Ontario man has planted 40,000 trees on his farm over 51 years — and he's not done yet

COBDEN, Ont. — The idea came to Bob Dobson decades after he was a boy growing up on the family farm. It was the memory of walking down a shady lane on hot summer days, so much cooler than the surrounding fields.

“I was the oldest of six kids. I had the job of going and fetching the cows,” says Dobson. “Sometimes they were half a mile away. There was a nice shaded laneway.”

Six generations have lived on the farm near Cobden since 1857. It’s about 200 acres, mostly heavy clay soil, about half of it rolling land. As many farmers did at the time, Dobson’s father kept it in mixed farming, with cows, pigs, sheep and chickens. The cream from the dairy was sent to a creamery in Cobden and the skim milk was kept to feed to the pigs