The handwriting is on the wall, written in ominous reports from the poles of sea ice melting and in our own experience not getting nearly enough chilling hours for our fruit trees. We humans are heating up our little planet at a scary pace while the mainstream media feed us a steady diet of “climate change debate” and “be happy, keep shopping” poppycock. We know better: we know we’d better get ready for a hotter planet. We talked in December about how we have changed and will be changing the way we grow fruits and vegetables. Today we deal with how to prepare the forest that covers most of our farm. We anticipate not only a change in the climate but also having to find ways to live with much less energy, specifically less petroleum.

Listen – 21:20

This post describes our planting of longleaf pines and includes a quick little video showing us doing it.

Here's Amanda planting a longleaf back in March of 2009. We plant about 300 trees each year.

We're sitting together with Sad Longleaf, the mascot of Longleaf Breeze. The forest is gone now, replaced by the orchard, but Sad Longleaf still presides over it.

This is the adolescent longleaf just southwest of the lodge.

General Links:

The Longleaf Breeze Planting Database

Join us at the (online) Longleaf Breeze Social