Here at Howmars Farm we don't plant field corn for grain or silage, or small grains, or alfalfa. We keep all our farm in sod, grazing the land all summer long, and harvesting hay from our neighbors’ fields. The one crop we do plant every spring is Christmas trees. We purchase balsam fir transplants at our local county conservation district's annual tree sale to plant in our Christmas tree operation. This spring we bought 100 balsam fir, along with three 2-inch caliper sugar maples and 6 blueberry bushes.

Yesterday, Karen and I planted half of the balsam fir in a couple of hours. Today I headed back over with the other 50 trees to put in the ground. The bucket of the loader tractor had the transplants, a bag of bone meal, and some compost to finish the task. We had left the wheelbarrow and shovels over at the Christmas trees. This year, instead of renting the auger to make the holes, I used our trenching shovel to do the job. The other new thing we did was put in a handful of bone meal in the hole to help the root system of the transplants get established. After digging the holes, I put in the bone meal and a shovelful of compost, mixed this with some of the freshly dug earth, placed the transplant in the hole, and packed the remaining dirt around the roots until the transplant was planted at the depth at which it had come out of the transplant bed.

 

Today I had also brought the chainsaw to remove overgrown, unmarketable trees. I cut down about twenty and planted new trees by the freshly cut stumps. With the extra work of cutting down the trees, it took me about four hours to finish planting the balsam fir. Even though the back-breaking, arduous work wore me out, little things along the way made the task enjoyable. A salamander in the grass, a grub in the freshly dug soil, fragrant white apple blossoms, new red maple seeds dancing in the breeze, or a hot, panting dog cooling off in the brook broke up the monotony of planting all those trees. Now, we hope for some rain to water the transplants, and we get the DR Fieldmower ready to mow the rapidly growing grass between the rows of trees.

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