like I said above there are rootstock of say apple that are drought tolerant like m111 and those that are not. I think annuals are going to become a thing of the past and while some reluctant the lawn will have to go.
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That still depends on where you are. Im in Alaska zone 4. anything I’m growing would still be happy in zone 5 or even 6 but the smart thing is still not to stray far from the more cold hardy stuff. 99% of the winter can be mild but all it takes is one nasty cold snap to go on a killing spree.
There is also an ungodly amount of water here. Heck it was amazing to see how we did not get much of any water this year until the beginning of August and yet the shallow wetlands by the highway were still wet. Even with little precipitation the aquifer is fed from multiple sources.
We are affected by climate change, but water and heat waves are not the problems here.
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If I was 30 years younger I’d jump at such an opportunity. I find it hard to believe that you won’t be able to entice somebody with such an offer. Good luck
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This is a very interesting thread.
Igor (bigiggye) you have evidently worked hard on your orchard and seem to sincerely want to give someone a chance to make your orchard productive.
You are obviously a very financially successful younger man. It makes sense you are short on time. Earning a high income generally takes a lot of dedication and time.
That explains why you don’t have large amounts of time to devote to taking care of your orchard, which as you mention hasn’t done super well. Temperate fruit orchards take a lot of time. I’m sure if we did a survey of the amount of time forum members spend in their home orchards, it would the equivalent of at least a part time job.
I mentioned your offer to one of my employees who has worked at my orchard for about 4 years, just to see what he thought about it.
He thought it made a good job offer, except for the part about taking care of the kids. In his mind he thought the job description was for an orchardist/nanny.
Rereading the job description:
- fermentation - pickling, wine and cider making or other cooking skills
- getting some chickens, dog training etc
- other landscaping and outdoor projects - powerwashing, snow plowing etc
- home maintanence, plumbing, electrical, carpentry etc
- babysitting / driving kids around places
Imo the job description looks a bit like a description for a man servant or maid servant, which is fine. I just don’t know if you will be able to find a quality person to fill that role for that kind of money ($50K).
A seasonal contract of $2 to $3K per week during the spring/summer sounds very good though. The only issue I see is finding someone with the wide array skill set. I’d be surprised if several people wouldn’t jump at that offer, but really don’t have the skill set to deserve that kind of compensation.
It took years of experience, reading, talking with other successful people before I started to have success with orcharding. It took many more years and experimentation to learn what varieties to grow in my climate. I ran the full gamut of first trying to grow varieties which required the least spray, only to find they generally didn’t taste that great, to trying to grow the absolute most delicious fruit, only to find they had too many issues (i.e. disease issues, or don’t produce much - like most heirloom tomatoes).
The spraying was also a long learning curve. I still struggle some with herbicides. It’s hard to get it right with sensitive plants like tomatoes.
Likewise with construction skills. It has taken a long time to learn to do electrical, plumbing and carpentry.
I wonder if you might find better results offering to pay a little less for a spring summer contract, but require a narrower skill set. In other words, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find someone who had a successful home orchard and hire them for, say, $1000 per week for spring and summer, just to do the 1/3 acre orchard and nothing else? That would seem a nice part-time job for someone with good experience in orcharding.
The job would be an excellent match for a recently retired person who had lots of experience with a home orchard.
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Thanks for input Olpea,
All that other stuff are just add-on services and not necessary. I was just trying to come up with other random stuff to fill time in case someone was considering moving for the gig and wanted more work. I certainly wouldn’t expect that for someone local just doing seasonal work.
That was my idea, someone close to retirement who’s mobile to move, not wanting any stressful work and earning some extra cashflow while practicing their hobby.
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I have most of those skills. I would do it but not willing to move.
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Time in the orchard will depend heavily on where you live, how many trees you have, what trees you have and depend heavily on other factors like what state of time your Orchard is in. My Orchard hardly takes me any time at this point because it is new even though I likely have over 30 trees/bushes. My trees are not fruiting yet so I dormant spray it twice a year and am in a dry area so don’t have to worry about fungal diseases as much. Early to mid summer I do a daily walkabout to find the ripe strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and inspect the trees for things like aphids but that is it for extra work and mid summer. Because the trees are new and in pots I water them. I have lettuce grow during the winter but it snows so much here they kind of just naturally get watered. My blackberry are disease resistant, a lot of my pears are disease resistant and my hazelnut are disease resistant. My apple and some of my pears are not as disease resistant but I handle that by not pruning during summer or spring time. I agree plumbing, carpentry and electrical work more so belong to a handyman and not a orchardist and childcare is more like a Nanny. You ask for too much as you get nothing. My dad was a lawyer who won millions of dollars in payouts from major cases and made news a few times as a kid for his major wins. I remember him wanting a nanny but no one took the job because of the conditions of the job he was putting out. Not even the foreign ones. He wanted the nanny to take full care of us (pick us up, cook for us clean the house, put us to bed etc). Those were very typical I suppose. Thing was he wanted to have the nanny live in the unheated barn even though he had a nice guest room. Since he wanted them to live in unlivable conditions no one would take the job. Surely in this case if they are good with kids enough to act as a nanny, act as a handyman and are a orchardist you can demand a few hundred a hour. 50k is chump change for someone who can do handyman work let alone 3 different skills.
I wondered about the height of your trees. A person who is retired may not want to get up on a ladder. They may be good with children but not an orchardist. They may be both but not a handyman. As @elivings1 stated, difficult to find someone with that combination of skills, let alone the inclination to do all three.
Would it make more sense to have them start a plant nursery to sell trees or raise crops for a community stand. Perhaps tasks that are more related or more likely to be interests of your target person.
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I am good with children, can play handyman, but am still learning on the practical side of things on the orchard through my own trials. It is definitely a Renaissance person Igor is searching for.
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Maybe reaching out to permaculture folks would be more productive than to this forum/page?
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My daughter in college is doing gardening for a lady. The lady is quite active in her garden but as we all here know so well there is always something else that needs doing. She gets paid $20 an hour, does about 12 hours a week.
As I stated a while ago: your best bet is reasonably skilled labor and you providing the expertise. Just having somebody doing the weeding and mulching can improve your quality of life.
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