Blood and Dirt

The title is a little joke between Lois and I, it seems like everything I do I end up dirty and bleeding. Especially at the farm where there are a lot of briar's and things that can scratch you. So on the trip I took to the farm today when I got home I was dirty and bleeding. The bleeding was from briar's thank goodness.

Yes I did go to the farm today and did some work, the heat index was 105 degrees there so I tried to get there early. First thing, once I got there was to spray the new weeds coming up around the barn, a lot of cockle burs had started coming up. Mixed up some roundup and sprayed clear around the barn. When I got ready to leave later today they were already shriveling up.

I told you in the last post how tall the grass was here is a picture of it

Next was to go and count the number of bales that they had baled this week, there was a total of 30 round bales. Which is two more than what they did last year and didn't cut as much grass as they did last year.

As I was riding around the property counting I saw one of the Indigo bunting's and tried to get pictures of it. If he would have stayed where I originally saw him I could have gotten a great picture of him. But you will have to try to see him in this picture, he is middle then a little to the right side. If you click on the picture it should enlarge to view it better.

As I was going up the hill to count the bales there were turkeys running down the trail by the loblolly pines, yes I actually got to see them this time.

Next I went over to the oak tree that had fallen down during the early spring. I have been wanting to get this tree cut up so today I started on it. It is easy cutting, the worse part is having to stop and clean/clear away what you have cut. I worked on this for about an hour, still have a lot more to do, as you can see from the photos. We will take all the small limbs and make a brush pile somewhere for the small animals to hide in and the larger logs we will cut to use for fire wood.

I next took the tractor and tried to level the area where they fed the cattle the round bales of grasses and hay. This area had gotten rutted and it is really rough to drive the golf carts over. It is going to take more than one try to get this leveled. Pictures show this area.

I had noticed that some of the trees/bushes that we had planted earlier this spring looked stressed from all the heat we have had the last few days. I decided that I would load the plastic tank into the front bucket of the tractor and see if I could water the ones that looked stressed. I have got to get a pump set up to fill this tank from the ponds. My plan to syphon water from the ponds into this tank did not work, I had to use a bucket to fill the tank. So now on to plan B to get water for the trees and plants.

Here are some pictures of trees I need to cut up and a picture of the one tree we have cut up and removed.

I also took a picture of the Monarda, it is blooming and doing so well.

We also lost the dogwood that we planted, don't know what happened to it, here are some pictures of it. It appears that something dug it up or grabbed it and pulled it out of the ground as there was a hole that you can see in the pictures.

Hopefully I will be going to the farm next Tuesday and will have the plan B ready and working to water the trees and plants. It is suppose to cool down a little so I will be able to cut on the oak tree some more.

See ya then.

June 16

We went to the farm on the 16th, we hadn't been there for two weeks. Needed the time away, as the farm is like a tranquilizer for me. Steve hasn't cut the grass yet as they have been getting a lot of rain. They said that it has rained about every other day. You could tell it as the grass is three foot tall and all the things we have planted are doing so well.

The first thing on the agenda was to go into Greenfield and get fuel for the tractor and Jessie the pickup truck. Once back with the fuel I filled up Jessie and then got the little portable air compressor out and aired up the tires her tires. They needed it as each was down around 15 psi and they needed to be up around 40 psi.

My plan on going to the farm was to cut up the cedar tree that had fallen sometime back. With some excellent help from my partner in life we made short work of the cedar tree. We took all the limbs from the tree and piled them up to create a shelter for small animals. The trunk of the tree was about 28' long, so I cut it up and saved two sections of it to be used later.

We then went on a tour of the property to see how thing were growing. Of course I forgot the camera again so there will not be any pictures. Rest assured with all the rain they have gotten the work I have done weed eating around the trees and plants has helped. Although they will need it again soon. Never ending work. The newly planted hostas and lillys were growing good, however the ivy we planted on the hillside by the dam did not look so good.

In planting the ivy last time I had noticed a grove of trees down below the dam, actually growing on the hillside next to the area where we planted the ivy. I told Lois that these looked like Paw-Paw trees. I looked at them, but could not see any Paw-Paws growing on them. I also did not have our tree book with us. So this trip I brought it along. Everything I looked at and read in the book points to these being Paw-Paw trees. We will see. The reason I tell this is that on my grandfathers farm there was, as they call them a Paw-Paw patch and I can remember eating them, they are a cross between a banana and eating custard. The other thing is wild animals love to eat them.

All the plants look good, the crab apple trees are getting nibbled on by the deer. I think I will get some human hair and spread it around these trees to see if I can keep the deer away from them for a while to help them grow.

We then downloaded the pictures from the game cameras. There were 100 pictures on one and 32 on the other. We are seeing a lot of Indigo Buntings at the farm. They are so pretty. Here is a picture of one off the Internet.










I will have to learn more about these birds and if they will come to a bird feeder. That may be a project to set up a bird feeder with a gamera on it.

When we were getting ready to cut up the tree we heard what we thought was some turkeys talking to each other up towards the loblolly pines. They were doing a lot of calling to each other. It is the first time we had heard them in a while. Well Lois did see them later on going through the corn field next to us. She said you would see them poking their head up over the corn.

I will be posting some of the game camera pictures later in the week on the other blog site.

We then fired up Jessie and took her for a ride down the road. She seemed to like the Tennessee hills and curves. This is the first time we have driven her out on the road. I do believe we heard her yell yahoo a couple of times.

See ya all next time.

A trip to the farm on June 2 was a beautiful day and we left early to get there. Uneventful drive over, once we got there everything looked great. We had some new plants the neighbors gave us to plant, hostas, iris’s and some ivy. The hostas we planted around one of the big loblolly pine trees,







the iris’s we planted down by the south pond next to the white birch tree. The ivy we started on the slope next to the dam on the south pond. Hopefully this will get a good start here and we will be able to get starts off of it and get it to growing on the whole dam.
Next we went around checking some of our plants, the one crab apple tree that I had planted a year ago and that I had mowed off this spring, has new life. It has grown 6-8” since I mowed it.

All of the plants look good, hopefully we will get some rain in the next couple of days to help them out.

Azaleas

Hydrangea

Red Bud

Next we swapped out the disks on the camera’s, yes I no longer have to take the computer to the farm. Since the cost of 1 GB scandisks have gone down, I was able to buy four of them for what it use to cost for one of them. The new site of the one camera has turned out good, although I don’t have many pictures from it the ones I do have are good. I also took pictures of the places we have put minerals/trophy rock out for the deer. They sure have been using these spots.

As we were leaving the one area where the game camera is at I noticed something up the hill side, I asked Lois if she seen anything up the hill and she said she saw an orange flag up there, well here is the orange flag.

It is called butterfly weed and I just love this color of orange, there were two different plants of it growing here. The butterflys really like this plant and if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you will see a butterfly.

Here is a picture of wild daisy's that are growing on the farm.

We then went in to eat, when we got back Lois cleaned Jessie the truck out with the vacuum cleaner. Here is a better picture of Jessie.

I pulled two of the posts out of the ground that were used to worm cattle when they use to be on the farm. They were set in concrete, so it took a some working with them to pull them out.

Next I went out and started weed eating and spraying around some of the little loblolly pine trees. They are growing fast and by cutting the weeds and then spraying the weeds with round up, the pines don’t have to fight the weeds for water and nutrients.

Hope you enjoy the new pictures from the new camera location.

To see more pictures from this camera and the other camera go to the other blog site http://htfgamecamerapics.blogspot.com/

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.