Country view: Acreage blunders

When moving to our 22-acre farm in New Hampshire, I thought we had all the land we ever needed. But it's the type of land that is important. Our land consists of mostly white pine. We raise Romney sheep, which require lots of grass for grazing, so we have carved out 3 acres for that.

We received several estimates to clear the land. The first logger wanted $5,000. The next logger would take any trees we didn't want for $500. The third logger paid us $3,000 for the white pine. We then hired an excavator to stump and level the land for $7,000. Next, we hired a farmer with a tractor to fertilize and seed the property. Finally, we set posts and fenced the pasture.

If we had it to do over again, we would buy property with easily reclaimable fields. It is too costly to clear acreage, which limits us to a smaller flock than we wanted.

Ellen Allwood, Dunbarton, New Hampshire

Growing trees

Newly married and anxious to leave the apartment life of Ft. Lauderdale, my husband and I bought 40 acres in my rural hometown in northwest Florida.

Wanting to establish a pecan grove, we researched the varieties of trees to plant and ordered 16 from a nursery. Hand-digging the holes, which were about 4 feet deep and 4 feet wide, we spent an entire weekend and every night after work that week planting the trees. We also planted several fruit trees at this time. Since the property had no well, we bought 10 5- to 7-gallon containers, filled them with water, and hauled them to the property to water the trees.

Summer came and grass and weeds began to overtake the little trees. We tied flags on the trees to mark them, but the sun faded them out, and we managed to mow down a couple of them with the tractor. Deer broke a few of the remaining trees. Today, only one pecan tree stands in the field. None of the fruit trees made it through the first year. Later, we decided to plant several acres of watermelons, mostly by hand. However, drought caused not one of the watermelons to produce.

Nikole Bethea, Marianna, Florida