I didn’t want to do this!

We transplanted this red oak tree from my ancestral home earlier this year with the hope that it would thrive in its new location on our farm. It has not, however, done as well as I hoped and it’s time for drastic measures. But it’s not all bad, and I’ll tell you why.

To begin, how about the clutch of eggs in this guinea nest? Every night I do a head count on all the birds and sometimes I’ll be missing a guinea fowl or two, but this usually doesn’t raise much of an alarm (I have a few that like to sleep in the goat pasture, which feels very unsafe). If they’re missing for more than a few days, though, I get worried, and after a week or so I assume they’re gone for good. But this missing hen was missing at all, she’s just broody. Hopefully she’ll hatch out a bunch of keets!

When we built our chicken run we had some leftover material and it’s just been sitting on sawhorses in the field by the barn. I had the realization (took me long enough) to hang this little lumber rack I built from 2x4s and conduit and store the lumber there. It’s not really built for outdoor use but it’s better than what we had and the rack was doing me no job on the floor of the shop.

It’s a big shock to a tree when you transplant it from the wild and this tree was not able to overcome that stress. But the tree is still alive, and to help it along I pruned the top of the tree leaving only the offshoots near the base off the trunk. This will allow the tree to put its entire nutrient-gathering framework to work growing those new limbs. It’s a drastic step, but it’s for the best of the tree. This tree is special to me because of where it came from and I’m excited to see where it goes from here.
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