Future orchard

[Stubbornhillfarm]

The farmer and I walked around our property this weekend, trying to focus on what we should be doing on our land to utilize it instead of just letting it sit there. We have many ideas that we have tossed around over the years, and now some of them are becoming reality. Our land is all wooded except for what we have cleared for the house and someday pasture.

This is a picture of where our future orchard will be. Can you see it? I know...it's pretty hard to even imagine. But I hope that over the course of the next year, we will have some updated pictures and one day you will see apple trees planted here. We have some big beautiful mighty oaks that live on our property and we just discovered a handful of maples that we did not even know existed. (I see maple syrup in my future!) Mostly as you can see we have many small beech and birch trees.

This is the future orchard.

This is one of our mighty oaks.

 

[Carol Dee]

I CAN see it after a lot of hard work clearing the excess trees. It is so nice to be able to see somedreams becoming reality.

 

[lesa]

I see it, I see it! Do keep us posted on your progress... I discovered a 5 foot tall maple, in my woodland garden the other day. I don't think maple syrup is in my future- but maybe a generation from now!

 

[vfem]

Wow... I have such respect for someone who sees the end result so clearing and is going to tackle this head on like you are!

I guess you can See the Orchard Through the Trees! I'm so punny!

 

[ninnymary]

Your dream does seem like a reality. Those trees that you have to remove are not very big so hopefully it won't be that hard. After that the planting is easy! The soil is probably also very fertile with all those leaves falling all those years?

Mary

 

[catjac1975]

We had a lot of land cleared for free. We made a deal with a guy who took the wood in exchange. He only took the pine and left the hardwood. (This is what we wanted.) He charges people for this usually. He was slow business wise. Of course that did not include the stumping, grading etc. We later saw some people were paying for the wood. How ever we did that many years ago and or property was left a MESS. The man we just used left not a single unwanted twig.

 

[thistlebloom]

Looks like a lot of hard work, but what a dividend! The orchard will be a legacy to your wise choice.

Do you have access to a chipper? That would give you a lot of chips for paths and mulch for flower beds.

 

[momofdrew]

I see it you willhave to keep up up dated we have the before pics we will need the in process pics and the after ones too... :tools

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Thanks all for the encouragement! I know it can be done. It just takes time, hard work and money (for equipment, etc). The cutting down of the trees is the fun part. We both have chain saws (the farmer's much bigger then the farmers wife's) and we burn wood for heat, so that is all good. Then of course as catjac says, the stump removale. Most likely this will be with a back-hoe as we have many, many, many rocks too which will have to come out. (more rock walls for me!) It is the moving of the remaining limbs and leaves that is the real work in my opinion, which leads to thistleblooms question.

We don't have a chipper yet. But we have a large peice of equipment that is useless at this point. We are going to scrap it and then hopefully get a sizable chipper with the money from that. The farmer reffers to them as a "chuck-n-duck" and what we can afford is the old style. Pretty dangerous, but quite effective. We have no little kids and certainly would not let anyone borrow it. The wood chips in my opinion are worth gold!

I definately will keep the updates coming as time goes by.

Oh, and if anyone has some free time......

 

[Jared77]

Stubborn have you thought about trying to borrow the use of one from someone? Do you have anything you could offer in trade? Say a portion of beef or a hog or something else worth bartering over? Then you could use the money from the sale of your item as seed money to buy trees with and get your orchard growing.

Just thinking out loud here....I can't wait to see it all come together for you