My business of managing scores of orchards is 50% pruning fruit trees. This means that for 6 months of the year, about 5 days a week for about 7.5 hours a day I do nothing but prune fruit trees, primarily apples.

I have more of this work than I have time but the part of my business I'd like to grow is my bearing age fruit nursery. I need some free publicity to sell more trees which I can get by getting local newspapers to write about my business.

For publicity, I'd like to make the claim that I have spent more time pruning fruit trees in the 21st century than any other person- at least in the northeast. But I don't want to make that claim without making at least some kind of attempt at verification. My hunch is that this might be a good place to start.

The commercial growers I know don't have anyone that spends nearly as much time pruning as I do, but I wonder if any of you out their know of a pruner who's hours come close to mine. I don't mind being brazenly self promotional (there's nothing heroic about pruning a lot of fruit trees anyway) but I like to have my facts straight. The schedule I spell out applies pretty much from 2000 on (and well before). I'm interested in knowing of anyone in the world who spends this much time (groan) pruning. Hope I can at least claim the northeastern U.S. record.