My Dad flew in yesterday. He hopes to plant 1000 chestnut trees in the next few days on the land next door, and he was up bright and early, ready to go. Here he is holding a bag with ten little chestnut trees in it.
The first snag: the swales we cut were not quite what they could have/should have been. Based on verbal instructions from our mentor, we did what we were supposed to, but Phil and my Dad went over with the level and laid out swales according to what made sense to them spatially. One of the cuts changed by 80 feet!
That took all morning, and much of the afternoon. Then they ran out of flags, so Phil used our new subsoiler to make a trench in the earth, and then went to recut the swales with the plow. My Dad started to plant. It was about 3pm.
Meanwhile, back on our farm, after I had potted on some tomatoes, I had turned my attention to the 23 trees that arrived for me yesterday. Three were to replace trees that didn't take last year. It was pleasant and easy to dig up the dead whips and put in vibrant new trees.
Then I went to dig holes for new apple trees. Roots! Rocks! Hard soil! Sometimes it felt like I was chiseling away.
And yet, it wasn't unpleasant. Perfect transplant weather: not too cold nor hot, overcast. Joe was my companion (he climbed on the woodpile and posed at one point, when he wasn't scrambling over logs), and I saw worms in almost every hole, so it felt good. I was making progress. I got 12 apple trees planted in the afternoon. Watered, mulched (well, eight were mulched). I am awesome.
Apples are so great! A few are leafing out.
Then Phil called to let me know that my Dad had started planting, and had a few in the ground. I went the 300 yards or so to see, and in that time, my Dad planted five more trees, taking about two minutes each. How could that be!?
The subsoiler had cut a deep trench, on the down slope of the swale. (In the photo: swale on the left, wheel track in the middle, subsoiler's trench, which actually looks like a little rise.)
All Dad had to do was stick in his specially designed shovel, ratchet it back and forth a bit, pull out some dirt (maybe two shovels' full), put the tree in, and tamp around.
It helps that the roots aren't extremely large.
How easy! Had we had all these tools and know how last year, we would have saved ourselves a month and a half of heavy labor! Wow! (That's not regret speaking: more just amazement at how easy mechanization can make things.)
They had to water all 60 trees after dark, using a tank on the back of the truck, so they didn't eat dinner until 9pm, but 60 trees in a partial day of work, while still figuring systems, is remarkable progress.
We had two loads of gravel delivered to the farm, and the excavator smoothed it out. That's all the progress for this week. I need to get used to the difference in topography: where the trees were all on level before, there is now a two-foot berm right behind some of the cherry trees, like a giant orange step up the hillside.
Amid all these wonderful bits of promising progress, I was devastated to find that the little broccoli sprouts and red cabbage sprouts that I set out earlier this week have all died. I'm guessing the trace waterings we've had almost every day were not enough for them. In retrospect, I could have even set a lawn sprinkler in there with them (not worrying about evaporation), if I didn't want to hand water. (It could be frost damage, perhaps: I didn't cover these seedlings, and it hit freezing last night. My gut says lack of water, though.)
What upsets me is that I didn't even think of those little seedlings. It's like they simply didn't exist for me. I need to water the onions, in those same beds, but by the time I realized it, dark had fallen and I needed to get dinner for seven ravenous people.
I feel like I have been successfully juggling five balls (which is pretty hard to do), and one just fell and bopped me on the head.
Four are still going, and the successes at the end of the day outweigh the losses, but I didn't want that loss.
I suppose this post sort of echoes my day: mostly cheerful, pleasant, with a downer ending.
May the Lord help those 2000 onions survive, despite my scattered (mis?)management.
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