Happy Trails Farm: 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.