Another winter; tree permanence

It’s been an odd season here on the farm — I spent much of the last few months holed up in our basement workshop with our old wood stove fired up, working on one project or another, and waiting for “real” winter to come. And now, here I am, sitting down to write this update, with the greenhouse already crowded with 2020’s seedlings! 

With no real snow pack and lots of dreary rainy days, we have definitely had our challenges this winter…. from getting our tractor stuck axle-deep in the swamp (thank goodness for logging winches) to a much trickier pond excavation back in December (thank goodness for our highly skilled excavator operator, Robbin). Still, amidst the seemingly never-ending activity, the past season has not been without moments of reflection and visioning for the farm.

Robbin (of RB Excavating) digging our second (bigger) pond back in December. We were fortunate to get 'normal' cold weather for as long as we did. No sooner had he finished digging, a major rain event filled the entire pond and overtopped the berm!
A typical view of our first (smaller) pond this winter.

Apart from the vegetable garden, we continue to work toward building long-term resilience on the farm… Just last week, we ordered more than 1000 tree seedlings from a nearby nursery to be planted this spring for various purposes — windbreaks, soil retention, the beginnings of an agroforestry site, a future coppicing stand (more on all these projects later…).

If I think too hard about it, tree-planting (or planning for it) puts me in a strange head-space. There’s a certain amount of gravity that comes with placing something in the ground that could still be flourishing there decades later. Trees have such enormous and long-lasting impact on the landscape around them, and holding that potential of beautiful power in my hands seems to demand an equivalent measure of consideration and attentiveness. It feels grand to engage with a being that is so much larger — not just in physical size, but also in time. I treasure the chance to stretch into an entirely different scale of permanence, one that far exceeds my little bitty human life.

All this makes me wonder at the other choices I make day-to-day — made in the spirit of impermanence, or at most, made only with my lifespan in mind. And yet, my casual choices and actions reverberate on this earth far longer than I want to admit — should I not give them the same consideration and attentiveness? So, when I plant trees, it seems only fair that I let a bit of them twine back into my life, stretching and lengthening my view…

(And if I look a bit twiggy by the beginning of market, you’ll know why.) 

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