I'm always astonished by my ability to think strongly sloping land is flat.  I just don't notice a slope unless it looks like the photo above.

Luckily, Mark is better at geometry than I am.  Taking a look at the hillside above the pig pasture, he pronounced it too steep for easy pasturing or orcharding.  Sure, the top of the hill is (semi) flat, but there's no way a wheeled vehicle could get up there without a lot of work, so how did I plan to haul the apples home?  Honestly, I'm not sure I'd envisioned the trees getting all the way to bearing age....

So I've taken that hillside off the table as a potential orchard, at least for the near future.  We might still use the slope later if we suddenly have a lot of manpower to terrace it, or if we want to make a hillside pasture.  But for now, I'll have to keep looking for a flat, dry, and not-too-shady spot for more fruit-tree experimentation. 

The good news is, ditching the orchard dream up above will expedite the current pasture project since we won't have to take down any more trees.  We got sidetracked by the garden, chicken incursions, and mushrooms this week, but hopefully we'll be back on track with pasture building next week.