Planting Chestnut Trees

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With Spring well underway, it was time this week to begin some serious planting.

Our first effort is Chestnut. In North America, the Chestnut tree was virtually wiped out by a fungal disease. However new hybrids have been created from Chinese Chestnut trees that are blight resistant.

When buying the farm, having a few Chestnut trees was a "must" for the family. We love Chestnuts, and not just roasted, but in baked goods, as part of a vegetable side dish, or even candied ("marron glace"). It is a very versatile food (in Corsica - where we have relatives - they make Chestnut flour, Chestnut pasta and even Chestnut beer). In fact our entire Christmas dinner is based on it: Chestnut cake, Goose with Chestnut stuffing, Roasted Root Vegetables with Chestnuts and braised Brussel Sprouts with Chestnuts! Most years, we are often been disappointed with the quality of the imported Chestnuts available at our local grocery store (often dry, attacked by worms, and to add insult to injury, expensive).

Needless to say, Chestnuts were a necessity. So this week, Tristan and I picked up 10 trees from a local (Niagara-on-the-Lake) nursery specializing in nut trees: Grimo.

Chinese Chestnut Hybrid

The problem with these trees is that they do require quite a bit a space (40 feet between trees) and need to cross-pollinate. As a result, we decided to set aside an odd shaped piece of land (somewhat triangular) just for this purpose. We had cleared it last year and it turns out to fit 10 trees quite well. This land slopes to the creek crossing the farm and is wet in some places, but we hope the trees will draw much of this dampness. Before clearing, it was already over run by bush and rather large trees including a couple of Black Walnuts.

The first step was to lay out the spacing and the location of the trees. We did this with a measuring wheel and some metal posts. This gave us a sense of the miniature Chestnut "forest" we were about to create.

Laying out the location of our new trees

Using a shovel and our trusted Stihl auger, we proceeded to dig our planting holes.

We combined the soil we dug up with peat moss and bone meal prior to refilling the holes with our tree roots. Given the fact that we face some rather strong southerlies from Lake Erie, we decided to tie the trunks of these small trees to metal posts installed on their south facing side (to ensure they do not lean with the winds).

Pounding a support post for our new Chestnut trees

We did this under rather difficult (grey, wet and very windy conditions) and we ended the week with a rather brutal frost. However, the trees look to be in good shape and we can hardly wait to see them grow (I have to admit, there is something very fulfilling about planting a tree). We were told that Chestnut do produce rather fast and that our trees may fruit within a year! It's hard to believe, but it would be great to see our own Chestnuts for Chistmas 2014.

Elsewhere on the farm, we felt like we were starting from where we had begun: it was time to prune the raspberries. I say this because when we committed to buy the farm, I had asked the farmer at the time to use Tristan and teach him a few things before we took possession. Tristan's first task at the farm was the pruning of the raspberries last Spring and here we were at it again.

Back where we started, pruning Raspberries

Having weeded the raspberries last fall, the job proved to be extremely easy to accomplish. We were done within a day (last year it had taken days to go through the process).

We also took this time to prune back the blackberries. We had weeded them and had cut them back last fall, but we were still unsure of the pruning. We decided to be somewhat aggressive since these stalks had reached incredible heights.

We also took the time to finally "seal" our drainage tile. Even though we have had some wet weather, the land is decidedly drier and easier to work. Tristan is now finishing off the surface by leveling it using a tractor-pulled blade (he calls it "zamboning"). Once this is done we hope to seed it to fix some Nitrogen back into the soil.

Tristan's "Zamboni" work

Meanwhile our budding vegetable garden is starting to overtake our handling capacity. I think I may have been overzealous when we started our miniature nursery. All our plants have had to be re-potted; we are really scrounging for containers; and, we are running out of space. Since we are not ready for planting yet (the last frost is still not upon us), we have had to take the plants outdoors in the day time and store them in a heated portion of the barn at night.

The "mini nursery" is overflowing

Keen as ever though, we decided to begin to use the space available on our lighted shelving for new seeds. We've planted more!  This time we've added new varieties of heirloom. non-GMO vegetables to the long list already in production. The way we look at it, if we over produce, we'll be more than happy to sell these in our new country market....and of course we can still develop our canning skills.

Our next batch of seedlings is on its way

This means we also had to start preparing the raised beds. Last year we only used three; we were late in being able to plant anything. This year we expect to use another six, plus some space next to our Beaver pond.

The raised beds were all constructed last year, so it was now just a matter of adding some fertilizer (sheep manure) and a bit more top soil.

Preparing the raised beds

On the renovation front, a lot of our attention has shifted to the barn. With the Tea Room and Country Market set to open in June, a lot of work has been done to re-equip our restaurant kitchen, furnish the store and finish the barn exterior.

The exterior of the barn is almost completed

The new store is coming together

Finally, we continue to process Birch syrup. I will end with one word of caution: do not leave a teenager in charge of supervising evaporation. The end result can be disastrous (I never thought you could actually melt a pot!).

There goes a great 40 liter pot