Planting Trees at Our New Land

 Today we spent most of our time out at our new land. The trees that I had ordered through our county's soil and water program had come in and so it was time to plant. We loaded up spades, buckets (to get water from the river) manure, lunch and other odds and ends and the whole family headed over there.

Megan, Jonathan and Aaron digging holes.

 Planting trees was the first thing we actually did to improve our property. This was a very important one for me as trees take a long time to grow and we wanted to get them started just as soon as possible. We planted 25 crab apple trees (that we will graft later into good apples), 5 Highbush Cranberries, 5 plums, 5 Nanking Cherries, 5 Rugosa Roses and 5 Silver Maples.

Mara mulching the trees

 While we were at the property we also worked to figure out a little better where everything would go. Ken did lots of measuring and tagging. We decided that the garden would go in one area that is near our neighbor's shed (they are the ones that sold us the property) as they already had a little clearing there. We will have to clear it a little more but it is started anyway. We decided to temporarily plant all of the trees except the maples in one end of the garden area as it is a nice safe place away from all the digging that will need to be done to build the house and create the driveway.

   The trees are planted pretty close together, nursery style, where they will hopefully grow a little and get used to the soil here and then come fall or next spring I will hopefully get them re-planted in their permanent location. We are hoping to have a lot of them line the driveway.

 We planted a couple of the maples (we love the red leaves in fall and someday would love to be able to tap to make maple syrup) down by the river in the back yard. The other 3 are up fairly close to the road. Planting 50 trees , hauling water to water them and then protecting them is a lot of work. We were all fairly exhausted by the end of the day. Aaron had a won a certificate for a free pizza so that is what we enjoyed for supper- nice and easy for the weary family.

 After we got done planting and mulching we put stakes and netting all around them in hopes of keeping the deer away from them. We also put egg shells around which is supposed to help. I am going to save more egg shells and also any hair from haircuts to add to the collection around them. Deer are a very real concern there as we can see evidence of them all over!

Above Ken was putting in a stake for one corner of the house.

  Today we got to meet our next door neighbors. They are a really sweet older couple who actually go south for the winter so we will only see them during the other seasons. They were so welcoming and even invited us in their house and told us to come over if we get cold at all and offered us hot chocolate and enjoyed visiting. I am so thrilled to have friendly neighbors. We have had good neighbors but never before has anybody welcomed us so thoroughly and quickly. The man likes to do woodworking so he and Jonathan figured they would hit it off and the lady likes to paint. Their love of making things and enjoying God's beauty made us feel like we would fit right in!

  We are hoping our house will sell soon - we are feeling quite ready to get over to our new land. :-)

 What would you do first if you had new land?