When Martin and Marialice Sandin bought the acreage east of Lincoln, it was an unbroken milo field rolling down to a creek, where there were a few scraggly American elm and thorny locust trees.
All volunteer stuff. Nothing more than 10 feet tall.Ìý
But then Martin started planting trees. And over the past 30 years, he's planted and watered and fretted over at least 1,000 trees.Ìý
He has tulip and cherry, plum, ash, white pine, Kentucky coffee and Hawthorn — "with thorns all over the place." White pine, Douglas fir, box elder, yellow wood and more.
I didn’t have money, but I had ambition, says the retired postal worker.
One of his earliest experiments failed. He started with poplars, 200 seedlings, hoping to border three sides of his five acres.ÌýÂ
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Poplars are quick-growing and short-lived, maybe 30 years. But his died earlier, felled by deer, insect borers, hail and the cold, cold winters.
Out of 200, he has one left, right next to the creek.
His acreage is an "iffy" growing zone, Martin said. The poplars probably needed a warmer climate.
He fell in love with trees when he took a biology course in high school at Wheaton Academy in Illinois, and had to be able to identify 60 to 70 plants, including lots of trees.
He also grew up on a farm near Newman Grove, where he helped his dad and learned about planting and tending crops.
He dropped out of school when he was 15 to help his dad on the farm, on the promise that his dad would send him away to school.Ìý
Marialice grew up in Minnesota, where trees abound, naturally.
She met Martin at the Powderhorn Baptist Church when he was living in Minneapolis. And she moved to the Nebraska prairie, where “there are no trees, nothing.â€
Marialice missed the shady comfort of all those trees. So she was on board for the acreage and Martin's dream of many trees.
Martin purchased most of his trees from a nursery in Indiana, Pennsylvania — Musser Forests.
"They were proud of the fact they sold 20 million seedlings a year. And they had a real good catalog.â€
Martin spent hours poring over those catalogs, deciding what to buy, where to plant it. "They were my storybooks, those catalogs,†he said. “I discovered so many different kinds of trees I had never heard of.â€
So he planted black gum, sweetgum, horse chestnut, Chinese chestnut (with seed pods that look like tiny porcupines), golden rain, a smoke tree, northern catalpa.
But not everything came from a catalog. He has a Chinese scholar tree that he discovered in a friend’s yard in south Lincoln, and thought, “I need to have one of those.â€
He has one silver maple left from 20 Arbor Day trees.Ìý
That first year, Martin dipped water out of the creek to water the trees. The next year he had a well put in. Then he bought a water tank that he pulled around with a small farm tractor.Ìý
Most of the trees were planted the first four years, tiny trees that looked so small and so far apart ... until they grew.
That is his biggest mistake, said Martin. "I planted them too close together."
One year he planted 200 trees with a long-handled tree-planting spade — a dibble bar — two strokes for each tree. But he planted them too close together. And a decade later he had 200 trees fighting for space.
Those days he couldn’t plant the trees fast enough. And he loved the work, then watching his babies grow year after year.
There have been a few other mistakes over the years.
The row of balsam fir, the Christmas trees with the really nice scent, didn’t make it. “I think they were actually intended for a colder climate," says Marialice.
But there are plenty of oak trees on the acreage, too many oak trees, Martin said.
One row of oaks come from acorns he picked up in town under a beautiful, big tree. One now has branches stretching 25 feet.
In the fall when the oak leaves drop, there are problems. "The leaves don’t mulch very well. They stay in one piece, kind of leathery. I have an issue with oak trees. Otherwise I love them.â€
And they are easy to grow. Put an acorn in the ground. Or have a squirrel put an acorn into the ground. “It’s that easy,†Martin said.
The birds plant mulberry trees and the squirrels also plant black walnut trees. “They carry them all over the place. And they grow if the squirrels don’t dig the small trees up and eat them."
One year Martin happened on a bargain, 60 flowering crab trees from a local nursery that wanted the space for fall displays.Ìý
He gave away most of the seedlings, but the white, airy blossoms of 20 flowering crab trees ring the house every spring.Ìý
Water is about the only thing a tree needs, said Martin.
He seldom stakes trees, though he sometimes puts a cage around a tree so the deer won’t eat the leaves or rub their antlers on the young tree trunk and shave off all the bark.
In 2012, the year of the last big drought, Martin watered seven days a week, six to 12 hours a day and almost drained the well.
But he doesn’t plan on doing that much work again.
Martin, who is on his way to 86, says he’s done planting. But adult trees are still a lot of work. He and a son trim what they can reach these days. But last year, he hired an arborist for the higher branches.Ìý
The Sandins heat their home with the wood from their trees, with more than enough left over to share with a son.
The landscape from the Sandin's living room windows has changed over the years.
In the middle years, Martin could look out his windows across a field of trees, see all of his handiwork, name the varieties.
But now the trees are taller, fuller, giving a Minnesota-like view in summer that Marialice loves, even as it blocks the extent of her husband's 30 years of labor.Ìý
The king maple, Norway maple, burr oak, wheat gum, sycamore, Ohio buckeye.Ìý
"I just wanted a good sample of every different kind of tree."