Monday, November 20, 2017

Poor Orchard's Almanac: Italian Olive Ladder

   My apple picking friend, potato magnate, and garlic farmer David Clauson sent me this picture forwarded to him by an itinerant  fellow apple picker just back from Verona Italy, where he had been picking olives.  This  simple pole with pegs stepping up each side, like the telephone poles they used to actually climb,  looks pretty  scary to me,
    My good orchard ladder has three legs and is stable on uneven ground.,  A ladder with two legs with rungs spanning them, the feet wide apart at the bottom and a foot or so apart at the top, will grab the tree and add a little stability, particularly on s slope like this, and like some of ours here at Dogsplot.  I have seen pictures of old ladders of this sort made for  for Washington State Pear trees.  They were forty feet tall, as Pear trees naturally grow in a spire.  I try to cut and bend my Pear Trees to a vase shape, as each has plenty of room to spread, but they still get up there, and they are generally on rough ground.  Also, I just want to make a bipedal ladder.
      I made a THREE legged ladder with Juniper rails and rungs, but I need sounder rungs.  Maybe PVC plastic pipe. 


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