August 22nd - 23rd trip to the farm

This trip over to the farm was more of a relaxing trip and a trip to get a tractor. We got there on Friday and went to Union City, Tn to look at tractors, there is a Kubota and a John Deere dealer located there. Well as luck would have it the Kubota dealer had a tractor just like we wanted that someone else had ordered and didn't take. We didn't even make it to the John Deere dealer. I hope to have pictures when we go to the farm on the next trip which should be Sept 6-7. Of course we don't have any pictures from this trip due to the fact that we forgot the camera. One trip we leave the camera at the farm and the next we leave it at home, what can I say???

We didn't spend much time at the farm as we went to an auction the next day and spent most of the day at the auction. I did however get the deer feeder set up and filled it with corn. One of the problems we have had with the deer feeder is coons climbing up the legs to get to the spreader and causing all the corn to come out. I am going to spray the legs on the feeder with WD-40 to see if this will keep them from being able to climb. It will be interesting to see how the deer are affected by this. I did put some Black Magic deer attractant down by the trophy rock so hopefully this will attract them.
So stay tuned to see what all this will bring.

August 16th trip to the farm

Well we made it over to the farm sooner this time, we didn't wait a full month to go over. I wanted to check out the dove hunting prospects and check the game camera's. The new camera had used up the batteries already, I knew I shouldn't have bought that brand of battery. The other camera had been moved about 1 inch around the tree so it wasn't aimed in the right direction. I can only assume that a coon or deer bumped against it. I do know the coons had been climbing up onto the deer feeder when I had it set out there trying to get to the corn so it would make sense that they would investigate the camera.

We had a great time at the farm, it was a spur of the moment trip on Saturday afternoon, so it was around 5:00 pm before we got there. We had stopped in McKenzie and bought sandwiches at Subway and then went on out to the farm. Once there we unloaded the blazer, loaded fishing equipment onto the golf cart along with the computer to download the camera's. We stopped at the first camera and downloaded it, that is when I found out the batteries were dead. We went to the next camera and downloaded the pictures from it. There were 276 pictures, which I will discuss later, as we had a new visitor make an appearance on the camera.

Our daughter had purchased us a little horn for the golf cart which Lois had mounted on the roof support bar on the riders side of the cart, the horn was red in color. I had just gotten done with the camera and had sat down to leave when a humming bird zipped right by Lois's head and went to the horn thinking it was a flower. It was comical as he hovered there trying to figure out what to do. Lois said it sounded like a 747 when he flew by her ear.

We then headed to the south pond, ate our supper of subway sandwiches and started fishing. Lois wasn't going to fish and she always carries a set of pruning shears in the golf cart to trim briars that may grow along our patch. Well she had spotted a vine growing up on one of the oak trees and when I turned around from fishing, she was over cutting this vine. I said "Lois do you get poison ivy?" She said " is that what this is". I said "yes it is". Well luckily she doesn't get it as nothing has shown up 2 days later. She did come down and start fishing. She was using a beetle spin on an ultralight fishing rig and ended up catching 4 bluegill, 5 crappie and a small bass. I was using purple worm rig and caught 5 bass in the 2 pound range. It was just a beautiful evening, the temperature was just right, no bugs, real relaxing way to spend the end of the day.

The new visitor to the game camera is a hawk, he must have caught a mouse, snake or something right in front of the camera area and we got three pictures of him. Just a reminder that if you click on the picture it will enlarge it

We spent the night in McKenzie at the motel, Sunday morning we were up and at the farm around 8:30, we did a little fishing. Lois again was using the ultralight fishing rig but this time I had tied a 3" rapala lure on it. She went to her favorite spot between 2 cedar trees that has a limb out over the water that has bag worms on it. Well it wasn't long and she hooked a fish. It was causing quite a ruckus so I went over to lend some support and give some coaching. Well some 8 - 10 minutes later she landed a 22" channel cat that looks like it would weight about 4-5 lbs. And to keep the record straight, I did not catch a fish this morning!!!!

We spent the rest of the day working on the barn, it has a lot of leaves, spider webs, wasp nests and dirt in it. So we have been doing a lot of cleaning. I also said in an earlier post that we had built some shelves in it and a rack for hanging tools.

I am going to change the tool rack area, by putting up plywood across this area so I can hang more tools.

Here are some before pictures of the trash that is in some areas of the barn, I will post after pictures in a few weeks.

You often find unexpected things when you do cleaning like this, one of the things we found was a snake's shedded skin, I took pictures of this skin next to a measuring stick, I would call it a yard stick but it is 48" long so it is a 4' stick. Anyway I could not believe how long it measured. 53", I could not keep it straight when I took the pictures, but you can see it is curled in several places.

This is one of Lois's favorite things at the farm, driving the golf cart around, we did spend some time just going to different areas to look at ways to mow, upgrade, clear timber, etc.

We also love seeing the wild flowers, butterflys and the wild birds.

We were on our way into McKenzie Saturday nite and the sun was setting in the west with a pretty sunset and the moon has come up and it was a full moon, it was so pretty. The picture doesn't do it credit.

We are going back this weekend, leaving on Friday and coming back Saturday, hope to have the deer feeder up and going, hope to finish cleaning. Want to see about a tractor and go to an auction. So we should have a lot to tell about when we get back.
I will be posting new game pictures on the other blog site.

August 1st visit

I haven't posted anything lately, even though we did make a trip to the farm on August 1 & 2. This is about that visit, it was a work visit, as I wanted to build shelves and a rack to hold things in the barn. We did download the game camera and got some great pictures of some nice deer. I took pictures of the some of the work but forgot the camera at the farm so you will have to wait until we get back there and get it. We did set up one of the new camera's. New cameras, I was at Walmart the other day and happened to be in the sale aisle and found two game cameras on sale, so I bought them. We put one of them up in an area that we had gotten some pictures of deer earlier in the year. We put a trophy rock out to help attack and hold the deer in the area. On the next trip we are going to put out the deer feeder at this location to see what we can attract. We didn't do any fishing on this trip. All work, of course I had to pick the hottest weekend to go and do this work. On Saturday it got up to 98 degrees and Friday was 2 degrees cooler.
While we were working in the barn I found a shed snake skin, I pulled it out and we measured it, 53" long. Will have pictures of it on the next post.
Here are some of the pictures from the game camera,
Nice young buck.







Another young buck







Another young'un







Get them coming to the trophy rock when they are young







Another new dog that is crossing the property

Latest visit to the farm

Well Lois and I made another trip to the farm on the 4th of July, it was a beautiful day, the temperature was great. Just a great day. We didn't do any work, we just fished and downloaded pictures from the game camera. I also put Gracie's blue bird house back up after fixing it. Hopefully it will have birds in it next year. The last time we were at the farm fishing we didn't do very good, Lois caught the biggest fish but I caught the most, which was a total of 4 fish. This trip we ended up keeping 11 fish







The red eared sunfish were big and I was surprised that we caught so many of them, which Lois caught most of them and I caught the crappie. I also caught a couple of bass, this one was on a top water lure which is always fun to do .







We also downloaded pictures from the game camera, here are some of the pictures, this one is of a young buck in velvet







This next picture is of the newest addition to the farm.














This picture is of the local coyote who doesn't look very good, a little mangy







Here's a picture of another coyote who looks a little better, he looks younger also







There were 243 pictures on the game camera and I will be updating the other blog soon. When we were leaving the farm across the road there was a doe with 3 fawns. Didn't get any pictures of it but it was cute.

Latest trip to the Farm

We went to the farm on June 19th, yes I said we, this is the first trip for Lois since March 11 and we planted all the trees. Today's visit was to try out the new fathers day gift I got, a weed eater that you can use to cut brush and small trees. It worked out great, you can cut brush/trees up to 3" thick with it without any problem. We also had a temporary electric fence that the renter had put up to keep his cattle in, he had taken it down but had not picked up the actual wire, I had asked him twice to pick it up. Well I picked it up today and it is now part of the metal going to the recycling company, I figure if I have to pick it up I will get the most from it, exercise and money. They had also baled the pastures, we counted 28 large bales down by the gate going to the neighbors property.

Had to change the front tire on the golf cart, it was flat the last time I was to the farm and I didn't have any tools to change it. That was a new experience, had to use the jack from the Trailblazer to do it. Once it was changed we were off to show Lois how much things had changed at the farm.

3 azaleas out of twenty had died which isn't to bad, 1 hazelnut nut bush was cut down when they cut the grass for hay and it should come back. Other than that most of the plants looked good. The rhubarb plants were still growing.

We did fish in the ponds, but didn't get started until late in the afternoon about 2:30 and Lois caught one crappie and I caught 2 crappie and one small bass. Didn't keep any of them.

We did download the pictures from the game camera, there were 262 pictures on the camera. Still not any fawns showing up yet. These are the new things on the camera, saw two new dogs, a rabbit, first rabbit we have seen on the property and a three legged deer.

While we were there fishing by the pond at the barn I heard a bob white whistling, we left that pond and went to the other pond to fish, when we came back to the barn a quail flew across the road when we were almost to the barn. Then he stayed out in the open for us to watch for about 3-4 minutes. I just love to watch and hear them. I also had to pick up Gracie's Blue bird house as it had come apart. The blue birds had nested in it, hopefully it had not come apart while they were in it. I will build it a little stronger this time and put it back up.

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.