The Dreaded Bagworm!

Bagworms!  

A Christmas Tree Farmer's worst nightmare....well, not really.  

They are no fun, but we are surviving them and will be victorious over them!

 They attach to the needles on the tree.  They are actually little caterpillars who live in a bag.  

They emerge a tiny bit through a hole in the top of the bag and feed on the tree. (See above picture)

But, boy do they do a number on the tree!

Do you see all the brown hang-y down-y things?  (Don't you just love my professional jargon ?) :0)  What about all those brown needles in the center of the tree?  That's the damage from these yucky ole bagworms.

How dare they!

Actually....it's our fault.  

How is that, you ask?  

Well, last summer while we were shearing we evidently missed the mama bagworm on this tree.  In late summer she lays her eggs and they winter over in her bag.  Each bag can have as many as 1000 eggs.  These worms on this tree are the babies.  In the springtime they will hatch out and climb out of the mama's (she is already dead) bag, make their own bag and then commence to just devouring the poor tree.

A close up of the damage to the tree.

Once they have eaten their way to maturity the males metamorphosize into a black moth while the females remain a caterpillar and stay in the bag to lay their eggs.  Then they die.

How do you get rid of them?  Well, we remove them one at a time by hand.  Yep, it's kinda gross!  

 

 We carry a jug of gasoline and just drop them into it.  That insures that they die and we don't have to spend the time smushing each and every one....ugh!

After smushing...green ooze! 

Like I said, they're really gross.  This is what we used to do until we found out just pulling them off and tossing them into the gasoline is faster and um...less gross!

Once we find a tree with bagworms we have to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to find each and every one.  It's imperative that we find them all.  We found a total of 163 bagworms on this tree.  Yep, we counted each and every one.

Then, we check each tree on every side of this one.  Typically, we will find one or two in these other trees.  So, all shearing stops until we have found each and every bagworm.  

Here's the tree after all the bagworms are off.  This tree will survive, but will have naked parts on the inside. If the bagworms had been left to do their work, this tree would be totally needle-free. 

We typically find the bagworms in our White Pine trees and Spruce trees.

Anybody wanna come to the farm and help de-bagworm the trees??

I'll gladly give up my spot! :0)

Thanks for stopping by!

Dawn

White Pine Shearing Time--Summer 2013!

Hello to all!  We've been a little busy here on the farm with shearing trees, mowing, watering the garden, etc.  We are experimenting with some all natural rooting hormone to see if we can root some of the branches that we just sheared off the trees.  If it works, we will be doing a whole lot more of our own rooting and growing in the coming years (more on that later.) 

I thought I'd share a little bit about how we shear the trees and some pics.  Shearing started on Friday, June 22.  So far, David has finished the first field.  These trees are closest to our house and gift shop.  They are 3 yrs. old and there are approximately 1000 White Pines. 

Below are a series of pictures of a single White Pine from this field as David shears from beginning to end.  

 Judah snuck away from me while we were watering the garden.  He had to go see Daddy!

 And, get a drink from his recycled gatorade bottle.  Just water.  Aw man!  He was hoping for a lil' juice!

 Threw the bottle down and is now coming back to me!

 Decided he'd move over a row and walk up with Poppie. It's always better together!

 Cleaning the sap off the shears. 

We have just started in the next closest field that we call the upper triangle.  It has 800 White Pine.

This tree is about 8 ft. tall pre-sheared

 

It's now a 7 footer after shearing!

 This is another tree from the same field.

 Some Hemlock trees in the same field.  They've only been there for 3 years.

 White Pines in this upper triangle

These are the Blue Spruce and the Norway Spruce

The extension agent from UT came out to answer lots of questions and see our trees.  He's also a Christmas tree farmer in his spare time :0)  Alan was very helpful and we let him shear one of our trees, just so we could see how he chose to shear it.  This tree is in our upper triangle and is 5 yrs. old.

It's a beautiful Christmas tree.  Actually it's been pre-tagged by a family for purchase this Christmas season.  

So, what is the purpose of shearing?  

Well, for one it makes the trees look, well, like Christmas trees.  Sure they're supposed to look like that anyway, but you know not every one is perfect, so we help them be perfect.  Ahem....not really, but we like to help! :0)

Shearing the new growth really helps the tree to flourish.  When you shear off some of that fresh, new, beautiful growth each year (sigh, sniff), the tree will grow fuller.  It keeps the spaces between the branches to a minimum so you have a fuller tree.  Most people don't like big gaps between the sets of branches or holes in their trees.  Some trees can't be helped, but others can be nudged into a beautiful Christmas tree.  

I'm a whiner and I always whine to my dear hubby that he's killing me when he shears the trees.  It feels like he's drawing blood.  (sniff). All that pretty new growth they worked so hard to give us and here's how we re-pay them...snip...on the ground.

I know, I'm a little dramatic, too.  I know it's the best thing for them, but at the time it hurts.  Kinda of like us as God prunes the death out of our lives, it gives room for life!  We are giving the trees more room for life.  Actually freeing them to grow and flourish.  That's how God does it with us, it may hurt as He prunes and shapes us, but then we can flourish in His new life and be free of the things that had us bound. 

I keep a centerpiece on our table during shearing time each year.  The sheared branches are so pretty, I hate to see them go to waste.  It is a constant reminder to me that death of the dead-weight brings life to the fullest and I pray and ask God to keep shearing me and taking off the things which I don't need and are actually holding me back.  I want to have abundant life!  How about you?

We have one more field to go after this one.  It's the lower triangle and it has 700 White Pine trees.  We have about 2500 White Pines total.  We hope to be finished by the end of next weekend. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Dawn

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