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.

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/