{"id":3512425,"date":"2025-04-24T11:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T11:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3512425"},"modified":"2025-04-24T11:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T11:13:09","slug":"letter-from-the-farm-all-in-a-days-tree-planting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-04-24\/letter-from-the-farm-all-in-a-days-tree-planting\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter From The Farm | All In A Day\u2019s Tree Planting"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re back with Martino Newcombe in the West of Ireland, where he reflects on a winter\u2019s day of planting a shelter belt of native tree species. Not on his farm, but on that of his neighbour, a retired farmer, with the help of another neighbour \u2013 echoing the traditional Irish practice of helping each other out that is known as \u201cmeitheal\u201d. On this particular day it\u2019s an act of coming together in community that nurtures the ecosystem of people as well as biodiversity. As a wildlife corridor connects flora and fauna, local networks of knowledge and skills spawn opportunities to build resilience. Martino shares the insights of a day\u2019s work.<\/em><\/p>\n

One Sunday morning last winter a neighbour and myself dragged bags containing a variety of young native trees to a barbed wire fence line, intending to plant four hundred of them for a shelter belt before dinner time. This was for an elderly retired farmer who loves to feed the small birds around her home knowing any extra cover would increase shelter and food for them, and shelter for livestock too.<\/p>\n

No favour, merely doing her a turn as she does us, always ready with advice on local resources such as the nature of particular spring wells \u2013 one is good for making tea, another for ensuring vigour in cattle \u2013 and as importantly the techniques that were used to \u2018sweeten\u2019 the wells to keep the water potable \u2013 invaluable local knowledge not written down in any book. Spring wells are places where underground freshwater naturally rises to the surface.<\/p>\n

Good company<\/h3>\n

We walked through mist to reach the fence line, a still morning with only curlew calls piercing the quiet, good planting weather. Four hundred trees sounds a lot \u2013 is a lot \u2013 if you go at it by yourself, but in good company the bags empty before you know it.<\/p>\n

Myself and the other lad hadn\u2019t worked together in a long time so talk turned to all we had been doing in the intervening years. Woods knocked and started, sheds, stables and bridges built, ponds and streams dug and the occasional reverent moment that being outdoors in all weathers brings, from stepping into an untouched valley in the\u00a0Burren<\/a>\u00a0or meeting a stoat while eating lunch by a hedge on the Sky Road.<\/p>\n

Savoured fleeting moments that offset winter\u2019s biting cold and summer\u2019s biting insects.\u00a0Something is always eating something else, everything is connected \u2013 ecology.<\/strong>\u00a0We mostly work in Connacht, a wet and windswept region in the west of Ireland, whose mountains, islands and plains still retain much of their ancient wildness, so natural wonders are never far away.<\/p>\n

One bag empty.<\/p>\n

The weather here can be harsher here than drier snow-covered climates due to winds driving rain hard in from the Atlantic which does benefit crop growers by blowing away insect pests but those winds also drive heat from the body very quickly \u2013 with livestock as with people. To keep body temperature up more food needs to be consumed than if they had shelter. Long before housing was used to keep livestock alive in harsh weather beasts were sheltered under trees or behind hedges, considered healthier kept out under\u00a0\u2018God\u2019s roof\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0in the words of older people.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Turlough<\/em><\/p>\n

Wildlife corridor<\/h3>\n

As the mist lifted we had a clearer view of nearby wide \u2018callows\u2019 which are seasonally flooded grasslands found on low-lying river floodplains. Callows where I mentioned I had seen a little egret perched on a dead tree by the river some winters past \u2013 until I saw one, I didn\u2019t realise they even existed in Ireland.<\/p>\n

Talk of little known wildlife reminded the other lad about his previous night\u2019s discovery when he had been looking at a map of the area. He realised that this one tree line we were planting was linking up existing hedge and tree lines on neighbouring gardens and farms\u00a0creating a wildlife corridor over three miles long<\/strong>. It began south of us high on a hill on an old abandoned road closed in with uncut (relict) whitethorn running through cattle pasture before dropping down to a furze covered callow, through copses of blackthorn across into more relict whitethorn to this new line of alder and Scots pine. These joined young willows running between the wide callows on one side and marshy pasture to a turlough before blending into a line of mature ash, itself bordering pine plantations and woods eventually spreading out into hundreds of acres of bogs.<\/p>\n

A wildlife corridor of\u00a0jays and foxes, buzzards and martens, orchids and kingfishers passing through cattle, sheep and horse pastures<\/strong>\u00a0farmed by people who mill timber, forge iron and work stone (to name a few) and some \u2013 as it turned out \u2013 on our doorstep just fields away, and many as unaware of each other\u2019s work as we were of them \u2013 until we began talking. Practical people, quietly working away improving theirs and others\u2019 self-sufficiency and biodiversity. A lot was going on and a lot was on the move judging by the new yellow deer warning signs appearing on roads near us. We wondered what else was out there, what other skills were out there \u2013 just out of sight, just beyond\u00a0local knowledge branching off in every direction<\/strong>\u00a0from this one strip that includes ponds, streams and rivers.<\/p>\n

When we came back to the job at hand another bag was empty.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Frogs tadpoles and spawn in turlough<\/em><\/p>\n

Fragmented knowledge, scattered skills<\/h3>\n

For all the talk of the internet being an information highway, it seems that practical knowledge is as fragmented and scattered as habitats and landscapes.<\/p>\n

More talk of finding a way to remedy this emptied another bag.<\/p>\n

So came the idea of\u00a0gathering together these skilled people into a network mirroring the network of habitats that a wildlife corridor creates<\/strong>, and linking those practised hands with anyone with a plot of land big or small that wants it cultivated, restored or managed to improve their self-sufficiency and nature value. When orchards needed pruning, bee swarms moved, timber milled for planking \u2013 whatever was needed. A loose network,\u00a0a half dozen or so practised hands with the machinery, tools, skills, experience and just as importantly, a lifetime\u2019s worth of contacts<\/strong>. If we couldn\u2019t do it then at the very least, we would know someone reliable who could.<\/p>\n

All bags empty now \u2013 four hundred new trees in the ground, and the dinner not eaten yet.<\/p>\n

The work is here at your feet<\/h3>\n

And if ever proof was needed of\u00a0what can be achieved by creating a network of practical people<\/strong>\u00a0it was right in front of us in what we had planted \u2013 free trees \u2013 courtesy of a little known charity called\u00a0Trees on the Land<\/a>. One woman\u2019s dream to help reforest Ireland turned into reality by trusting her work to like-minded individuals and groups, leading to the planting of over two million new native trees across the island in a mere decade.<\/p>\n

This winter we were sent another 1800 free trees of various species for more neighbours joining into our wildlife corridor and also more oak to add to a young wood started in Connemara last winter. Early days for us all yet but we reckon we are in good company which according to the old people is half the battle when facing into any laborious field task:<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t look at what\u2019s far off ahead of you,\u201d they say. \u201cThe work is here at your feet \u2013 take heart instead by looking back at all you have already done, and always and ever keep your arse to the wind.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They\u2019re not far wrong. They rarely are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re back with Martino Newcombe in the West of Ireland, where he reflects on a winter\u2019s day of planting a shelter belt of native tree species. Not on his farm, but on that of his neighbour, a retired farmer, with the help of another neighbour \u2013 echoing the traditional Irish practice of helping each other out that is known as \u201cmeitheal\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3512443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79719,213531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512425"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3512444,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512425\/revisions\/3512444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}