Seedlings Now; Towering Trees Some Day

One day last month District Forester Ben Lyle from the Kentucky Division of Forestry spent the better part of an afternoon tromping around Farm Dover dispensing all sorts of useful information to Bobby (our next-door-neighbor), Ed, and me.

Ben was here to create a customized forest stewardship plan based on our goals and objectives for our property – free of charge! He showed up at noon. I fed him a bowl of chili and then off we went for a three-hour tour...a three-hour tour. He identified trees on our property, talked to us about which trees we could add that would flourish on our farm, gave us advice about ways to improve wildlife habitat, and told us about seedlings available from his division.

The next morning, I called his office and ordered sixty trees. Well, "trees" may be a bit of an exaggeration. Someday they will be trees. Today they are seedlings, 12- to 24-inches in height. Many of the variety we wanted were already sold out. No pawpaws or pecans. No dogwoods or redbuds. No coffeetrees or chestnuts. No willow oaks or river birch. I'll try again in the fall.

Instead, priced very reasonably, I ordered 10 bald cypress, 10 hazelnut, 10 white oak, 10 yellow poplar, 10 bur oak and 10 mulberry seedlings. They arrived on our doorstep this week and so this afternoon, Ed and I headed out with fence post diggers to plant the trees. Because the seedlings are not very big, we tied a bright orange ribbon to the top of each one so that we won't run over them with the mower.

Just think, the 18-inch bald cypress seedlings that we planted today on the far bank of our pond may grow to more than 80 feet and may live for more than 1000 years. So the work we did this afternoon may provide shade for an afternoon of fishing for our great, great, great+ grandchildren. Fun to think about....