A Greene County family held a Pork and Trees Field Day Wednesday, where attendees learned about the variety of benefits that trees provide around a hog confinement.

Bruce and Jenny Wessling showed two different hog confinement sites on their property in rural Grand Junction. The couple were the first to utilize the Coalition to Support Iowa Farmers Green Farmstead Partner Program to plant trees along their first hog confinement at 1321 X Avenue ten years ago. They also recently planted three rows of trees on the northwest portion of their other hog confinement at 1950 250th Street this past spring.

Bruce says trees near hog confinements not only provide a better aesthetic to the site and block the odor that the hog buildings have, but trees also serve as a windbreaker. He talks about the issues from this past winter and how each site was impacted.

“At the home site (1321 X Avenue) we already had the trees. We didn’t have to do any additional snow removal other than the driveways. At the site where we didn’t have trees (1950 250th Street) we spent a lot of extra time with tractors and snowblowers moving snow away from the fan cabinets to make sure that everything was working properly. So yeah it’s just a huge time savings for us this winter.”

Trees Forever also works in conjunction with this program. Trees Forever Program Manager Brad Riphagen says they provide funding in a lot of cases for ag producers.

“So that could be from a buffer for along your stream, there could be from a nut planting that you want to start to harvest in the future. We do a variety of different things that are positive in terms of tree plantings. Windbreaks are ones that are visible to folks throughout the state. Anytime I see a facility such as this that has a good windbreak planted around it (and) it’s been here for a number of years, you know that’s somebody who is planning to stick around. It’s a long-term planting that people have invested in the site.”

With the Green Farmstead Partner Program, the Coalition has planted over 70,000 trees at over 200 livestock sites in ten years. The newly planted trees at the Wessling site includes conifers, red cedar and austrees.