Cutting Back

We're almost 3 years into our journey towards home food production and this year, our trees, vines, canes and shrubs finally began producing.  We're up to 8 dwarf/semi-dwarf fruit trees, yellow, red and black raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, 4 grapevines and rhubarb, and this year we enjoyed fruit from most of them.  Starting around April or May, there was a constant supply of fresh fruit, right up to the present, as we're still enjoying an occasional yellow raspberry.     

The first 2 years there was little no no growth on any of the plantings.  They looked healthy and sported an occasional berry or fruit, but growth-wise, nothing.  This year however, a couple of the trees doubled in height.  Our first peach tree doubled in width. The raspberry vines took hold and are becoming an actual, respectable patch.  Apparently there's much merit to the old saying 'first they sleep, then they creep, then they leap!'  That's what our plants did.  Slept the first year, woke up the second and leapt into life the third.  As a result, I have a lot of pruning to do and therein lies the problem:  I have no idea what I'm doing. 

There are so many schools of thought on how/when/why to prune your fruit-bearing plants and I think I've read every one.  The confusing part is that each plant wants something a little different, depending on when it bears fruit, how it propagates and the season that it's in.  As a result, I haven't done much to the orchard.  I snipped off a few stray branches and a couple of canes that were obviously dead, but I'm perplexed on the correct way (or is there a correct way?) to prune the various trees, vines and canes.  

My go-to guy for most things agrarian is Gene Logsdon.  He's a fellow Ohioan who's made a life (and a business) out of living simply and he's an absolute wealth of knowledge.  His books are written very simply and straight forward, no fancy lingo or impressive vocabulary.  Gene just IS.  I've read his book on small-scale fruit production several times and it's absolutely invaluable, especially in dealing with planting and propagation.  The only areas that leave me hanging are, you guessed it, pruning.  Do I prune now?  Do I prune later?  Do I need to cut them back at all?  Or the better question, where can I find a pruning service?

Cutting back has been the most difficult part of the learning curve for me.  Everything else sort of fell into place, but pruning has proven to elude me.  What I really need is 'The Complete Idiots Guide to Cutting Back Fruit Trees in Ohio', but I'm not sure that book exists.  Probably not much of a market there.  

So pruning is a huge thorn in my side.  What's yours?