Village News

There are two oak trees in our village that are direct descendants of the great Chortitz Oak Tree in Ukraine. One of them, the one you see when you walk out of the Village Centre onto the village street, produces acorns every year. The squirrels are very quick to pick them up for their winter food supply, but someone managed to beat the squirrels to the harvest some years ago.

Those acorns were gathered and planted, and little oak trees began to grow in a little plot on the west side of the Peters barn. By now, some of these trees are six and seven feet tall, so we realized it was high time to move them to permanent locations.

Our main village street is lined with trees, mostly Manitoba Maples. In some places, the trees have died and been removed, leaving open spots. This week we filled nine of those open spots with nine oak trees transplanted from the little plot. Thanks to Dan and Trish Friesen of Timber Trails Tree Farm for bringing their very efficient tree-moving machine to make this job so much easier. The transplanted trees are generation-three descendants of the great Chortitz Oak Tree. The stories of this historic tree will live on at MHV.