I think a lot about training apple trees because it's part of my living. I also get lots of opportunity to see the consequences of bad decisions early in a trees development a few years down the road- often my own bad decisions. What you do to develop a productive framework of scaffolds depends a lot on the variety of the tree and its rootstock. If your tree is a vigorous grower like Fuji or Granny Smith those 2 scaffold branches may be more trouble than they're worth. In such varieties a scaffold branch more than a third the diameter of the trunk at the branches point of attachment may grow with excessive vigor, delaying the trees fruitfulness and throwing your plans of a Christmas tree shaped central leader out of whack as those branches dominate. In spurry, early bearing varieties like Goldrush or Ark Black such "oversized" scaffolds will probably not be a problem because the diameter won't cause excessive vegetative vigor because the early fruiting will calm vegetative growth. If the rootstock is M26 or anything down in vigor managing vigor by removing excessviely large scaffolds may not be important. I have an article that I've written about the training of fruit trees using ratios as a guide. E-mail me if you'd like a copy.

thomis, good work on that Apple orchard. But, in the photos the sun does appear on the other side from the N direction on the layout. One year tree growth seems fair not great. Fertilizer may double the growth. Cutting the tree down to 30". In the last photo your holding a tree that looks like a 48" whip that grew one season. It won't hurt the tree to cut it to 30". I'd leave it that high so not have to duck when mowing. You can spread the vertical tree branches now and in a month or two they will hold that angle. Clip the branch tips off to an outward facing bud.

I suggest you pinch back all but your leading bud at top of tree to maintain central leader and the dominance of the bud going most straight. You can let the rest of the tree grow for now as long as nothing threatens the dominance of the leader.

You can't prune an open canopy, spreading tree - like most apples (and most other trees as well) - into a columnar form very successfully - the tree will fight against you. Columnar apples are bred specifically to have that very narrow, pole-like habit, but non-columnar forms will not lend themselves to this type of treatment readily. I doubt even the spurring types will respond favorably. OTOH, any type of apple, if started young enough, can be trained into an espaliered form and these can be great space savers as well as being maintained at a low height that is very unlikely to shade out much of anything. How to espalier fruit trees.