📖 🇺🇸 🏡 Remembering and rebuilding first shelterbelts

Trees have been planted by nature and humans on the Plains region since ancient times, making the region more livable for man and beast. While the Prairie States Forestry Project of Roosevelt’s New Deal administered the planting of almost a quarter-million acres of windbreaks over an eight-year period, many of these shelterbelts have been removed over time. That said, a fair amount of these historic shelterbelts remain across the prairie states, still providing good service to landowners.

This was not necessarily an original idea. European settlers on the Plains brought their tree-planting methods with them to their new homesteads after the Civil War. For instance, as early as 1885, a tree-planting project took place at South Dakota State University at Brookings, where students planted trees for shelterbelts on the campus during their spring term.

https://www.farmprogress.com/conservation-and-sustainability/remembering-and-rebuilding-first-shelterbelts

📖 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 Combat in Normandy’s Hedgerows

🏡 Norman farmers, centuries prior, enclosed their fields with hedgerows to delineate property lines, slow land erosion from English Channel winds, and corral livestock. Hedgerows were composed of solid mounds of earth resembling parapets that surrounded individual land plots and were between three and 12 feet high and one and four feet thick. Growing on top were vines, brush, small trees, thorns, and brambles, which intertwined and grew into solid barriers, extending the height in some cases to 15 feet.

🛡 The fields had different shapes, but on average were 400 yards long and 200 yards wide, giving the layout across northwestern France an asymmetrical appearance. Entrances to the fields were accessible via sunken lanes used for farm equipment and livestock. These were connected to other hedgerow fields and led to farmers’ houses, wagon trails, and roads. The terrain astounded soldiers because tanks could neither penetrate nor roll over hedgerows.

📎 History Network