Lots of Excitement This Week

First of all, we had rain.

We had about 1/2" on Friday and 1/4" on Thursday.  Yahoo!!!

And, I hired a dozer guy to clean up my trails.  He decided to do it right away  (this weekend).

And, I got two young, strapping boys to work as farm hands.  John and Steve are the sons of Joan's physical therapist, Andy.

We started by giving them a tour of the place on the Ranger.

Then, I put them right to work in the pumpkin patch. The weeds really prospered with a little rain.

There is no good way to get the weeds.  We tried hoes and pulling them.  Finally, we just crawled around and yanked.

There were alot of weeds when we started but we made a dent in them.

This is the kind of challenge that we faced.  The pumpkins in the foreground have been liberated from the weeds.  There are more pumpkins to be found in that snarl in the background.

We really made alot of progess.  I was able to roundup the large areas in between the rows.

The zucchini harvest is pretty strong right now but may be dwindling soon.

I think that I have a bug boring into the stems.  Not every plant is affected...yet.

John and Steve also helped with some mowing.  And then we cleared some downed trees and brush.

After a long day's work, they checked out the dozer guy's progress on the trails.

All my trail cameras had these blurred images...

Then we did a little shooting.

First with a 22 pistol.  Then with a 40 cal semi auto.

Then with the 44 magnum - the Dirty Harry gun.  We shot targets and also blew up some old stale beer cans.

The 44 is a handful.

Then we shot with a 22 rifle.  I had been in South Dakota prairie dog hunting last week and I left my other rifles in Mason (by mistake).

I was exhausted and had a beer on the couch.  These guys went fishing at the pond.

Proof that there are bass in my pond.

Sunday morning we stacked and "plotsavered" a couple of fields.  We also cut up more downed trees.  The boys fought off doves, pigeons and wasps to take a look out of the high rise stand.

Then we decided to shoot a few clays with the shotguns.

Steve was a natural.  He broke the first clay that he shot at and then didn't miss too many afterwards.

This is "Myrtle", the walking sprinkler and another birthday gift.

Believe it or not, there are actually some beans up amid those weeds.  I sprayed the field with roundup and the boys put up the plotsaver tape.  If we get a little more rain, there's still a chance for this plot.

The sunflower field looks terrible.  I'm not sure if it has a chance or not.  We worked on it to give it a chance.

Here I am clearing the line of sight for my new camera.  I had just mounted it on a tree.

Here's the dozer clearing trees right around where I had put the camera.  Luckily, he must of spotted it on the tree and he left that one tree standing.

Lots of progress this weekend.  Dozers and farm hands really help alot.