We were all sick again. I’m getting tired of writing that. Husband picked up a virus at work, and we all dropped like flies. Headache, neck/body pain, fatigue and lack of apetite, fever, nasty cough. The cough is still lingering on, but the rest has finally cleared up. We didn’t do much for over a week, though. We were just too fatigued. I did manage to plant my Jerusalem Artichokes last week, but it took everything I had to do so.

It’s good to be feeling better, especially as this year’s tree order arrived yesterday and we had some serious planting to do today.

We got to less than half of the trees, and the rest will spend the week in a bucket of damp soil, waiting their turn.

Before lunch, we transplanted 5 blueberry and an apple tree that mom had brought from her place. After lunch, we planted
1 plum
5 nanking cherry
3 aronia berry
3 kousa dogwood
2 blue elderberry
3 eastern redbud
2 chaste/ vitex
Several liatris bulbs
Meadow arnica

(We also dug up for transplant back to mom’s:
3 white pine
6 maple)

We’ve already had to begin expanding the orchard section (which was already nearly an acre) to the South and the West. It’s going to be a respectably-sized orchard in very short order.

Looking at last years’ trees as we were going around, I dont think we lost anything over winter. I was concerned about one of my two mulberry trees, but I think it is just delayed, not dead. I’ll watch it and give it a good dose of fertilizer if it seems to need it. The apple tree that was ‘dead’ for 3 months last year is heavily budded up and thriving, so dead doesnt always mean DEAD.

Tomorrow, I pick up a pear tree at another place, and then sometime in the next week or so, my figs are set to arrive. After that, I have the mushroom order at some point in May and then that’s it for the expansion of the orchard this year. (I will still have to do the garden beds, though. There are 4 new ones going in)

Still waiting for next week is all of the nut trees, the fodder trees and the oaks, but they’re going in an entirely different part of the property, which will eventually (hopefully) be part of a relatively large Silvopasture system.