This week we have been working to get everything ready to plant trees next week. First step was a trip to Rabbit Ridge Berry Farm in Coats, NC to pick up trees and bushes.
Fred and Amily are great to do business with. We have been buying trees and bushes from them for more than 2 years and it is a wonderful experience.
We filled up the truck and trailer and headed to the farm. One of the trees we purchased was a pecan that was more then 8 feet tall. It was longer than the 8 foot trailer!
The next step was to take measurements and put flags showing the future location of the trees. The fields are starting to get wet so we transferred the trees to a smaller trailer and towed the trailer (with the tractor) to areas close to the intended locations. You can see me with the lines that we used to measure out the 20 foot grid.
Weather permitting, the plan is to plant 47 trees and bushes next week including:
- pear
- plum
- plumcots
- nectarine
- peach
- black walnut
- mulberry
- chestnut
- goji berry
- blueberry
- PawPaw
Next week should be a busy week.
Garlic and Wolly Worms
The garlic is coming up. We had tried something new with the garlic this year. We planted the garlic then rolled out hay from a round bale (instead of manually spreading it). Once we started unrolling the hay we were concerned that the hay would be too thick. However the garlic is growing through the hay so hopefully this approach will work.
We are still seeing wolly worms. We saw a really big one yesterday
I’m a mechanical engineer turned weekend farmer, so I’m just smart enough to know that there is a lot that I don’t know especially when it comes to farming, permaculture and food forests. I’ve been heavily influenced in my love of farming and permaculture by my Mom and Dad and also by people like 
Connie has her certificate in Sustainable Agriculture from CCCC. She really enjoyed the classes at the community college and learned a lot. The program was a mixture of classes and work on the school farm. What she learned has really added to our technical proficiency on the farm.