Wabi Sabi Woman: Instant Orchard

This is a real tractor. It is huge. At 8am on Saturday, Mike Fuller and his crew of five arrived, quickly loaded all the Cresthaven peaches onto our trailer, hooked to a four wheeler, then disappeared behind the barn, making a beeline to the far north eastern corner of the field to begin. I jumped on the four wheeler and followed them with the trees and the break-neck pace began.

In this photo, what you see are men loading trees onto a sort of rack behind the tractor. They are about to take off, planting about 60 trees in less than five minutes.

This is the tree planter implement. An implement is anything you attach to a tractor. This is essentially a huge ditcher that sinks into the dirt like its soft snow. There is a seat on top of the ditcher, (the silver metal by the tan boot) where a guy is sitting backwards, being handed trees. He sticks a tree into the ground and lets go, and as the tractor continues at its steady pace, the tree slides between the tires, which pull the dirt back around the tree and when the planted tree is as far as the flag at the end of the white pole you can barely see sticking out between the tires, he knows its time to stick another tree into the dirt and let go. There is a man handing him trees, a man grabbing the tree as it goes between the tires that push the dirt around it, straightening the tree and another man stomping dirt around the tree and moving on to the next tree. This all happens so fast, its unbelievable.

Instant orchard.

They planted 1,619 trees in under three hours. That's about 1 tree every 6.67 seconds, counting the time bringing the men and tractor back up to the North end of the field to begin again, sometimes having to wait for me to bring trees and a problem with mis-labeled trees. Really, they planted 1 tree every three seconds.

Since the Fuller work crew are obviously professionals, it left us time for picture posing. Friends showed up with work gloves and cameras to join in the hoo ha and enjoy the action. It was a wonderful time.

Here are Cecilia and our friend Quinn.

Grandpa drove down the rows and pulled ditches on the outside of the trees on both sides after the trees were planted in hopes of watering the trees along either side. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and we should've done this a little differently, but it worked out fine for now.

The last tree was planted before 11am. Thanks, hard working men.

We got the water running about 2:00 and then the real work began.

But there was still time for posing with Dad. Thanks Dad! You're the farmer man!

Here are our big, beautiful trees. The trees we ordered were 5/8" trees, but we received bigger trees. The roots looked great. In a few weeks, we'll lop them off about where we'll want the trunk to stop and the limbs to begin . . . almost in half! But first we'll tour some other orchards and decide where we want to make our cuts. Luckily, there is an abundance of experienced farmers and established orchards in this area.

I can't believe we've only been at this place for two years! Almost two years to the day!

All afternoon Saturday, we fought the water to go in the West ditch, where we wanted it to to. For an hour on Sunday morning, with shovels, we continued to fight the water . . . until Layne and Marion Brown showed up, to save the day. The took two rakes out of their car and told us to put down our shovels. "You're fighting the water. You have to work with the water. It don't matter if the water goes down the right or left or middle, you're not trying to establish roots out here right now, you're just trying to get water to these trees." Said a wise old farmer. And so we began our irrigation work with rakes. And thank goodness! It was a WORLD easier than fighting the water with shovels. Just move a little dirt here or there with your rake, so the water flows . . . so easy, a three year-old could do it.