Tony and Brenda
I heard about the Peer Group Mentoring Project from Cath. We’d fairly recently bought a 40 acre block and we were just starting to think about what we’d like to do with it. Cath asked whether we’d be interested in planting trees. We are interested in planting trees but have no experience. The idea of growing trees and even producing timber is of interest. I’m sympathetic to the protest about logging Mowen Forest and so the idea of growing wood on farmland has some appeal.
Cath arranged a visit to our property with Bob, Pete and herself. We had a good walk around; looked at the bare paddock on the south side and also the areas of native bush. We discussed a range of issues and ideas. For example, we talked about the power-lines in the southern paddock and a layout of trees that would avoid them. We talked about thinning the native bush to improve the growth of the better trees.
It led to a discussion about plans for 2016. I don’t want to take on too much. Pete supported me on this point; he’d learnt from bitter experience that it’s easy to plant trees but there’s a lot of work in managing them. I don’t want to get over committed, so we are thinking of starting by planting a belt of trees along our southern boundary. There’s bluegum
on the adjoining land and I imagine they’ll be harvested before long so it would be nice to have some trees as a bit of a screen along there.
Bob told us about contractors for site preparation work, such as ripping and weed control. He also recommended a nursery at Katanning. All this information, plus the main points of the conversation we’d had, was put together into a report. The other aspect of the support we received was visiting some examples of trees in the district. We visited Cath’s place to see her spotted gums and to have a go at pruning. Bob showed us some examples of eucalypts being grown for sawlogs nearby.
The most significant thing to come out of all this for us has been our decision to plant about 200 trees in 2016 – a mix of spotted gum, lemon scented gum and red ironbark. We knew we wanted to plant trees but didn’t know how to go about it. Now we do. We also have the contacts we might need. Bob is helping us with ordering our trees and I feel I could contact Cath if I have questions at any time, which is great. This Project has been very positive for us.
I heard about the Peer Group Mentoring Project from Cath. We’d fairly recently bought a 40 acre block and we were just starting to think about what we’d like to do with it. Cath asked whether we’d be interested in planting trees. We are interested in planting trees but have no experience. The idea of growing trees and even producing timber is of interest. I’m sympathetic to the protest about logging Mowen Forest and so the idea of growing wood on farmland has some appeal.
Cath arranged a visit to our property with Bob, Pete and herself. We had a good walk around; looked at the bare paddock on the south side and also the areas of native bush. We discussed a range of issues and ideas. For example, we talked about the power-lines in the southern paddock and a layout of trees that would avoid them. We talked about thinning the native bush to improve the growth of the better trees.
It led to a discussion about plans for 2016. I don’t want to take on too much. Pete supported me on this point; he’d learnt from bitter experience that it’s easy to plant trees but there’s a lot of work in managing them. I don’t want to get over committed, so we are thinking of starting by planting a belt of trees along our southern boundary. There’s bluegum
on the adjoining land and I imagine they’ll be harvested before long so it would be nice to have some trees as a bit of a screen along there.
Bob told us about contractors for site preparation work, such as ripping and weed control. He also recommended a nursery at Katanning. All this information, plus the main points of the conversation we’d had, was put together into a report. The other aspect of the support we received was visiting some examples of trees in the district. We visited Cath’s place to see her spotted gums and to have a go at pruning. Bob showed us some examples of eucalypts being grown for sawlogs nearby.
The most significant thing to come out of all this for us has been our decision to plant about 200 trees in 2016 – a mix of spotted gum, lemon scented gum and red ironbark. We knew we wanted to plant trees but didn’t know how to go about it. Now we do. We also have the contacts we might need. Bob is helping us with ordering our trees and I feel I could contact Cath if I have questions at any time, which is great. This Project has been very positive for us.