Going to the Farm

Lois and I will be going to the farm tomorrow, for Lois this will be her first trip over there since thanksgiving. It gives her a chance to slow down from her job when we go there. Lois bought me a deer feeder for Christmas and we are going over to put it out and start feeding the deer, turkeys, raccoons and etc. as this seems to the animals that show up once you start feeding corn, I also bought a mineral block to put out. We are going to put the feeder down by where I have the game camera so hopefully I will get more good photos of the animals on the property. We will spend a relaxing day there, we may stop in to check on well drilling as there are two drillers that live just down the road from the farm. Hope to have more photos to put on the blog site of the farm. Will also down load photos from the game camera.

Thanksgiving at the Farm

We spent thanksgiving day at the farm, Lois and I, Liz, Scott, Darren, Chad and Carmen. We were suppose to have a wiener roast but decided to eat at a buffet in Mackenzie sometime during the day. We were able to do a lot of different thing that day including fishing,

shooting,


, exploring and of course we had a bonfire
.
We were so busy during the day that at about 4:30 pm I said that we needed to head into town to eat. Of course by that time the restaurant had closed, so we headed home and stopped at a McDonald's for Thanksgiving Diner. Everyone had a great time and we are going to do it again next year and include more of the family.

Work at the farm needs to be done, work on the dam at the south pond needed to be done, a washout up on one side of the draw that feeds into the south pond needs to be filled and an area up on the hill needs to be cleared of brush and dirt. I hired a backhoe and operator to do the work. He on the south end of the dam, it had washed out over 7 feet deep. We were able to get enough dirt from the side of the hill to fill this in. We then cut a new ditch into the side of the hill on the east end of the dam to create a spillway for the dam. See attached pictures. We were able to use the brush and dirt from the area up on the hill to fill in the washout on the south side of the draw that goes into the pond. I was also able to haul a bunch of metal that we had picked up from numerous places on the property and haul it to the recycle plant in Huntingdon. We also had to have a tree cut down that had died down by the barn. It was leaning towards the barn and was also next to the electrical wires that come into barn and property. The reason the pond looks so dirty in these pictures are the cows were still on the property and they would get in the ponds and keep them stirred up and dirty.

Birds

One of the things that has been exciting for me at the farm is all the different birds I have seen at the farm. There are several pairs of bluebirds that I have seen. One pair stays close to the barn. I have seen numerous pairs of cardinals and jays. The bluebirds were the most fun to watch. I will be building some bluebird houses to put up. I also saw a Pileated Woodpecker near the farm (I have included a picture of one). We have a lot of swallows that nest at the barn. We also have quail, turkeys and hawks. I have started a diary of the different birds I have seen and will update the blog with the different birds. I will also be adding some wood duck house with hopes of attracting some.

Turkey Hunting

In April, Brady and his family came to Tennessee for the first time to see the farm. I met them in Greenfield and we stayed in McKenzie at the Best Western for 5 days. While there we discovered that McKenzie had a Rural King store. When we visited it on one of the first days Colton my grandson found a John Deer pedal tractor that he liked, so we bought it. You will see him riding it at home in a picture I have attached. We had a good time at the farm. Got some work done with Brady and Nicole's help, cutting down trees, picking up trash and framing of walls inside the metal building. Brady did do some turkey hunting without any luck. He also got to find out about the cows. He put up a portable blind one day and was going to use it the next day, the cows got back into our pastures and they proceeded to knock down the blind and then pooped all over it. Needless to say Brady was not happy. We also fished in the ponds, Brady caught a 3.5 lb bass and Nicole caught a 4.5 lb channel cat out of the barn pond and I caught several bass and crappie out of the south pond. The kids really liked the farm and they did get to see some deer one evening. I also got one of the nicest birthday presents ever.

Cows

We were leasing the property to a rancher to run his cattle on our pasture. This turned out to be quite a learning experience for me. I went to the property in March to plant some trees and grasses and to also mark some of the flowering trees on the property. I planted 2 apple tree, some pompass grass, a lilac bush and a flowering quince. Upon my return to the property a week later the pompass grass had been pulled out of the ground, apple trees had been pushed over and numerous trees that I had marked with plastic ribbon, had the ribbon pulled off. Another thing I have found out about cows is that when you change something on/in the area they live in they have this urge to mark it once it is changed. To do this they will poop all over the thing that is changed. I will tell more about this later on.

These are pictures of some of the wildlife Lois and I saw the first time we visited the farm in Dec. 2006. We spent 2 days at the farm, we met the man from the forestry service and he did a forestry plan for the farm, which will allow us to get reduced taxes and help us enroll in government plans.