A farm in 70 years.

I moved with my parents to this farm dad owned when I was a baby. We kind of grew together. I have some memories when little, but more are what mom and dad told me. For some odd reason, I have no memories until I was 6 and started school in one of the last one room schools. Even then memories are scant. Bits here and there. I talk to others and they remember lots even to toddler ages.
I look at photos taken of the farm and that is how I see the changes.
When we moved here, this was a new house on the hill in the barren cow pasture. All the rest of the compound was down the hill past the barn. The only trees standing here were the old apple orchard and four big oak trees. Mom said they were going to name the farm Four Oaks.
Now there are 3 rotted stumps and one tree hanging on as hollow as I think my head is sometimes. But, too make up for it, those 4 seeded 20 million acorns over the decades. Now I walk around the yard and yank sprouted oaks everywhere. Do the squirrels EVER remember where they buried their winter stash?
When I was a child, we could look down hill across our fields to the neighbors. Now I can't see across the driveway. My parents fell for the idiots in the Conservation department.
Plant pines and have a retirement income. So with two knolls of blow sand, dad said yes to the concept. He bought thousands of seedlings, got the use of a planter from the department and away they went. Dad hooked it up to the tractor, mom sat in the planter and stuck trees in in nice rows. The centers of the two plantations to be were Jack pines. Not great trees , but fast growing to hold the knolls til the Red pines and spruces grew bigger.
The neighbor was happy and got into it too. He planted in the river bottoms. Guess floods lately killed most of his. He thought us blocking wind was good. One year he thanked dad for the oat crop. Too bad it was our oats that blew into his corn.
Some of those pines they planted on both sides of the long driveway and along the cliff overlooking the river by the new house. A couple went here and there. Mom said after they got some in, she told dad, need to move them farther out. They don't stay a foot high forever. Should have moved them a few more feet really. The ones on the cliff, and drive, mom pruned into hedges til she lost it. She told me that she would tell dad, unstick me. Seems the pine sap would glue her to the pruners. Now those pines all stand 30 feet tall.
In the plantations, Jack pines are all dying and falling over. The Red pines are a self pruning tree so many are more like poles than pines. They are dying along the driveway too. I am moving small spruce and planting to try to re-new the rows.
Anyway, now the old orchard is gone. The new house is now just the main house. And it is hiding in a jungle of trees, grape vines, weeds and whatever seeks to take over.
I try to keep a yard. Hack, chop, spray, pull, mow and wait for winter to kill it off or put it into hibernation. Maybe next spring I will win the fight. Tell myself that EVERY summer.
The old orchard was bulldozed by mom's orders. It was back into field. And inch by inch it became a meadow taken over by dewberry vines. What isn't mowed now has woods between the drive and meadow.
I sit and look and wonder. When did this all change? Guess years passed and I just went along for the ride. I remember mom telling me that dad and her used to go down in the river woods and prune trees. Finally mom asked dad, how does Germany do the Black Forest like a park. He said on weekends everyone went out to take care of it. She said well guess what,I quit. TWO people can't do this all. They should see what I call oak island now down there. Those oaks grew straight and thick and clean. So they did accomplish something.
I will settle for getting out the door without chopping my way out!