Sep 26 visit to the farm

We went to the farm yesterday to pick up the trailer to bring back to the house, we have to go to pick up some furniture that belonged to Lois's sister, It is at Lois's nephews house down in Birmingham, Al.

I also needed to take the weed eater to Phil Haskins who lives just down the road from the farm and runs a small engine repair shop there. The weed eater broke the last time I used it, hopefully it is still under warranty, we just bought in the spring. He is an authorized Poulan repairman and is the one that repaired my chainsaw and did a great job on it. So if you are in the area and need work done on small engines see Phil. You will see signs for Haskins small engine repairs.

I also changed out the memory cards on the game cameras, only the one at the mineral licks had pictures on it, the one at the oak grove had nine pictures on it but none had any animals. I have readjusted it so we will see if that makes any difference. Here are some of the pictures from the mineral lick area.

There is still standing corn in most of the fields around the farm and we think that all the larger bucks are hiding out in the fields. The standing corn gives the deer an extra place to hide. Last year the fields had soybeans in them and the deer couldn't hide in those.

I did do a little fishing and caught one small bass and a bluegill that was bigger than my hand. He was one of the largest ones I have ever caught. Turned him loose.

I did some hoeing around the iris's at the end of the barn, planted some bulbs up by the lob lolly pines. I also started up Jessie the pickup truck and took her for a spin out on the highway. She fired right up. Still no signs of any oil leaks underneath her.

We forgot the camera again, hopefully we will be back week after next. See ya then.

To the farm

On Thursday I made my way over to the farm by myself, Lois was out of town so I got up at and was out of the house by 5:18 am. It had been raining in the Nashville area for the last 2 days and I hoped it rained at the farm. If it was raining there when I got there so be it I would just do some fishing. When I got there it wasn't raining although it had rained some the day before so I didn't have to do any watering of plants. I did take some pictures of the areas that I sprayed with the brush killer last week. It is starting to work.

Next I decided to do some weed eating around some of the plants as the weeds are trying to take over. I got some of them done when the weed eater broke. So I am going to have to get that fixed.

Next I loaded up the chainsaw, some fencing material and headed for the back of the farm as I knew that there were 2 spots there that trees/limbs had knocked down the fence. I got there and got the trees off the fence. I ended up fixing the fence in 5 spots, I still have to get about 5 fence posts to

fix it better. I then moved along the west side of the property where two different trees had fallen down, one was almost on the fence. It was a twenty foot tall elm tree. The other tree had the fence attached to it, it was a 30 foot tall cedar tree. I got started on the elm tree and had it cut up in no time, it probably took another 1 1/2 hrs to finish the cedar tree. It was hard work but I was glad when it was done.

Once I was done with that I went back to the barn and loaded up my rifle and a target. I went to the area down below the south pond. I then went to an area that was about 100 yds from the target and sited in the rifle. I hadn't done this in over 20 yrs. It was a lot of fun.

Next I went to the barn and loaded up the memory discs for the game cameras. When I got the camera by the mineral holes I had to take some pictures of these holes. It is amazing how deep these holes have gotten as you will see from the pictures. The holes are 8 - 10 inches deep and now the deer have dug them out another 6 inch's deeper as you will see in the pics.

I was a little disappointed by the game camera at the south pond, as it didn't have any pictures on it. The camera that I put in the oak grove had 4 pictures on it, only one of an deer, the other three were at night and you could see nothing. I found out that after looking at the camera that it is aimed at a slight angle up. I need to get it so it is level.

While I was checking the cameras I noticed these yellow flowers blooming in different spots so I took some pictures of these and you will see how pretty they are.

Also while I was looking at the flowers I noticed the pine trees that I had trimmed around. These trees had grown over a foot since the spring, the two that I took pictures were now taller than me.

Here are the some pictures from the cameras

The Farm

We went to the farm on Tuesday, Sep 8, just to check things out. We had some more iris's to plant to finish out what we had started two weeks ago. We were happy to see that the ones we had planted had already started to grow. They really looked good. So we got those planted. I decided to spray the fence row starting at the front gate. Here is what it looked like.

As you can see we definitely needed to do something. Some of the bigger trees I am going to have to cut down. Anyway I will be keeping you informed on how the spraying went.

Next I watered as many of the trees and plants as I could, some of the azaleas have died, I guess we haven't had any rain there in more than a couple of weeks. Hopefully I got to most of them in time. The apple trees really looked good.

Next I mounted the one game camera by the pond again and mounted the other up in the oak tree grove above the pond. I put this one about 1' off the ground. we'll see what kind of pictures we get. If we don't get any I am going to move it to the pecan tree.

We then downloaded the pictures from the other game camera. I think you will enjoy a few of the pictures.

The little one

Two new bucks that I haven't seen before

Mom and baby

We went to the farm on August 27th to plant some flowers on the back side of the barn, this is the side that faces the road. We had sprayed a 3' wide swath the whole length of the back side of the barn with round up two different times to kill all the weeds and grass growing there. I then tilled this area up when we got there this morning and Lois planted 2 peony plants and about 16 iris's. We can't wait until spring.

After we got this done I started mowing with the brush hog and spent the next 2 1/2 hrs mowing

That is all I really got done as far as work. I did do some work on the electrical system in the barn, which will require more work down the road. I did download pictures from game camera and I will post some of these. One of the neatest things is the camera had not been downloaded since before we moved it to the new location. This allowed me to show you pictures from both locations of the mowing I did there. So enjoy.

Before

After, from old camera position

Before from almost the same position as new camera

After

At the new camera position there are two mineral licks that I started and they are using them like crazy as you can see from these pics. Look how deep they are.

Some pictures of the bucks that are starting to show up

And one last picture