The avenue ...

Our first two days in the Huon have been mist covered and chilly, but our spirits have been high. We were particularly keen to see how Pepper reacted to being back on the farm and whether or not she remembered the place where she had spent 6 months growing up last year. It was pretty amazing. One of the little rituals we developed last year was for her to carry my one of my gloves to the shed first thing in the morning. Sure enough, as soon as I walked outside on the morning after our arrival she bounded up and started leaping at my glove and then trotted off proudly carrying her cargo. But best of all was when we walked the boundary, and she was finally free to run unchecked. Collies are born to run, and Pepper is no exception. She is slight and fine boned, but she is awesome to watch in full flight.  It was not surprising that by nightfall she found her sheepskin rather inviting.

A subtropical puppy in the southern-most municipality in Australia

This morning we planted our avenue of claret ash trees. We were amazed at how big the bare-rooted trees where when we picked them up from the nursery. It certainly looks like a good way to buy trees as similar sized ones go for 10 times as much when sold in containers. 

A bare-rooted claret ash

We have a track/road that runs along the fence line along our eastern boundary, facing the river, and leads down a hill to the northern paddocks. At the beginning of the year we had our new boundary fence put up as a first line of defence against marauders, and we picked out this boundary as a great place for an avenue of show trees. We marked out positions for 5 trees about 10 metres apart and this morning, closely watched by a friendly herd of Dexter cows we planted the trees. (Dexters originated in Ireland but soon found their way to England. They are the smallest of European cattle breeds and their size made them useful for transportation to the colonies.)

The Dexters

We planted the trees in a rich mixture of soil and horse manure and covered the mounds in leaf mulch which we nabbed from our local poplar trees. They look great (even though they are dormant!) and we cant wait to see how they develop over the coming year. 

The Avenue

We also managed to pick up our 16 bare-rooted apple and pear trees for the domestic orchard from the supplier. After the enormous claret ash trees, we were surprised to find that these fruit trees were really nothing more than twigs!  Anyway, tomorrow is another major day – we get to plant our orchard.