Winds of Change

The last two days have been a whirlwind of hard work for us....literally!  We've been fighting upwards of 25 mile per hour gusts on both days, which I'm hoping are the winds that are finally bringing Spring to us on a permanent basis.  Albeit, about a month later than normal.

On Sunday, we planted the 6 large sugar maple trees that J. had bought at the auction a couple of weeks ago.  They've been sitting on our trailer since then and we really needed to get them out of the burlap and into the ground before they completely dried out.  Actually, it turned into a fun family outing, since J.'s mom, stepdad, brother and niece joined us as well.  We could not have done it without them, so this is a BIG public THANK YOU to all of them for all their help and hard work.

My new maple-lined driveway!

Along for the ride was the J.'s new brother, who he says is "furrier and cuter than my other brother".  Ah, brotherly love!  The comment might make more sense if I told you that the new addition is a cute-as-a-button Great Pyrenees puppy named Deuce Wellington.  He's only 9 weeks old and already knows how to shake hands.  Smart and cute! My phone battery was dead so I have no cuteness to show you.

We were tired puppies on Sunday!

These trees are somewhere around 12 to 15 feet tall (the one on the left is 1 of the 2 larger Green Mountain sugar maples and the other 4 are Fall Fiesta.)  There was no maneuvering these trees by hand, so we used the JD 5103's loader to get them off and take them to where we were planting them.  Then it took the 3 guys to maneuver them off and into the hole.   The Dingo and its posthole digger attachment made digging much easier.  J. said it was like "making meringue".  I guess...if you made meringue with large, heavy machinery.  LOL.  But 4 of us with shovels made short work of getting the holes dug once the ground was broken up.  The biggest holes had to be 4 feet wide by 33" deep and the smaller ones weren't much smaller.

Suffice it to say that we all collapsed in a heap once we made it home Sunday night.

Yesterday, we had the guys from Eli's Tree Service out to cut down the limbs on our neighbor's huge oak trees that are overhanging where our solar array is going.  Wouldn't want those falling on the solar panels! 

At one point, this guy was swinging around by his rope.  No way I'd get up there!

And we've got that big tree in the back that dropped a huge limb several months ago.  I'm pretty sure it's almost dead, so we're having them remove it for us.  They're also taking out 4 other smaller trees in the back of the property also.  Those are up in the power lines and leaning every which way, so I'd rather the professionals get them with the bucket truck.

Here it is all nicely packed onto their truck.  Overloaded on the truck, that is.  They actually broke one of their leaf springs because of the weight.

All of this was the first step in clearing space for the solar panels.  With the trees taken care of, now we have to move the chicken coop and transplant the 3 apple trees that we planted last year.

By the way, I think this puts our tree karma up by 5 points, since we took down 4 dead trees and 1 half-dead one, and planted 6 new ones.  And the mulch from our trees went across the street to Christine and Dave @ TheDeadlyNightshade so they can use it to line their garden paths.

What was everybody else up to this weekend?

I've shared this post with this week's Homestead Barn Hop. If you got here from there, welcome!  If you haven't been there, what are you waiting for?  Go check it out!