We made another trip to the farm today; we had several things we needed to do. First we had some more trees to plant, junk we needed to haul to the recycler and peg board to mount in the barn. We went over on Wednesday night so we could get a head start on the work. When we got there we were unloading the blazer when Steve pulled in, he is the guy that had the cattle on the property when we first bought it. He wanted to know if he was going to be able to bale the pasture again this year, which we agreed to do that. Hopefully we will be able to get more than one cutting this year. After Steve left we had another visitor, our neighbor, Terry came over and wanted to know if we had found his fishing pole, if you remember 2 posts ago that I wrote about finding a fishing pole and tackle box down at one of the ponds, will it was his. I bet he won’t be leaving that around anymore.
We stayed at the Hampton Inn in Martin Wednesday night and got an early start Thursday morning, we got to the farm and hooked up to the trailer and pulled it out, it was already loaded down with some metal. We then got Kamo Kirby (name of Lois’s golf cart) yes we have the golf carts named and who they belong to. We took it down to one of the draws that I had found some metal that I wanted to take to the recyclers; it was an old watering tank. Well we hooked a chain to the tank and to Kirby and away we went. Right up the side of the draw without any problems at all. I got the tractor out and mashed the tank and some old barrels that were on the trailer. We then tied everything down and off we went. We got $16.00 for the metal; we only had 400 lbs of metal. Important thing is it is gone.
When we got back to the farm the next thing on the agenda was to plant the trees we brought with us. We had 2 apple trees, 1 granny smith and 1 Macintosh, one clump white birch and a holly bush.
The apple trees we planted on the south side of the draw that leads down to the south pond and yes that is me in my bibs.

The birch we planted down by the south side of the south pond. If it survives it will be very pretty there. You can see it in the for ground.

The holly bush I planted along the fence line north of the barn, I want to do this to separate us from the neighbors.
I then went to work on the peg board area, it not only is pegboard but it is also more wall storage space. We started running out of room for shovels, weed eaters and such. Lois went into town (subway pizza) to get lunch for us. We still need to do some work on this but you can see before and after pictures.

Pictures of some of the tulips we planted earlier this year.

Picture of the azaleas on the other side of the pond

Once done with that I did get to do some fishing, caught 5 crappie and 1 bluegill (which was a big one).

It's always an adventure going to the farm, we went over Tuesday, April 14th. We had some more trees, shrubs and plants to plant. Lois and I got there and loaded everything into the golf carts, we then headed to area down by the south pond. On the way we stopped by the big loblolly pines so Lois could see where I planted some of the phlox and see where the asparagus was at, while there we planted a rhubarb plant. We then headed down to the pond where I ran the weed eater by the two new crab apple trees. Then I showed Lois the azalea bushes, most of them were blooming.

Lois had gotten some wild violets from a lady in Hendersonville, we had went to her house and dug them up. So we took them to the farm and planted them on the slop under the oak trees. We had not seen an violets growing on the farm.

We planted two red bud trees, two flowering almond bushes, one white dogwood, two oak trees and one peach tree.

We also ran the weed eater with the brush blade on it on the slope by the azaleas and under some of the oaks trying to get rid of some of the elm trees.

I also started clearing some of the elms and briar's that were growing down by the pond. While running it I noticed something fall into the water, looking closer it was what I thought was a butterfly. Upon closer examination there were two of them mating and they were moths not butterflies. I put them on the seat of the golf cart and they separated, the female wing span was 4" wide, they both had tails coming off the lower wings. I have included pictures of them, I have never seen a moth colored like these. I did research on the computer to find out what kind they were. It said they are called Luna moths.

I downloaded the pictures off the game camera, there were 252 pictures

this time. We had 2 pictures of a crow sitting on the ground, numerous pictures of deer and 1 picture of the south end of a north bound bobcat.

You can just verily see him on the right side of the picture just above the center.

I have to get the other two cameras up and running. I want to put one of them down along the pond, the other camera I may move around some. I have thought about putting it on some game trails that I have found leaving the property going under the fence over into some fields and I have several other spots that might be interesting.
Also took some pictures of the tulips we planted earlier this year, one was even blooming.

The dogwood trees and red buds trees were blooming and the trip over to the farm had some pretty scenery. We don't have a lot of these on the farm but we are working on getting more but here are pictures of one of the dogwoods

Of course I didn't take all the pictures I should have, we got to working so hard and time just flew by. It was 2:00 in the afternoon before we knew it and we then went into town to eat. When we got back I still needed to download the game camera and the weather turned colder so I didn't get as many pictures taken as I wanted.

I will try and post the game camera pictures sometime tomorrow

Planting Trees and shrubs

I went to the farm on March 17th and again today to plant trees, shrubs and some flowers. On the 17th I planted 10 azaleas, 5 white ones and 5 red ones. It was a easy job as all I had to do was pull the ones from last year and put these in their holes. The ones from last year died due to the drought. Today I planted 4 crab apple trees, 5 purple azaleas, 2 dogwood, 2 eastern red buds, 2 Washington Hawthorne's and 2 golden raintrees. I also planted some phlox, I believe there was something like 15 roots, 10 purple cone flowers and 10 black eyed Susan's and 1 hydrangea. Hopefully we got a good rain after I left today. The ones I planted on the 17th looked good.

The Yoshino Cherry we planted last year made it through the drought, it was flowering when I got to there today and the one red bud is still alive. When I was planting the cone flowers I happened to go by one of the flags that I had put in when I planted some of the other trees last year and low and beh0ld the tree by the flag was still alive, it was a Viburnum Arrowwood. So then I got to looking for some of the others that I thought were dead and I did find one more and it was Crab apple tree and it looked great.

I did fish a little bit and caught 1 crappie, 2 bass and several nice redear sunfish. When I was at the farm on the 17th I was driving around on the golf cart and since it is early spring/late winter I am able to drive places I wouldn't normally be able to drive. Anyway I scared up a Woodcock, these are small birds with long bills that fly low to the ground. I have always loved these small birds, so when she flew I had to get off the cart and see if I could scare it up again which I did. Just a neat little thing for me.

We must have had a visitor to the barn pond, when I got there today I was unloading the Blazer and looked down at the barn pond and saw a bucket sitting down on the dam. I went down there to see what it was doing down there and found a small tackle box in it and a fishing pole laying beside it. I don't know who's it was but it is in the barn now. We'll see if anyone comes to claim it.