There is far more to maintaining our Galeru rainforest orchards than simply providing the trees nutrition and harvesting their fruit. Evidently, the nutrition and care we have been providing this past decade was more than adequate, for now we have to thin out the trees so there will be ample sunlight for them to generate crops.

The canopy has grown so dense in one of our orchards, the sunlight could not penetrate. And, these past two years, there has been more rain here than during the previous eight years, prompting even more growth.  It was not an easy decision to remove what had been planted with so much love and care, nevertheless we “bit-the-bullet” and through the month of June over 100 trees were culled from one orchard.  Then we brought in a mobile wood-chipper to reduce much of the culled timber to mulch.

After days of feeding the wood-chipper and wielding the chainsaw on thicker branches (to make a lot of firewood) both Michael and I have discovered muscles we never knew we had. Mind you, Michael is about half a century younger than me so he can not complain.