Skip to main content

Other trees to plant!

This weeks research has been on what other trees I need to plant on the homestead, earlier I went into some of the fruit and nut trees I was thinking about but I would like to get a little more variety out there as well.  When I walked through the property a couple of months ago most of the woodland on the property was poplar.    While poplar can make a decent forage and it is fast growing it is not much good as a building material   and as fire wood it burns hot but very fast, you are constantly having to put more in!  There is three additional types of trees I am thinking of planting other the the fruit and nut trees mentioned earlier.

Maple Trees
I am thinking of planting a variety of Maple trees, a 6-7 sugar maples, 2-3 red maples and 2-3 silver maples.  I have to admit the idea of making our own maple syrup does intrigue me and gives me something to do in February!   Terri loves the color change of the leaves  and as they grow they will provide shade for the cattle in the pastures and the mast will provide additional feed for the birds and wildlife.



Weeping Willow
Weeping willows grow very fast, up to 10 feet a year!  The willows will be a great shade tree around the pond as well as in a couple in the lower areas of the pastures to suck up the excess water that will pool in those areas.   In addition to the shade aspect willow branches are excellent feed for the rabbits (along with the poplar that is already abundant), the rabbits will chew the branches to wear down their teeth and the willow also acts as a mild pain reliever.  The leaves should also serve as a good fodder for the goats.  So we are looking at 4-5 of these trees to the homestead.


There are numerous other trees that would do great on a homestead but being in the northern part of the country I am a little more limited in my choices!  I do think in addition to the fruit and nut trees however we will have a pretty good selection on the homestead!  As always if I missed something let me know!!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Long over due update! We added livestock (and poultry)!

Non-gas operated lawn mowers! It is hard to believe I am so far behind on my blog posts.   Spring is a busy time on the homestead, especially a first spring!   Two and a half inches of rain last night in about a two hour period has given me some time this morning to write as it is too wet to get much done!   So much has happened in the last two months, I will probably on touch on most of it in an attempt keep this post readable!   First, we lost our bee hive from last year, the bees ate the stores in the middle of the hive, all the way to the top, but did not eat the outermost combs.   From the looks of it they ended up starving themselves out because they moved too far from the edges for them to reach them with the cold weather.   We were able to salvage about 15 lbs of honey and a pound or so of wax out of the dead hive. We also managed to harvest a couple containers of virgin honey comb. This years honey harvest In this picture you can re...
Post a Comment
Read more

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they cou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sourdough Fail, it Happens

I am trying to get better about posting my blog every week, it does get difficult at times as I am still in DC for the next 9 weeks or so before returning for good to the homestead.   Some of you have noticed there is more posts lately about things like baking, particularly sour dough bread baking rather than farming/planting/livestock stuff.  That is because that is something I can work on in DC while I wait, and it is skills that will transfer.  I have been working on sourdough bread lately as it is a cultured food, similar to cheese’s and yogurts (which I want to also work on) so it allows me get some of the basics down to dealing with live cultures and further reduces the need for commercial yeasts. The plan for this weekend was to make a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread as well as a sour dough king cake.  I even bragged about doing it on Facebook before the fact.  Admittedly after last week’s success on the artesian sour dough bread I was probably...
Post a Comment
Read more