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

August 12 Visit

We took a trip to the farm today to do some work, I wanted to spray the area again for the iris's, more mowing needs to be done. First thing I needed to do was go into town and get diesel fuel for the tractor. Everything is working well and got the grass sprayed, Lois wanted me to mow a lane down to the porch swing. I then headed to the area where we have the main camera, it was needing mowing bad the trees, small ones 2-3' tall we going to take thing over. As I was mowing there was a tree that had limb sticking out into the area where I was mowing, so instead of getting off the tractor and cutting these limbs down with a saw I decided to try and knock them off with the blade on the front of the tractor. We won't be doing that again. The limb came back and hit me in the forehead, it left a knot on my forehead and scratched it. Luckily it didn't knock me out. There is a picture of some trees 50-60 of them that I have been wanting to get rid of in this area. They take up about an area of 100' x 30', they are mostly sweet gum trees 1" to 4" diameter with alot of briar's growing up in them. Well here is the before picture and the after picture.

Before

After

I will come back and clean this area up even more and spray it with brush killer later this fall to help kill any trees and brush that may be left. While we were here working on this area I decided to move the game camera, I had picked out this tree and started clearing vines off of it. Lois made the comment that about 8' off the ground there was a nest in the vines where they all came together. I looked at it and said it looked like a squirrels nest, at about that time I grabbed some vines under the nest. The next thing I knew something stung me on the elbow. You got it, hornets nest, luckily only one hornet stung me and the rest didn't bother us. Needless to say we did not use this tree and moved the camera to another tree.

I spent the rest of the day mowing, I made sure to stay away from limbs sticking out that could do me harm.

I took down the camera from the south pond and brought it home, I want to mount it on a better support and will put it back up on the next trip. but it did have some good pictures on it.

To the farm today

We went to the farm today, on a Thursday, which is unusual for us. It was suppose to rain on Tuesday so we waited to go. It was a nice day, a little to hot but still got a lot of work done. There won't be any pictures today we did take the camera with us but we didn't take any pictures just to busy. We got there and the first thing was we saw two baby blue tailed skinks when I opened the door to the barn. I tried to take pictures of them but they were camera shy and won't stay still. Next we unloaded Camo Kirby, yes we were able to get her fixed without to much trouble. While I was unloading the hostas out of the trailblazer and looked down between my legs and there was a snake. He had apparently came out from under the boards were have there to make a ramp going up onto the concrete floor. Needless to say I don't like surprises. A little squeal and a jump was in order. After I calmed down I realized it was just a small snake, don't know what kind but I did help him along his way. I think I am going to get some of the stuff to put out around the barn to keep them away from it.

I then got the roundup out and sprayed the back of the barn to kill all the grass and weeds so we can plant iris's back there. Next we loaded up camo with the hostas I bought for $1 apiece, got 15 of them, got the tractor and we headed up to the lob lolly pines. I mowed some of the area under them, pushed some of the dead limbs out and we then planted the hostas.

Next I started mowing and spent the next two hours mowing, Lois went to Greenfield and bought us lunch and we had a little picnic at lunch time. We downloaded the pictures from the game cameras, I am going to have to move the camera that has been out there the longest, for some reason the deer have stopped coming by it like they use to. I have noticed that the spot on up the hill where I had put the mineral block out they are wearing this spot out so on the next trip I am going to move and see what we get.

That is all for now, we had a busy day.

Here a couple of pictures from the cameras

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.





Some ferns of a different type.






Wild morning glory vines








Some fungus growing on a dead tree






Big bird in the pond







Doe and fawn at the pond

July 21st visit

Went to the farm today, got there and first thing was to check and fill the batteries on Lois's golf cart, it was a little low so it was a good thing I checked it. Next was to hook up the battery charger to Jessie the pickup, I am going to leave it on her all day as the battery was dead when I left last week. See if that helps. I forgot the camera again today so there won't be any pictures and since it has only been a week since I downloaded the game cameras I won't do that. Give another week.
Today's visit is to mow and brush hog. I need to get the area down in fern valley mowed as the black berry bushes are trying to take over down there. On the way there I stopped to mow some around the big lob lolly pines. I started mowing down through them and wanted to make sure I didn't mow any of the flowering trees that we worked on in that area. We had marked them so we won't cut or mow them down. As I was going by one I noticed that one had fruit on it. I don't know if they were peaches or apricots. I got to looking and they were loaded with fruit. No I didn't take the time to pull any off will do that the next time we are there. We have about ten or twelve of these trees. As I was mowing further in this area I notice a box turtle trying to get away from the tractor, he at least had enough sense to head deeper into the timber. I mowed a little while here and then headed down into fern valley, I had just gotten down into it and looked to my left and saw a fawn moving into the timber, he looked like he wasn't very old as he was very wobbly. Started mowing, had about half of it done when I noticed another box turtle trying to get into the timber and he made it just fine. Once I finished down there I decided to drive around to make sure I had as much of the black berry bushes mowed as possible and saw a nice buck heading into the timber, he looked like he is going to have a nice rack. It looked like at least 6 points and it looked wide. The bucks are just starting to grow their antlers and the antlers are still covered in velvet. I then went to an area I had mowed last year that was needing it again. I had just enter this area and saw another fawn walk out the other end of it. He was a little older that the one I saw earlier.
I got several areas mowed before it started raining about 2 in the afternoon. I didn't see anything else to tell about, did find another big oak tree that had split and half of it had fallen. At least this one is not in an area that I will have to hurry to clean up.
Hopefully I will remember the camera the next time. There are some thing I want to take pictures of and post here for all to see.
Until then I hope you enjoy the stories.