R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press A North-Central kindergartener helps Eric Treichel pack dirt around the seedling he’s just planted in the yard at Treichel’s Trees.

CARNEY — Spring at Treichel’s Trees, a Christmas tree grower in Menominee County, means that time has come for planting — and inviting local schoolchildren to do the same.

Back in December, school buses pulled up to the farm where Eric and Kitty Treichel helped groups of little ones choose Christmas trees to take back to their classroom. Beaming at the children’s excitement in the snow, the Treichels reminded the kids then that what is taken from the earth should also be replaced, and asked teachers to get back in touch in the spring.

The week of Arbor Day, the classes returned to Treichel’s Trees. Carney-Nadeau students visited on Wednesday, April 24, and on Friday the 26th — Arbor Day itself — kindergarteners from North Central Elementary filed neatly off their bus before racing to the field where Eric and Kitty had prepared dozens of seedlings and an appropriately-sized spade.

“It’s so important to learn how to plant trees,” Kitty told the children, encouraging them to continue to do so every year, “because it gives oxygen for all of us to breathe. Very important.”

One by one, each of the children jumped on the spade held by Eric until they had helped to dig a hole that would fit the roots of their seedling. The kindergarteners placed the tiny trees in the ground and packed dirt around them.

Teacher Sarah Olson said the field trip ties into science lessons.

“The curriculum is about planting and growing and life cycles, and how the trees start from seeds and saplings … root directionality, what they need to grow and prosper, and kind of the whole circle,” Olson said.

At one end of the Treichels’ yard, some trees planted by the first classes to participate are now full-bodied and around ten feet tall. Kitty said that they began inviting schoolchildren about 35 years ago, and that students from those first classes have returned with their own children to pick out Christmas trees.

The circle continues.