tree removal

February: We started cutting down poplar trees to open the canopy for our micro orchard. We are going to plant 4 apple, 2 pear and 2 cherry. Maybe more in the future. 

Delimbing and bucking a tree is a big job. My husband does all the work with the chain saw then I come in and start piling up the branches and get the big logs loaded up in the wheelbarrow and move to the splitting area. My son gets his toy chain saw and helps too.

  It takes us about 1.5 hours to get tree down and cleared. (not including splitting). Then we go inside and eat lunch and take a nap......Well I do. I will say that cutting and hauling trees in the winter is far superior than when it warms up. 

When its hot out its the worst job ever, you are pouring sweat and getting attacked by armies of mosquitoes.

Six poplar trees came down and stumps cut down, and brush removed over several weekends in February, March and April. The beginning of April we rented a wood chipper and chipped up all the slash. We were going to need mulch for the trees any way and around the property if we can afford to get the raised garden beds in this year.

The end of March we preordered our trees from an organic local nursery to save 35%. We wanted to add in plum trees but we simply ran out of money. We chose cold hardy trees for zones 3 to 4. We have Haralred Apple, Prairie Magic Apple,Snow Sweet Apple, Frostbite Apple, Parker Pear, Summerscrisp Pear, Monetmorecy Cherry & Evens Bali Cherry.  We studied the forest around us and looked at the way the trees are in alignment. Nothing is in rows so we decided to plant our small orchard this way too. We staggered the trees, no perfect rows like you would see at commercial orchards.

We were able to fit 8 trees, one boy and two adults in our jeep. Everyone and everything got home safely. We soaked our bare root trees in water for several hours before planting them. We learned something new! Our soil is very rocky and gravely with millions of interwoven blackberry roots. While digging the holes we would have to stop and axe apart these unwanted root systems to make room for the bare root trees.  Digging eight holes was very hard, exhausting work. We were only going to do half the trees and save the other half for the following day but I checked the weather forecast and there was rain in the evening so we muscled through and got all the trees in. We do not have any outdoor plumbing or irrigation so the rain is exactly what we needed for these new trees.

The Pug Life in front of the wood pile that needs to be split.

The weeks following the planting were extreamly dry so we had to haul 5 gallon bucket loads of water to the trees. All of the trees have leafed out except our Frostbite Apple. The branches are still pliable so the nursery said to wait a fee more weeks to see if they leaf out, they still have trees that haven't leafed out.

A friend of mine gave me cuttings of raspberry and currents. We have hundreds of blackberries on our property already so these raspberries and currents are great addition. I can wait for everything to start fruiting in a couple years and I can make rumtopf, The tradition of the Rumtopf in Germany goes back centuries as a way to preserve fruits of the season in booze. I have never made it before but it sounds like it would be delicious. 

A really cool find on our property Oyster Mushrooms. A decaying poplar tree along the driveway started popping out oyster mushrooms after our epic down pour of rain.