Planting trees, with kids and pigs

Last Friday, Daddy had to take part of the day off work, because Winnie had a bad rash. Apparently she had mono when she took the amoxicillin for her ear infection, so she ended up with a pretty prominent mono rash.

So what do you do when you are feeling sick? Obviously, go to the farm and do some work.

We had three willow trees, and three witch hazel trees that arrived in the mail to plant. Winnie fell asleep on the way to the farm, so she snoozed through the first half of the day.

But Seppi had his workingman gloves on, so he was ready to get his dig on.

He was tickled pink to see that there were trees inside a box.

So were the pigs, so we had to put the trees on the back of the tailgate, so the pigs couldn’t try to taste them.

They are very friendly pigs,

The two boys more so than the girl, and the pig with the white dash on the end of his nose, named Lard, is obnoxiously friendly.

Like a big dog with no manners.

They snuffle through the dirt we dig out of the holes, they sniff and shove at the trees waiting to go in the ground. I wouldn’t put it past them to nibble on the bark a bit as well.

First tree in!

Then Winnie woke up and came out to help. She loves the pigs, but they are a little big and rambunctious up close.

Lard sniffed at her pacifier, hanging on its strap from her coat, and obviously thought it smelled good because he grabbed it with his mouth and walked away with it.

So Daddy had to banish the pigs to the orchard until we were done with tree planting.

A baby girl with a baby tree!

This one is actually too tall for what we want. We want all of them to be pollarded at about 6 feet tall so that we can harvest the shoots every year (for animal fodder, biochar, basket making, and any other projects we can come up with). So after we got this one planted and mulched with wood chips, we went and whacked it off at 6 feet tall.

It started getting windy and baby girl got tired of being out on the rough ground of the pasture, so…

She spent the rest of the job practicing driving the truck.

There we are. Three willows and three witch hazels. We will see how they do.