 Welcome everyone! Welcome for today for Arbor Day 2021. Happy to have you here. My name is Tim Bull. I'm the city forester, the city of Sheboygan. We were lucky enough to be here on Arbor Day, beautiful weather. It's my job as a city forester to take care of the city's trees, to manage them, and it's a wonderful job. It's great. I mean, I get to be outside and look at trees every day. Does any of you kids, you like trees? You like trees? What do we like about trees? Paper. Good one. Any others? What do you like? Air? Yeah, climbing trees. That's wonderful. Yeah, good. Lots of good things to do with trees. So I work for this tree crew, right? And I also have two of my employees here, or my co-workers, Jim and Kenny. They get to play with trees every day too, and they're out there whether it's snowing or it's super hot and sunny, and they're really working hard out there. Cutting trees, pruning trees, planting trees, like we're going to do today. And also today, we have the mayor with us. I don't know if you kids have met the mayor before. We had Mr. Ryan Sorensen here, and he has a message he would like to share with all of us about Arbor Day. All right. Well, thanks everybody for coming on out. Let's give a round of applause for the Forestry Department. They do a lot of awesome work making sure that Chaboygan's trees are healthy and planted all over the city. So this is my... I'm wrapping up my second week. I just figured out how the printer works yesterday. And this is my second time here out at Maywood being mayor. I love it out here. I was on the board before, and today's a very special day. Today is Arbor Day, but it's also Dave Cookook's last day. So Dave wanted to thank you again for all the hard work and dedication that you've given to the city of Chaboygan and especially Maywood. So everyone, let's give Dave Cookook a round of applause for the years of service for our community. Thank you, Dave. All right. So we're going to make Arbor Day official. So I have a proclamation here. This is my officially second proclamation and second one for Maywood. So I'll be dedicating that. So I'll read some points here. So in 1872, J. Sterling Mortar proposed that the Nebraska Board of Agriculture set aside a special day for planting trees. And this holiday is now called Arbor Day and is observed all over the country, planting millions of trees across the United States. Trees can reduce erosion for top soils, provide energy for wood and heating services and moderate temperatures, help clean air and produce life generating oxygen and provide habitats for wildlife. And trees are a renewable source for giving us paper, wood for our homes, fuel for our fires, and countless other wood products. Trees increase property value, enhance the economic viability of our community and beautify our neighborhood. Trees whenever planted are a great source of joy and spiritual renewal. And Sheboygan is now celebrating 43 days of being designated a tree city USA and one tree being named a tree city of the world and by the Arbor Day Foundation. And we are the longest running tree city in Wisconsin. So now, therefore, I, Ryan Sorensen by virtue of the authority vested to me as mayor by the city of Sheboygan, do now proclaim April 30th, 2021 as Arbor Day. So Dave or Sam, I'd like to present you with this proclamation. So come on down. There you go. Congratulations. All right. So we're going to plant some trees now. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Ryan, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, so as the mayor said, we're celebrating 43 years as tree city USA and the city of Sheboygan is celebrating its first year as tree cities of the world. It's a new program that the Arbor Day Foundation started. And I'm happy to say that the city of Sheboygan is the only city in Sheboygan that's part of this new program with the Arbor Day Foundation. So we're in our first year of tree cities of the world. And in order to qualify, we have five criteria that we had to follow. So we have people responsible for trees, meaning myself, the tree crew, the tree board who makes decisions for the city trees. We have rules and laws that we have to follow managing trees. So we call those ordinances. We have budget allocated specifically for the care of our city trees. We know how many trees we have and where they are. We have an active and updated inventory. So on our tree inventory, I can see exactly every street tree we have, what's been done with it, what species it is, even the ones we're planting recently, we know when they're planted. And the last thing that we need to do is celebrate trees annually. So today, Arbor Day, we're doing that. We're celebrating trees. And what better way to do that than to plant trees? So today, we're here at Maywood to plant trees and we're going to plant sugar maple trees. Now, do any of you kids know what's so great about a sugar maple tree? Go ahead. Maple syrup. Perfect. Yes. So every year here at Maywood, they tap the sugar maple trees and they get the sap out of them and they boil it down. It turns into the sweet maple syrup that we enjoy on our pancakes. So we're planting four sugar maples here today that 30 or 40 years from now will be big enough to give us sap is help make maple syrup. And the planting here at Maywood has has is going on a lot. I mean, we got David Cookuck. It's his it's his last day today. He's retiring. He's he's been working here for 35 years and he's planted over 30 or he's helped coordinate the planting of over 30,000 trees here at Maywood. So I thought it would be great if David I hate to put you on the spot. But if you if you'd be willing to help me demonstrate the proper way to plant a sugar maple tree, I'd like to dedicate this one specifically to you and for your time here and your service and I want to thank you again. So we're going to go through the right way to plant a tree now planting a tree is the most or transplanting a tree is the most important thing that this tree is ever going to experience. You start a tree off wrong and it's going to you know, it's going to have problems down the road, but we started out right and it's going to be set up for a long healthy life. And that's that's what we're going to do today. And we're going to demonstrate how to do this one. And then when we're done, we're going to split up into groups and there's three more that that that you kids will be able to plant just down that way. Okay. Alright, David, let's get started. So we got a bear root tree. Right. So some of you might be used to seeing trees that are big and heavy and they have the dirt still on them. Well, this tree, you can see all the roots here. Now we've kept it moist and damp. So the tree's not going to die. The one thing about bear root is they can be sensitive if you let them dry out. But this one's ready to go in the ground and you can see exactly all of its roots. So you can see there's no problems there. And it tells you exactly where to plant the tree. You don't want to plant these trees too deep. Planting a tree too deep is the worst thing you can do for it. The roots need to be this first set of roots needs to be right at the surface just below the surface. That's the proper spot. And and and so what we'll do is here we'll look at this and we have this whole pre dug, but it looks like it's not quite deep enough. So maybe I get Jim, you want to come over here and help help us get a little deeper to David, David, you can help. I guess I'll hold the tree. That's what what's that? Yeah, that's true. Sam's taking over for David. So let's do that. That would be good. You're doing an excellent job. Yeah, let's take a look. I think that's going to be really nice. So yeah, we'll we'll tuck all the roots in and under this so they're all going to be covered. I'll hold it down and now the nice thing we did is we pulverized this soil so it should be fairly loose or we can get it in all around these roots fairly tight. We don't want any big air pockets in there because that'll allow that that won't allow the roots to to grow into anything and they'll they won't they won't do well in that situation. So with this fine dirt, it'll make it a real nice nice and easy for us to plant and it'll it'll be a nice happy spot for these roots to grow. Yeah, oh yeah, I need I need you guys help. Is this does this look straight? March, does this look straight to you? Should I go this way? This way? Right there? What about from this side? What do you think? I need to go that way? There? Right there? It's kind of like we're playing the claw game and you're telling me where to drop it. Oh, this is looking good. So, we'll just I'll just lightly compact some of this soil in there like I said to reduce those air pockets. Looking excellent, David. We still like how straight that is. Good from this way? Mr. Mayor? Okay, good. So now that we got the the tree the dirt over it, I think we should give it a little water before we put the mulch on and then we'll get the we'll put some more water on after the mulch. So, we got two buckets by each tree to make it easy for us today but we'll take we'll take one of these and and maybe David, I can have you put that on the tree and we'll be periodically coming back to water these you know over the next this whole summer really but it's very important to water when you're planting. Okay, we have a we have a bucket of mulch by each tree to make it easy again too. So, this this these wood chips these wood chips will keep you put those around the the base of the tree over the roots to keep that soil from drying out too quick and it can be you know the thing is you want about a three or four inch layer and you don't want to mount it up against the stem because because that stem needs to be open to the air but once we get about three inches then we'll just spread it out so it's so it's no more than three inches around. It's looking really good and now I think we'll we'll put the rest of the water on this other bucket on and and that'll that'll dampen the mulch to keep to give that at least a a damp start so then we don't have to hope it rains tonight right away. Okay so you kids we're all paying close attention right you know what you're doing it's going to be up to you guys to plant those other three. We'll split up and me and the tree crew will help you guys plant those other three trees okay. Thanks for being here for Arbor Day.