Here are some pictures I took a while back but never got a chance to post. This is the miserable looking row of trees that is right on the edge of where I wanted to put the orchard. Most of the trees were dead or almost dead so I decided to remove them. So this,Plus this-
Equals this! It took about 10 minutes with the Cat to push all but the three best trees out and into a burn pile. I Left the three trees because I wanted a marker and they were in the right spots, I expect I'll push them out in a couple of years once the apple trees are a little bigger. As I expand the orchard I'll need the room anyway.
This is a poor picture of half of the trees on the day I planted them. You can see how I watered them in that first day, so far I haven't needed to water since. I've been mulching trees every chance I get and so far I have more than half of the orchard mulched. I'm slow because I just don't like raking chopped grass in the rain!

The last time I posted I wrote about rain and it hasn't really stopped raining since! I guess there was a small belt of extra rainfall right here where I live so while the surrounding areas got between 4 and 5 inches total in the past two weeks we got over 8 inches here. The differentiatioon between mud and flowing water is becoming hazy since almost everything is flowing one direction or another, one neighbor told me it hasn't rained this much since Noah built the ark but I think he is exaggerating a little bit. Of course this is the time that my rubber boots have given out and the holes let in enough water that I would probably be better off going barefoot. One huge blessing for me is that my house and yard is up on a pretty good hill for North Dakota so there is no mud there, and the garden and berry patch is on the side of a nice slope so those are doing fine though the lower end is far too wet for plants to be growing properly. The potatoes are showing a little effect but the 1500 new strawberry plants I put in are doing great, as are the weeds! If I walk out there to pull them I sink in and leave a trail of holes where I stepped so I am letting the weeds go for another day or two in the hopes that things will dry out enough so I won't make a huge mess of things just from weeding out a few thistles. The new orchard I put in is also loving the rain, leaves are bursting out everywhere and the grass is growing like crazy so mowing it was a bit slow yesterday. My driveway is almost hopeless, mud and ruts so deep most people won't even attempt a trip in, which in most cases is exactly what I prefer! For some reason people like to come over just to gawk like turkeys at everything I am doing and I feel like telling them to go find a petting zoo somewhere else. Unfortunately the mud and ruts aren't selective in chasing people away so the people that I like to have visit don't come either! Last week the Henderson's went by and needed to pick some things up at my place but after a look at the driveway decided that their big 4x4 Excursion might get stuck so they went to Kyle's place instead. I can't get out with the pickup or truck but I can get out with the Mercedes, which is probably quite a sight with the water and mud flying everywhere. One day I had a pile of mud push up in front of the bumper as I was coming in and eventually that stopped the car so I had to shovel that away before I could get going again. It wouldn't be muddy at all except that I had just rototilled the entire driveway to about 8 inches deep with the 6 foot tractor mounted tiller in order to get rid of the old potholes and grass. It worked great and I had a nice, smooth and firm driveway for about a week. Now I have a lot of work to do with the drag and grader blade in order to fix up the latest mess.

The newest addition to the farm is a couple of pigs that are very happily eating up all kinds of waste and rubbish that I otherwise would have had to compost, they are also loving the weeds and it looks like they will do a great job of rooting out bothersome weed patches like thistles. I got them from the Henderson's on Thursday and they didn't make half the mess I thought they would in the car. They are about 40-50 pounds each but they fit nicely in the spare tire well in the trunk, which has a drain so I was able to wash it out when they were finally home. I guess it is rather unusual to be hauling pigs in a Mercedes but no matter what I do with it I don't think I'll be able to compete with the Bartlett's in the unusual auto uses category. Plowing with their van absolutely wins first prize in my opinion!

I was going to write about some of my energy ideas but I think I'll wait to do that until they are more of a reality and less of an idea.