9/11/08 Trip

It's only been a week since we were here, but we enjoyed ourselves so much we couldn't stay away. I am going to do some more mowing and we are also going to do some hand brush clearing on one of the ponds. It is suppose to rain some while we are here so we brought some things we can work on inside the barn. When we got here we had a lot of stuff to unload and as we were unloading it I noticed one of the big tires on the tractor was flat. Thank goodness for the local coop, as they have a truck that will come out and repair the tire on the tractor, of course $139.00 later I was able to start mowing again. I have named the tractor "The Chief" since it is orange in color and I am an Illini fan it worked out great.



I found this 12" magnet of the chief



Anyway I spent the next 4 hrs mowing out on the front/north side of the property. As I started mowing I saw a lot of small lob lolly pine trees that were growing which we hadn't seen before. It seems that the cattle like to eat these and they have never had a chance to get over 3' tall. Well now they will as I didn't mow them down.

If you click on this picture you will see the small pines growing along the edge where I have mowed.

We also found a lot of small oak trees that I had to mow around, I think this is also the same thing in that the cows ate the leaves off of them and wouldn't let them get big.

The start/headwaters of Cane Creek starts on our property, it is a small draw on the north side of the property. It was full of briar's, wild roses and weeds over 8'tall. Anyway I started mowing it and the next thing you know you have opened up a new area that if given a chance to let the grass grow and keep the nasty stuff out it will be a great area. Again this was an area that you could not walk through, the cows had not even tried to get through it.

Friday 9/12/08, It isn't raining this morning so when we get to the farm I am going to do some more mowing, when we got there, low and behold another flat tire. This is on one of the front tires, which I can change and take into town to the coop. I left the tire at the coop and told them I would be back at noon to pick it up. When I got back to the farm Lois suggested that we go down to the pond and do some clearing on the dam side of it. We spent about 1 1/2 hrs working and then it was time to go eat lunch. The area around the dam looks pretty good.

You can now drive the golf cart all the way across the dam

After lunch we got the tire and headed back to the farm. Once there we decided that as hot as it was we would spend the rest of the day doing some fishing. Here are some of the pics from that.

Saturday 9/12/08, Today we went to another auction, after looking at all the stuff they had at the sale most of it was junkie, we decided to go back to the farm, it was still a hot day so we decided to just do some fishing, planning and light work. Lois loves to trim trees so here are two of them that she has started trimming down at the south pond.

Before

After

Another tree Lois worked on

9-7-08 Trip to the Farm

We left on Friday morning and went to Union City to get the tractor, we had it unloaded by 2:30 and I was mowing not too much later. I mowed the front of the property and up on the hill, spent 3 hrs doing this. It sure made the areas look a lot nicer

you couldn't even see this small bale of hay as the elderberry plants and weeds were so high around it.




Saturday 9/6/08 We went to an auction this morning and early afternoon, Lois bought a small electric scooter that we hope to be able to use on the farm. Lois also bought an old porch swing that we are going to hang down by the pond by the barn. We also bought a telescope to keep at the farm.

We are going to name this scooter Wall-e as it reminds me of a robot when you see it head on

Once we got back to the farm I mowed for another 3-4 hrs. I mowed down by the south pond. It is a good thing I like trees as I also like being on the tractor mowing and I would be mowing down the entire property. See the picture below, this was an area that was full of raspberry briars and little elm trees. You couldn’t walk through it before, it sure makes it look nicer mowed.

Sun 9/7/08 We went early so I could do more mowing, cleared some areas out that had lots of briars and wild roses on them. These need to be cut often; hopefully we will be able to spray them with brush killer now that we have them mowed. Once we get them killed I hope to plant Lespedeza plants in that area. These are good for deer and Quail. I also mowed in the area where we want to build the house so we could see it better.
Before we left I downloaded the pictures from the game cameras, found out the one camera by the deer feeder isn’t working correctly. I will work on it on the next trip as I didn’t have the instruction book with me. For some reason the deer aren’t coming to the deer feeder like they should be. There was a lot of corn laying on the ground, it may be that the corn in the fields are ready for picking and they are eating it or could be something else. The sooner the camera is working the better.

Lois my wife has done a great job of cleaning up the barn; I have included some picture for you to see what it looks like. I wish we had taken more pictures before she started cleaning, because it is quite a difference.