The Pond

Tony, Thea, Anna, and Andrew

Dorothy organized a work day today at the farm. If you haven’t heard about the farm, then you should know that, although we call it that, it’s probably not what you are picturing. My parents bought the property almost 59 years ago and it had been part of a working farm, with five fields. Since them, however, although we’ve continued to call it the farm, it’s never really been one. Three of the fields have entirely grown up with trees. Two of them are filled with trees specifically planted by my parents, including Japanese larch, white pine, and Norway spruce. One field was my dad’s ‘orchard’ and even that title may be misleading. In this part of the country there are orchards all around. But those have rows upon rows of trees. Dad’s orchard had a little of everything, with half a dozen apple trees, a few peaches, plums, pears, and various other fruit trees and shrubs. He also planted nut trees, including Turkish and American hazelnuts (Corylus colurna and C. americana, Persian walnut (Juglans regia), and Chestnuts (both Chinese, Castanea mollissima and hybrid Chinese and American, Castanea dentata). Since dad’s passing, the orchard has become significantly overgrown. The final field, which we usually call the picnic field, is still mostly clear but dad planted specimen trees of various sorts.

Today’s work day was focused mostly on clearing the orchard and we made a really good start. There were ‘weed trees’ four or five inches in diameter that needed to be cut down, along with lots of vines, multiflora roses, and Elaeagnus. We did our best to cut back the hardy kiwi (Actinidia arguta), keeping much of it but not wanting it growing up into other trees. While this was going on, we had a tree guy cutting a few larger trees, including one large maple tree that was leaning over the cabin.

The first picture here is of the pond with the cabin in the background. The second is four of the 36 or so people we had working here today.