I started on my orchard :)

[iowaorganic]

Yesterday I woke up with tons of crazy ambition and planted 5 trees in my new orchard!  2 apple, 2 pears, and 1 peach tree!  I need to do some more grubbing- but then in April I am going to plant raspberries, blackberries, and grapes.  I am very excited :)  I am trying to do this all in steps so I don't get overwhelmed- but DH was rather impressed that I not only picked them out, bought them and brought them home- but I also had them all planted, mulched and watered by the time he got home from work!  I also love my orchard spot so much that I think I am going to put pumpkins and watermelons and cukes out there too and that will leave a lot more space in my garden.  Oh and strawberries too!  I am going to put those in my orchard too!  Which btw is conveniently located close to a hydrant- didn't even think about that when I chose the spot!  

my orchard is the second step in my average renovation plan- which is kind of a 5 year plan......

[AnkaJones]

Awesome!  I'm looking forward to the day when I can plant some trees. It's so uplifting to hear you're getting to do it.

[Chicky2]

We are planting an orchard, too!  We have 2 8 year old peach trees already, and an apricot tree we never bought a mate for, until recently.  We just go it planted.  Looking for plum trees (will get sand plum trees dug up for free soon and planted in another, more wild, area), and have kefir pear seeds to get started.  Looking for some sort of apples that will grow ok here.

[FarmerBeth]

Great fun.  I'm planting cherry trees and gooseberries this year (already have lots of raspberries and blackberries).

[grahamsmom98]

What do you mean by a hydrant? 

[iowaorganic]

A water hydrant?  You know- what you hook a hose onto?  My orchard is by my cattle pasture which I forgot has a hydrant on the outside...  We have probably 6 on our average :)  I just forget about the ones I don't use all the time for calves.

[OceansEve]

lol Around here we call them water spikets. We just moved to our place and we keep finding them everywhere, I think we're up to 5 now? We got our first tree in the ground last night, think I over watered it, hope I didn't kill it. Have another 8 to plant this weekend. I'm already tired just thinking about it. Think you'll stick to your five year plan? We had a 3 year plan.... trees were supposed to be next year.... I'm not good at following plans :p

[iowaorganic]

Well.  I don't know about if it will really take 5 years- it is kind of an in-depth plan that involves reseeding most of our Acerage into pasture and then installing permanent paddocks...  The last one we did cost a couple of thousand for the fencing- but it is now ready for western calves-so very strong and definite overkill if all I am keeping is dairy cows...  I would also like to renovate our barns- and that will cost a good fortune :/  This year my barn plan is just to get some sort of parlor fixed up with a raised stanchion... that would rock my world right now.... Being pregnant and milking is just sooo hard at this point.  

[OceansEve]

I knew your name looked familiar, we were in the same ddc for a little while under my other name on here. We were pricing fence for our whole 5 acres, for us to do it ourselves will be around 5K, maybe next year, this year's big ticket item was a tractor. We have two barns both of which are falling apart, one is both storage and chicken coop at the moment, the other just needs to be torn down eventually. Too bad the one that needs to be torn down is huge and probably looked wonderful when it was taken care of, but someone stuck a bunch of garage doors on to these odd additions to it and now the whole thing is falling apart. They also didn't put any protection down for the roofing so it's rotting and falling apart too.