North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

I have been working for the owner of an unplanned deer-pruned orchard, which
was planted over 20 years with mostly end-of-season sale trees and
self-grafted stock, all dwarf & semi.
What I can sum up from my experience there is that M 111's will work well,
and that bucks are the big challenge; they will prevent new trees from
succeeding and tear branches off even mature trees smaller (and lower) than
the M 111's. Some judicious pruning helps get the trees up high enough to
work under and mow around them. The deer in the area are BIG mulies, and
there's lots of them.
I'm very curious as to whether it would be possible to move sheep through
quickly enough to mow and yet not de-bark the trees; the owner is not
interested in managing any stock, though.

-Rick