Fruit trees and mushrooms

I spent a nice Sunday on my parents farm pruning the fruit trees in the new orchard with my brother. After doing the pruning course last week and the fact that my brother is a tree surgeon, I felt quite confidant. It was a cold day and we had to wait for the trees to defrost before we started, but we soon had the 3 and 4 year old trees pruned to size, we should hopefully get a bit more fruit off them than we have up till now, they’ve been slow getting established and we’ve only had about 2 apples so far. The plum, gage and damson trees will get pruned in the spring to prevent silver leaf.
After a warming roast dinner we braved the cold again to use up the dowel mushroom spawning kit that had been sitting in my fridge since the spring. To do this we drilled holes in some freshly cut logs every 6 inches, knocked in the inoculated dowels and then sealed the tops with wax. We then found a nice dark corner of mums’ garden to store them in where they won’t dry out. Hopefully in about 6 to 12 months time we should have some Shiitake mushrooms to eat.