Trees for Farms field day

GLENRAC hosted a Tree’s for Farm field day last Thursday; wet weather forced a last minute change of venue from ‘Ker Even’ to the Show Grounds Tea Rooms.  Despite the wet weather the event attracted 25 interested land managers to hear from our guest speakers Shane Andrews, Armidale; Chris Eveleigh, Kentucky and Troy Dawson, Glen Industries.

The aim of the event was to provide information for those land managers interested in planting trees of farms this year or in the future. Our guest speaker’s provided high quality information that could be implemented straight away for those planting in 2012 or to consider for future planting planning activities.

Shane Andrews, a farm forestry consultant from Armidale gave a comprehensive presentation on the economic benefits of shelter belt plantings, encompassing production benefits in the form of improved livestock production, reduced lambing mortality and improved pasture growth.

Chris Eveleigh operates the Kentucky Tree Nursery at Kentucky south of Uralla. This nursery supplies many of the seedlings required for GLENRAC plantings when we have funding available for this purpose. Chris discussed factors to consider when planning a tree planting, including indentifying what already grows well on your property and what species have done well in past plantings, on your farm or neighbours.

Troy Dawson from Glen Industries gave some tips on site preparation and post planting care of seedlings. Glen Industries will again be planting seedlings for the current GLENRAC project funded by the Australian Governments Caring for Our Country program. 10,000 seedlings will be planted on 21 farms in the next two months.

The field day finished with a panel discussion of the three speakers and generated a large number of questions from the audience.  All our speakers emphasised the need for well planned and executed site preparation and post planting care of seedlings to ensure maximum survival of seedlings in any season.