[MassChestnutOrchards] Wrentham Orchard

[Rufin Van Bossuyt]

I went to the Wrentham Orchard today. I replaced one of the three blue bird nesting boxes, refurbished the other two, replaced two of the posts and changed their locations. I placed one of the posts in the inner most row. That is the row in which we have had a lot of mortality and poor growth. In digging with a posthole digger I found that there was only about four inches of top soil and a coarse gravely sandy subsoil below. I placed another post about thirty feet away in the third row. There the top soil was about a foot deep and the subsoil was sandy and free of gravel and stones. Quite a difference in only thirty feet.

A car had recently lost control on the road adjacent to the orchard. There were skid marks on the road,turf was torn up, the car went diagonally between two of the large roadside white pine trees, then sideswiped the large Meadow View F 1 in row one and broke a large branch which I cut free and removed. It then hit another tree which had bark skinned away and was leaning at about a forty-five degree angle. I straitened it the best I could with breaking it. 

Rufin
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