Latest Trip to the Farm

First off I forgot to take the camera with me so there won't be very many pictures. I did take a couple with my phone and some of fish when I got home. There were also 237 pictures on the game camera. Most of this post will have to do with stories.

The purpose of this trip was to meet with the Weakley County Electrical Company, they are the people that handle all of you electrical needs, getting power to the property, setting poles, transformers and such. We are wanting to build a small building that we can live in about half of the year until we are ready to build our house. To do this we have to move the electrical power that is already on the farm, further back onto the farm.

I found out in order for the power company to install this we are going to have to build a gravel road back to the house site before they will do it. So I met with them we laid out a route back to the house site, some 1650'. Now I will have to set up a meeting with the backhoe gentlemen that I have been using to see what the road will cost.

I also talked with a water well drilling company to see what it will cost and

what we will have to do to drill a well. We also contacted Morton buildings to see what a building will cost. This is all new to me so it should be interesting.

The man that use to have cattle on the farm had asked if he could bale the pasture areas as it had grown up pretty good. In an earlier post I stated that the grass had gotten up over my knees. Well they had cut it and while I was there they were raking it. I talked to the men doing the raking and he told me that he could not believe how many quail he had seen so far. He stated that he had seen three separate coveys. Apparently letting the grass get taller had allowed them to spread out. Hopefully it will help them nesting and multiplying. We left a lot of the grassy areas unmowed.

When I went down to the game camera I scared turkeys out of the area. These are the first turkeys I have seen since last fall. There were also some pictures on the game camera of turkeys this time.

I believe the tall grass has helped these guys also.

While there I also realized that I had a flat tire on the front of the golf cart, so once I found that out and realized that I would not be able to change it as I do not have any tools at the farm to do that, I was limited on what I was going to be able to do the rest of the day. One of the first thing for the next trip to the farm will be some tools for such thing as this. With limited mobility I decided that I would spend the rest of the time fishing in the pond by the barn. I ended up catching 11 crappie and 8 bass. I brought all the crappie home and cleaned them. Now the story of the bass, I have wondered what kind of shape the pond was in, health wise for the bass. I caught 3 bass that were not over six inches long, another 4 bass in the 1 to 2 pound range and one bass that was around 5 pounds. I would say that the pond is in good shape. I need to get all the crappie out that is the reason I keep them whenever I catch them.

Latest trip to the farm

Went to the farm Monday, May 19th, left at 5:45 a.m., I went to the garage and opened the garage door of the condo, outside walking down the middle of the driveway 20' away was a wild turkey. He didn't get scared, he just kept walking, it was a young male called a jake as he had a short 2-3" beard.

Got to the farm and got busy spraying thistles and brush. Downloaded 484 pictures off the game camera. We are hoping that there will be some pictures of fawns as there were three does from last months pictures that sure were fat. Well I can tell you they are even fatter this time and no fawns. It did appear that the last week of pictures two of the does did not appear in any of the pictures so they may have had young ones just not moving much.

Checked on all the plants that have been planted, everything looked good except the one burr oak and the Canadian juniper, both of these had been dug up. I imagine that either a coyote or squirrel did this.

The grass has gotten so tall, it is up over my knees. The neighbor is going to mow and bale it for hay sometime later this week. Regardless it was beautiful looking across the field. A lot of wild yarrow and wild daisies were blooming

Fished in the pond by the barn, the pond had cleared up some, caught 12 crappie, 3 big bluegill and 2 bass.

Last time I was at the farm I put up a blue bird house, as there were a lot of bluebirds in the area. I figured it was to late in the season for them to nest, not so blue birds have taken up residence in Gracies Blue Bird House.

Quail

Another thing that happened when I was at the farm the last time was I got to see the quail again. I had not seen any since December of 2006. When I got to the farm I was walking down to the pond by the barn to check on the Hazelnut bushes we had planted. When I got there I heard the familiar sound of quail flushing from the grass and there they were a couple of quail. I think that the grass being able to grow now that the cows are no longer on the property will help the quail multiply.

More Pics

While I was at the farm last weekend one of the things I did was to mount the first Blue Bird house. I named it Gracie's Blue Bird House. There are a lot of Blue birds that I have seen at the farm this is the first of many house we plan to put up.

The other thing I wanted to show was the size of the bluegills that I caught while I was there. I wasn't fishing for them but the next time I go over I will be fishing for them as they should be spawning then.

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.