Farm Fresh: Bye Big Trees. Hello Playground!

Lots more progress on clearing the land for our future berry patch. My sister Becky published an excellent blog article this week on how many fruit bushes/trees you need to feed an average person/family a years supply of fruit.  We are trying to be as self reliant as possible so it is interesting to compare what we have so far and what we still need.  We have enough apple, peach, and pear trees (not to mention apricot, plum, fig, and elderberries) in our little orchard to cover those, but we are way behind on our berry needs. We only have 6 blueberry bushes and we need at least 12.  We don't have any blackberry or raspberry bushes so far. That is what I hope to plant in this new stretch of ground -- more blueberry bushes and 20 to 30 thornless blackberry bushes.  We had just ONE at our old house and it was great, grew huge berries and was pretty easy to care for. 

Watching the pros cut down three big trees was very exciting. We all sat in wrapt attention for an hour or so. 

  This part of the yard is our best sun for growing things as it is a south facing slope.

 We only had these three cut this year because we knew it would make a huge mess! And it will take awhile to chainsaw it into wood stove size pieces and chip up all the branches.

 Turns out it also made a really fun playground.  The kids were pretending that each tree was a ship that wrecked on a deserted island, among many other imaginary adventures.

 This big old oak tree has been dead for 2 years now.  It really needed to be cut down.  A few of its branches fell every time we had a windy storm. It was the most fun to watch hit the ground because the rotten wood of the branches looked like they were exploding!

 They cut the tree high up on the stump because of the the two trunks coming out of it. They were going to cut it down lower, but the kids begged us to wait so that they could climb on it.

 Brother S sketched some trees

The weather was unseasonably warm that day.  Temperatures went up to 80 degrees for the high.  That called for a picnic lunch at our new "playground".  

On Saturday, Hubby spent the day chainsawing things into more manageable pieces.  

 I will move the smallish branches to our chipper pile and he will use the backhoe plus thumb attachment to carry logs to the woodpile.

 At some point I would like to measure how many square feet of growing space that we will have gained by the time we are done clearing this new berry patch. I can't let myself get too excited yet though. There are several more trees that will need to be cut and cleared next year before this area is ready to plant. One is a big dead hickory tree and another is an invasive tree of heaven that was allowed to grow huge and spreads 300,000 seeds (see linked article) each year, creating invasive seedlings of itself all over the yard.  I cannot wait to get rid of that problem... Lots of progress for now though.