How many men does it take to plant a tree?

Walking today: 3.8km

I've written before about the Amenagement Fonciere - the land re-organisation in the commune that aims to deal with the consequences of the Napoleonic succession laws - and the full report and proposals were published nearly three years ago. As well as reorganising land parcels (we bought a chaotic bundle of ten separate plots in 2009 including three that split the house and barn between different plots) it also allowed land owners to remove certain hedges and talus to make field sizes more logical and specified new voies rurales and new talus to be planted and created at the cost of the commune.

Understandably the farmers enthusiastically pulled down the hedgerows as soon as they were allowed to, the rural roads were installed by contractors last summer and the new planting was scheduled for last autumn.

We knew that a new talus was specified to be planted along the small stream line that runs across Dominique's field at the bottom of our land, the stream is about 30 metres from our boundary. A couple of weeks ago the contractors came to see me to check on access to the field, I re-directed them towards Dominique and a couple of days later a mini digger arrived and proceeded to dig a series of holes along the stream line - this took all day.

Then last week Dominique came to see me to say that the contractor had found it was difficult to plant in the specified position (unsurprisingly it seems the holes had filled up with water) and wanted to know if we would object if the planting was moved up to our boundary. Well yes, actually we would, the open view to the south across three fields was one of the things that attracted us to La Basse Cour and really we'd prefer it if the new planting wasn't done at all.

Yesterday I was working in the garden when I noticed a group of people in wellingtons peering into the holes. There were seven of them and I found Dominique afterwards to find out what had been going on. The men (they were all men) were the contractor, his foreman, the géometre who had managed the Amenagement, a representative from the water company, three members of the local council and Dominique - eight people.

Dominique said that they had realised that the planting was in a zone humide (a river catchment area for the lake where the local water supply is drawn from). How that was overlooked for 3 years after the plan was published I don't know, Dominique said it didn't prevent the planting but made it much more difficult and that alternative positions on his land, or maybe no talus at all had been discussed. I've partly modelled my developing Gallic shrug on Dominique's - the one he gave when I asked when the work would be done showed me how much more work I still have to do ;o)

So, how many men to plant a tree? Eight, but of course as we are in France the tree may not get planted at all.