April visit to the farm

I have not been to the farm since Saturday, March 22nd, a lot has changed since then. All the pasture areas have really grown, so much that one of the neighbors has asked to mow and bale some of the areas later this summer. The last time Lois and I were there, we had planted trees and shrubs, I checked on all of these and took pictures of them. You can barely see the red and white azaleas in this picture. The pink one's had already bloomed, the red and white one's were blooming. They all looked in good shape. I also planted a white dogwood in with these. The two red buds were also doing good, as was the Yoshino cherry tree.

Also checked on the 3 Hazelnuts plants that were planted last fall they were looking good. The Iris that was planted early this spring were doing good. The forsythia that we planted died for some reason.

On this trip I planted 3 female princess and 1 male prince hollies bushes, 2 rhubarb plants, a bunch of white tulips, a few pink tulips.

I also planted a Burr Oak tree,

a Sargent Crabapple,

Canadian Hemlock, Washington Hawthorne and Arrowwood Vibrunium. These were planted down by the south pond where we want to build our house.

Also took pictures of some of the trees and plants that are blooming on the farm, there was a tree that I have no idea what it is that has purplish flowers on it. See picture

There were several white dogwoods and a lot of white daffodils

Checked on the game camera and there was 585 pictures on it, you'll be able to see some of those on the other blog (Happy Trail Farm Game Camera Pictures) . All the corn was gone from the deer feeder and I didn't bring any to fill it up. It looked like coons have been trying to climb up to get to the corn.You can see the foot prints on the legs of the feeder.

I did do some fishing while I was there, did it all in the south pond as the other pond is still muddy looking. I ended up catching 32 crappie and 12 nice bluegill. I kept all the crappie as they will take over a pond if you don't get them out of a pond.

Gracie & Braxton at PaPa's and Lois's Farm

We went to the farm on Saturday while the kids were down for Easter, Lois didn't get to go which was a bummer. We took the golf cart to the farm and Gracie has named the cart Camo Kirby. Papa just has to camouflage it now. We didn't get any pictures of us riding on it at the farm but it did a great job. Mike (son-in-law) was impressed with it. Did get a picture of us riding on it at the house before we took it over. As you can see the kids enjoyed riding on it.
We also had a wiener roast, which meant we had to have a fire, which we didn't get any pictures of but as you will see in the following pictures, that Braxton had a ball playing in the remains of the old fires.
Gracie even got into the action of playing in the charcoal remains . Gracie even enjoyed the girl's porta potty that we have set up inside the barn.
We next went fishing, which was quite an event. Gracie has turned into a very good fisherman. Of course with her Uncle Brady teaching her how to fish we should have known that. She had help at the farm with her first two fish and then she caught the next 12 fish all by herself, one of which was a bass. Her brother Braxton, with help from his mom caught 2 and then her mom caught several more fish. Her mom also caught the biggest fish which was a 15" crappie. I caught one fish and Mike had several strikes on a lure but ended up catching a tree. It was a nice one!! Sorry Mike.
Mike's tree









This is what the farm is all about, we have had so much fun with our grand kids and kids at the farm this last year and this year, we can't begin to tell you. We can't wait for all of them to visit more.
All the trees we planted 2 weeks ago are doing fine, got more pictures from the game camera so you will need to go there to see them, I believe we had 130 pictures this time.

Gracie & Braxton

Gracie and Braxton are coming down today to visit Papa and Lois. We will be going to the farm one day during their visit. We plan on going fishing, downloading pictures from the game camera, having a bonfire/wiener roast and riding in the golf cart.
So stay tuned for pictures next week of our visit and new game pictures.

Planting trees and shrubs

We made a trip to the farm yesterday, and yes Lois got to go this time. We planted 20 azaleas, 1 Yoshino cherry tree that is about 15' tall, 2 red buds. These were planted on the slope on the west side of the south pond, just below the oak tree line. See photo of area.

Hopefully the area just below the tree line will look like Augusta Golf course in the spring by planting these flowering trees and shrubs.

We also planted 4 Forsythia along the fence line by the barn and some flowering bulbs down by the pond by the barn.

We also got to get some measuring done along the fence line on the west side of the property, we needed this so we can figure up how many trees will be needed to plant along that fence line. We also got to do a lot of dicussing about the plans we want to do with food plots, planting trees and such.

We also took some pictures of daffodils that we blooming on the property, filled the deer feeder, and downloaded 170 pictures from the game camera. Apparently I put it in the right place to get pictures!!! I may have to get another camera so I can put it in some other places. I am going to start another blog so I will have a place to put the game camera pictures.

New Farm Toy

We have a new toy for the farm, I have attached pictures of it. I am going to the farm on Tuesday and will bring the trailer home so we can load it up and take it to there. I have ordered knobby tires for the back of it, and we will be painting it in camocolors. Will probably add some sides to the bed in the back. Will post new pictures once it is painted and we have a name for it.

Fighting Bucks!!!!

I was at the farm last Monday to do some work on the south pond again, seems when we did the work last May we did not dig the spillway deep enough and the water from rains this winter had started going over the middle of the dam, which isn’t good. So again I hired a backhoe & operator and had him dig the spillway out deeper. I believe we have it this time.
While there I downloaded the latest pictures from the game camera. Had a lot of deer in these pictures. The best set of pictures were two button bucks trying to fight each other. I am going to load a couple of pictures in this post so you can see them. In the background of these pictures you can see my christmas present from my wife. Yes it is a deer feeder (we have started calling it a game feeder as it will attract more than just deer), it has only been there for a few weeks.
I also did some fishing while I was there and caught 9 crappie and 1 bass. This day it was windy and temps were in the low forties.

Shape of Texas

I don't know if anyone noticed the new picture I added to the right side of the blog, it shows an outline of the farm. It is shaped like the state of Texas, I notice this the day we were at the farm looking to buy it. It seemed funny that we were from Texas, wanting to leave Texas and now we were looking at buying a piece of property that was shaped like Texas.