July 27th trip to the farm

Lois and I decided to go to the farm today, the forecast for the day said there was a good chance of rain which didn’t bother me as I made the statement that even if it did rain it wouldn’t rain all day. So we started off for the farm. It was an uneventful trip there. This was the first trip for Lois since we came over when my brother and his wife were here. When we opened the door to the barn Lois got to see the baby blue tailed skink, he lives under some of the boards that we have laying under the doors. The first thing to do was hook Jessie up to the battery charger as the battery did not get fully charged when I was here the last time. I wanted to spray the weeds and grass behind the barn, we have decided to plant irises behind the barn. You will be able to see them from the road, from the swing and they will make the back of the barn look nice. Well it was still raining and you need at least 30 minutes for the weed killer to stick to the plants. It was a light rain so I got on the tractor and started mowing around the barn, doing this I should have seen the omens that were to come. While mowing I went under some tree limbs and my hat came off and flew out the back of the tractor and under the brush hog. Needless to say there wasn’t much left of the hat, just a small piece of the bill. Next we got on the golf cart and took a trip around the farm; they finally have all the bales of hay removed from the pastures. We drove up to the big pines and checked out the mowing I did last week and looked at the peach/apricot trees. We couldn’t decide which they were but we are thinking peaches.



















Lois loved the way the area looks mowed, I just have to do it more. We then went to look at the latest oak tree that fell down. It was an old one; half of it is still up.

I am thinking of trying to cut so it makes a long bench with the trunk, we'll see how it goes. We then headed down into fern valley; we went a different way, a way we have never gone before. It is an easy way to go and I will have to take the brush hog down that way to make it even easier. Once we got down there I took pictures of some of the flowers for you and some of a butterfly.

I also wanted you to see the small tulip trees that we have growing down there.














I mowed around them and will get the weed eater and trim around them like I did the small pine trees. We also saw some ferns growing back into the timber, I took a picture of them and you can see why we named it fern valley.







Thank goodness camo Kirby has a roof on her as it is still raining. We started up out of the valley going the usual way and Lois was concerned that Camo would not make it up the road as it had water running down the road. Now this is not a paved road, or a gravel road this is your run of the mill dirt trail now a mud trail. We have special tires on the back of camo and I said it would make it up the trail. Sure enough she did and without slipping one bit. As we were going up the trail we saw some bright yellow mushrooms growing in the timber but did not stop to investigate them.
When we got to the top of the hill we found some more of them, they were yellow looking and next to them was a mushroom that looked like it had sugar sprinkled on top of it.














I also saw a passion flower vine blooming, they grow wild here.







We then headed down into the other valley and on the way we saw these flowers. We then headed to the south pond to pull the pictures off of it. Well I forgot the key to unlock the lock on the camera so we had to go back to the barn to get that. Did I mention it was still raining? We did see two deer run through the trees above the pond, could not tell if they were bucks or not. Got the lock and headed back to download the camera’s went to the one where the trophy rock use to be. Where I had the mineral block the deer are just eating the heck out of the ground. May have to move the camera there. Got to the camera and there was a mushroom growing there so Lois had to take a picture of it.







Lois’s description of this mushroom can’t be put on this blog, as you can see from the picture!!! Downloaded the pictures and I had bought a supplement block so I put it out, we will see if that helps bring back the deer. Then we went to the camera by the pond downloaded that camera and headed back to the barn. Did I mention it was still raining. On the way we went down to look at another area of the farm we had gotten there looked at what we wanted to see and started back to the barn when camo just stopped. So I told Lois to stay with camo and I would go get the tractor and pull it back. Did I mention that as I started back it started raining harder than it had all day? Got the tractor got camo hauled back to the barn. Looked like a tree limb had gotten jammed up under the cart and broke a wire and selonoid. We decided to load it up on the trailer and take it back with us to get worked on.
On the way home Lois told me that I could never mention the statement about raining all day again. Here are some extra pictures that I took and some from the game cameras.





Some ferns of a different type.






Wild morning glory vines








Some fungus growing on a dead tree






Big bird in the pond







Doe and fawn at the pond

July 21st visit

Went to the farm today, got there and first thing was to check and fill the batteries on Lois's golf cart, it was a little low so it was a good thing I checked it. Next was to hook up the battery charger to Jessie the pickup, I am going to leave it on her all day as the battery was dead when I left last week. See if that helps. I forgot the camera again today so there won't be any pictures and since it has only been a week since I downloaded the game cameras I won't do that. Give another week.
Today's visit is to mow and brush hog. I need to get the area down in fern valley mowed as the black berry bushes are trying to take over down there. On the way there I stopped to mow some around the big lob lolly pines. I started mowing down through them and wanted to make sure I didn't mow any of the flowering trees that we worked on in that area. We had marked them so we won't cut or mow them down. As I was going by one I noticed that one had fruit on it. I don't know if they were peaches or apricots. I got to looking and they were loaded with fruit. No I didn't take the time to pull any off will do that the next time we are there. We have about ten or twelve of these trees. As I was mowing further in this area I notice a box turtle trying to get away from the tractor, he at least had enough sense to head deeper into the timber. I mowed a little while here and then headed down into fern valley, I had just gotten down into it and looked to my left and saw a fawn moving into the timber, he looked like he wasn't very old as he was very wobbly. Started mowing, had about half of it done when I noticed another box turtle trying to get into the timber and he made it just fine. Once I finished down there I decided to drive around to make sure I had as much of the black berry bushes mowed as possible and saw a nice buck heading into the timber, he looked like he is going to have a nice rack. It looked like at least 6 points and it looked wide. The bucks are just starting to grow their antlers and the antlers are still covered in velvet. I then went to an area I had mowed last year that was needing it again. I had just enter this area and saw another fawn walk out the other end of it. He was a little older that the one I saw earlier.
I got several areas mowed before it started raining about 2 in the afternoon. I didn't see anything else to tell about, did find another big oak tree that had split and half of it had fallen. At least this one is not in an area that I will have to hurry to clean up.
Hopefully I will remember the camera the next time. There are some thing I want to take pictures of and post here for all to see.
Until then I hope you enjoy the stories.

July 13 visit

I went to the farm by myself this week, need to get the trees we planted covered/protected from the bucks using them to rub their antlers. So I have come up with some hardware cloth and posts to do this. I have seven trees that need to be done. The worst part is cutting the hardware cloth, anytime you mess with it you get cut from the little pieces of wire. Anyway I got this done without spilling to much blood which was amazing for me.

The second thing I worked on was Jessie the truck, she would not start the last time we were at the farm, so I bought a charger to charge up her battery and a pair of battery cables. I had her running in just a short period of time. Found some bad wiring going to the negative side of the battery and changed it. She still is not charging the battery when she is running, so the next couple of trips I will work on her some more.

I also had some more hostas to plant, these were planted around the oak trees down by the south pond. I also downloaded pictures from the two game cameras. I need to get some sort of mineral rock for the one camera, the deer are not coming to it like they use to. I did take some of the Black Magic deer bait and put it in the hole where the trophy rock use to set. We'll see if that helps.

Did get some pictures of a couple of bucks just getting their antlers. The two big bucks have not shown up from last year, hopefully they will. Kinda disappointed that we don't have any pictures of any fawns yet. A couple of the does look as if they are still pregnant.

Here are some of the pictures that I downloaded, the first is of my brother fishing, yeah he got caught on the camera. A little note about their trip here, they are bird watchers, so we told them about the humming bird that comes into the barn to drink from the humming bird feeder and the indigo buntings that are at the farm. Won't you know that while they were here neither would show up while they were here. Of course they show up today, go figure.







Here is a picture of a rain storm the night of July 3rd, you can see the rain going sideways. This was a hard rain storm.







Big Bird

















































Hope you enjoy the pictures

Brother's visit to the farm

Yes my brother came all the way from Kansas via Ill.(visit other brothers) to visit us and make a trip to the farm. They got here on Monday and we stayed here at the condo Monday nite, then left Tuesday morning to go to the farm. When we got there we were lounging in the chairs inside the barn when I noticed a toad sitting on top of some canning jars we had sitting on the floor. This toad was quite fat as you can see from the photos

Lois and our sister-in-law took off in one golf cart, my brother and I took off in the other golf cart to tour the farm. As we were touring we went down into the area where the one game camera is located and Lois and Claudine saw this pretty butterfly.

My brother and I found this butterfly checking out the butterfly weed

Lois and Claudine did see a couple of turkeys today, it was strange though as normally we see a lot of small birds and we were hoping that we would see them when they were here and for some reason we didn't.

After the tour of the farm my brother and I went fishing in the south pond, it was about 2:00 in the afternoon, not a good time to start fishing. As luck would have it the fish did cooperate with us, I think we ended up catching about 20 crappie, which we turned lose. My brother did catch a big bluegill and 1 small bass.

The next morning Larry and I went back to the farm, we stopped and got the chain saw and when we got to the farm we decided to try the chain saw out. So we went and did some cutting on the oak tree that I had been cutting on for the last 3 weeks.

Larry and I did see two deer later in the morning before we left for lunch. After lunch they headed home to Kansas and we headed back to Gallatin.

June 30th

Another trip to the farm, hopefully I will be able to finish cutting up the oak tree that I started last week. I left earlier than usual as it is suppose to get up to 90 today with less humidity than last week. I got to the farm around 9:00 and went right to work getting everything loaded into Lois’s golf cart, chain saw, tools, gloves and a bottle of cold water. Started cutting, piling cut wood and piling small branches, worked for about an hour and decided to take a brake, drank the whole bottle of water. Decided to cut some more and worked for about 30 minutes and went to get another bottle of water so I went back to the barn. When I got back went to start the chainsaw and the starter rope would not rewind back into the saw. So I took it back to the barn and work on it. Should not have done that, as while working on it the spring that rewinds the rope came loose and once that happens you can’t get it back in. So I decided that I was going to have to get some else to fix it. The good part of this story is that just a 1/2 mile by road is a man who fixes small engines, so when I went to lunch I stopped to see if he worked on chain saws. Turns out he does, his name is Phil Haskins, he actually is a neighbor as his property backs up against ours. So he is going to fix the chain saw and it will be done by next Tuesday. Very nice gentleman. So if you are in the Greenfield area and need work done on your small engines/lawn mowers stop in and see him.

So I decide to try the plan B for watering the trees, bushes and plants. What I did was buy a small bilge pump for a boat and install it inside a 5 gallon bucket. Drilled 1” holes (3 rows around the bucket) covered them with hardware cloth so trash would not get into the bucket and plug the pump up.

These pumps are submersible, so I ran wire from it, 20’ long added a 1 1/8” hose to it 15’ long. Now remember I have a fifty gallon tank that I can put into the front bucket of the tractor. So I loaded this all into the front bucket of the tractor and off to the pond we went, I set the bucket into the water, stuck the hose into the water tank and hooked the wires up to the battery on the tractor, I heard the pump kick on, saw water go into the hose but it would not come out of the discharge end. So after moving the hose around I shut the pump off and decided maybe the tank was too high above the pump. I then moved the bucket down to a different spot and moved the tractor there hooked everything up again and water started coming out of the end of the hose.

I was able to fill the 50 gallon tank up in 6-7 minutes. The first time the problem was I had the wires crossed on the positive and negative sides of the battery. I ended up filling the tank 3 times to get everything watered.

I did download pictures from the camera’s, there wasn’t very many pictures from the game camera where the trophy rock was at. I may have to put another rock out there. There was one picture of the turkeys going by. I hadn’t seen those back in there for over a year, so that was good.

There were a few pictures from the pond camera which I will post here.

Enjoy.