Tree Planting

Tree Planting Update

Heavenhi everyone!

Our big spring tree planting was a huge success! Six of our community members came from Charlottesville to help out, and we had about 10 workers on both Saturday and Sunday.

This tree planting was a very important one; we have been gearing up for it for a year and a half, when we bought some very special hazelnut and chestnut seeds. Our goal with our silvopasture is to produce a lot of food, to bring us closer to our goal of being fully self-sustaining. These hazelnuts and chestnuts have special genetics that will cause them to produce more nuts, as well as being blight-resistant.

We stratified these seeds in fall 2023, and planted them in air prune raised beds in spring 2024. We transferred them to our nursery in fall 2024, and planted almost all of them last weekend.

In total, we planted 87 chestnuts and 274 hazelnuts, as well as 25 elderberries, for a grand total of 386 trees! That’s about 39 per helper. We also were able to protect all of our chestnuts with our white plastic tree tubes.

Thank you for reading, and thank you so much to everyone that came out and helped. It really meant the world to us.

Namaste’