Well I have two visits to tell about, one on 5/18/08 and the other on 5/22/09, the first one was a visit Lois and I made to get things finish for the Memorial weekend visit. I did some more mowing, got the front bucket straightened out that I had bend trying to tear a stump out, dug some more on the fire pit. We also cleaned the barn out sprayed for bugs and sprayed the rafters for the boring bumble bees. Yes they bore into the wood and I have found some spray that I can spray on the wood and it keeps them away. We also did some spraying around the new trees and marking some of the pine trees so they don’t mow them when they cut for hay.
While we were down at the south pond and Lois showed me two birds nests, one had two eggs and one baby bird in it, the other had 2 eggs in it. The one with the baby bird in it was a neat looking nest as it hung from the tree limb.

The other was a typical nest that sat in a fork of the tree only thing was it was only 3’ off the ground. I took several pictures of them.

When we first got to the farm and I opened up the door there was a blue tailed skink making a home under the door and I got several pictures of him.

I also took a picture of the peach tree, it is doing so good nothing has eaten it yet and the violets are growing.

The trip on Friday, May 22, we took a new piece of equipment to the farm, her name is Jessie and she is a Toyota pickup truck that our niece Carmen wanted to retire to the farm. As you can see Jessie already likes her new home.

I also showed Carmen how to drive the tractor, whose name is chief. She took right to it and took to mowing just like I did. She really enjoyed it. She was good at it too, I may have to hire her to help mow.

Also here is an update on the bird nests, The one with the one baby now has 3 baby’s in it and the one with the two eggs has four eggs in it.
We went down to the south pond to fish and shoot the guns, Lois and I have been to the farm once a week the last 8 weeks and I have only seen 1 snake in all that time. As you know that would change today, we saw at least 6-7 snakes swimming in the water. Then when we came back from lunch the kids saw what looked like a rat snake that was about 4’ long down by the barn. If you remember in an earlier post we had found a shed snake’s skin in the barn that measured 4’ long.
All in all we did have a great time. Caught a lot of fish, turned them all lose. Found a new restaurant in Dresden Tn that serves fried bologna sandwiches.

May 5, 2009

I made a trip to the farm on Tuesday May 5th to do some maintenance on some of the equipment. Usually when I am at the farm I am using the equipment and don't get to check everything.

First was the tractor and brush hog, the tractor just needed to have all the fluids checked and they were all okay. Next was the brush hog which needed greased, I have never had to disconnect the PTO on anything before in my life. Well I read the instructions and gave it a try and right off it came. So I got things greased and went to put the PTO (which means Power take off) and it won't go back on. I worked and worked with it put grease on it, WD40 on it, pushed, pulled, wiggled and finally it snapped on.

Next was the golf cart batteries and checking to see if they needed any water put in them, there are six batteries in each cart and they all looked good except one which was a little low.

Next was to go check on all the plants, the Holly bush, peach tree and Hazelnut bushes are doing good. These are all down by the barn. Next are the plants up by the big Lob lolly pines, there is one hosta, 1 rhubarb and 9 phlox plants. The hosta and rhubarb are alive but only 5 phlox are still alive. The asparagus that is growing there is coming up so I pulled all the grass that is around it.

The two crab apples that we planted earlier are doing well as you can see from the pictures.

The columbine and violets we planted are also doing well.
The 15 azaleas and the one red bud look good, also in the same area I planted 1 hydrangea and it has new growth on it so it is doing good. All the trees from the Arbor Day Foundation look to be dead, but that is what I thought about the ones last year and found 2 of them alive this year. All but one of the phlox we planted down around the ponds are alive.

The two apple trees are also doing good.

Here also is a picture of the clump white birch trees.

Since we don't have any cattle on the property now the small oak trees and pines are having a chance to grow. Here is a picture of the pines and look at all the new growth on them.

Here also are two pictures of oak trees, the first is one tree with like 4 small limbs coming off the stump.

What I need to do to cut 3 of those off and let the one left grow. In the other picture you can see how many of these in this one area I need to do that two.

I down loaded the one game camera and when I was leaving the area when the camera is I noticed this trail leading to/from the area. Here are two pictures of this. In the one you can see how much the grass is bent down.

I also finally got the other camera set up down by the south pond. Hopefully we will get some good pictures from it. The three legged doe is back, was glad to see that.

I did fish a little bit, caught some bluegill and one small bass.

April 30th

We went to the farm on April 30th, I had purchased 50 gal. plastic tank that I wanted to set up to water some of the trees and plants that we had planted. I was going to try and syphon water out of the ponds to fill the tank. The tank that I purchased is rectangular shaped and will fit into the bucket of the tractor. I got fifty foot of 1 1/4" hose in 2, 25' sections which I connected with a short piece of 1" pvc pipe and hose clamps. got it all into the bucket of the tractor set it down below the dam of the pond and tried to get it to syphon and it would not work. I think it is pulling air at the pvc connection and not letting it syphon. I will get some silicon and seal it up and try again.
When we got to the farm I set Lois up with a sprayer and put malathion in it so she could go down and spray the bag worms she found last trip.
Since my project didn't work I got on the tractor and started mowing/brushhogging. I spent the next four hours doing this, which for me was very relaxing.
One of the things I forgot to tell about from our last visit was that Gracie's blue bird house is missing. It appears that someone had to have taken it. It looked like all the grass was matted down underneath where it was on a post and we looked for it and it didn't just fall off. It is a sad thing when someone can not build a bird house of their own and have to steal one.