Author: Anna & Mark

My last post about tree alleys
lacked a big-picture photo to help readers understand what I was
talking about, so I figured you were due another post on the
topic.  Plus, Kayla and I did a lot more digging and ended up
putting in a second tree alley, so the design has changed
slightly.  Hopefully the diagram above will help you visualize what
the tree alleys will look like once they’re planted, with the thick
lines being apple trees, with coppiced black locusts sitting between the
fruit trees on the upper swale, and with hazels between the fruit trees
on the lower swale.  The locusts are already in place, and just
need to be cut so they don’t shade the apple trees, but everything else
will be planted in late winter.

Here I’m seeding rye on
the newly-dug swales to hold the soil over the winter.  Cardboard
is marking the tree spots so I don’t accidentally toss seeds there, and
to keep down weeds.  The cattle panels will eventually be about
where they’re at, but standing up instead of lying down, and there will
be another row of fencing on the upper side to close off this tree-alley
swale into its own paddock.

One thing we’ve learned
already from this project is — don’t leave your cattle panels lying on
the ground over the summer!  We thought we were going to build our
fences right away, so we just dropped the panels wherever last spring. 
Half the work involved in last week’s earth-moving consisted of prying
the panels up out of the honeysuckle and moving them to the side so we
could dig.

The other thing we
learned is — dig carefully!  This box turtle had already dug down
into the soil to hibernate, and she came up in a shovelful of
dirt.  Luckily, her hard shell protected her, so no box turtles
were harmed in the creation of this post.



The one problem I foresee
with our tree alleys is that the long, skinny pastures won’t be grazed
evenly.  Hopefully my trick of putting a chicken waterer
at the far end of each pasture will prompt the chickens (and,
eventually, sheep and/or pigs?) to move away from the coop and hit the
far end of each alley.

There’s still a bit of
vegetable garden and several perennials to be put to bed, but I figured I
could play hooky and take another stab at the newest pasture.  Having Joey’s and Kayla’s help really made the work go quickly.

I’ve changed my mind
several times about how this pasture will be designed — it seems that
every book I read prompts me to try something new.  At the moment,
I’m thinking of a swale running right down the middle of the pasture, on
contour, since this area is very dry for our property due to the slope
and is far enough away from our water systems that it’s unlikely to get
irrigated.  A pear and four semi-dwarf apples will fit on the mound
downhill from the swale, with black locusts left at intervals in
between and comfrey stuck in the ground beyond the eventual spread of
the trees’ roots.



What
I haven’t quite decided is fencing.  I’m now thinking of splurging
and turning this tree alley into its own little paddock (well, two
paddocks — one on each side of the coop).  The alley design would
mean we’d eventually have to buy more panels to finish the pasture, but
it would simplify grazing management around the young trees — I could
let in chickens just for a day or two and keep out larger animals entirely if we do get pigs or sheep.

Meanwhile, a tree alley would also make human access much easier.  My previous design of using trellis material to protect baby pasture trees
results in lots of weeds since I tend to ignore the hard-to-get-to
zones.  Most of last year’s persimmons are growing strong despite
the weeds, but I’ll bet they would have been taller with more care.

Tree alleys might mean that I won’t have the cash to completely fence
this pasture for another year, but that would probably make Mark
happy.  He’s willing to let me get a new kind of livestock if I
really want to, but I can tell he wouldn’t mind waiting indefinitely for
that day to come.  I’m impatient, but like the idea of building a
complicated system that will be simple to maintain, even if it means the
project takes a little longer.