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.

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.

Game Camera Pictures

Here are a few deer pictures

I will post a few more at the other site, here is the link Game Camera Pictures

Work, Work and more work

We made a trip to the farm on Tuesday March 10th, we wanted to take the new golf cart over to the farm and give us some more room in the garage. It was a beautiful day, temp was in the 70's partly cloudy, just a great day. Lois decided that we would work on the area below the dam of the barn pond. The previous owners used this area as a dump, it has a some of everything there. Tires, windows, cans, jars, carpeting, old satellite dish and lots of other junk. There was also two doors from a truck and the kitchen sink, no kidding. I took some pictures from the area across the fence from this area and you can see what it looked like.

It did seem like we had all the big stuff on our side of the fence. I used the tractor to pull the doors and all the big stuff out of the ditch where they were. I do have pictures of all the trash that came out of the area. This all came from our side of the fence.

Here is a picture of all the trash that Lois picked up from just one area across the fence from us. It was an area that was probably 10' x 14'.

Here is a after picture of the area that the five bags came from, Lois certainly did a great job on it. It looks great.

We were both sore this morning from doing this work but we enjoyed the way things are looking when we complete the work.

We were going down to the other pond so I could fish some and spotted this area by the big lob lolly pine trees that had these small trees blooming, so the next thing you know Lois is pruning and cleaning out all the trash trees from around them. There must have been 15 - 20 of these trees.

I went and got the tractor and pulled some old logs out of the area and then used the brush hog to mow around some of the trees.

I then went down to the other pond and fished, ended up catching one bass, four crappie and 12 bluegill, the bluegill were all as big as my hand. I also caught 2 bass from the barn pond.

While I was at the other pond I checked on some of the trees and bushes we planted last year, we knew we had lost most of them because of the draught, but the ornamental cherry tree and one of the red bud trees were still alive.

Hope to be back at the farm in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

Latest golf cart

Here are some pictures of the golf cart I told you about in our last blog. It is going to be the work cart. It has a dump bed which will come in handy. When I get it to the farm I will take more pictures of it and post them. Until then have a great one.