We arrived Saturday and there was a good snow cover left from a storm on Thursday.
In the 2 days since 6" of snow fell, the deer have been absolutely digging up the turnip field.
It looks like 1000 head of cattle have been out there. But, if you get outside the boundary of the turnips, the snow is pretty much intact.
I made a monster batch of jerky this weekend.
I did three rotations thru the dehydrator and still had a couple of batches to freeze for later.
The fun part of this weather is following the deer tracks in the snow. It's only been two days since it fell so everything is pretty fresh.
Crossing the atv trail.
Out in the middle of fields.
Over the pond ice and across the dam.
They seem to like the stands of pines and cedars.
They bed at the base of them.
They also eat the buds off of certain types of pines - I think the white pines get hit the hardest.
They just chomp off the bud. Instead of growing the next summer, the tree just resets the bud.
A bed and stripped branches.
Sometimes they follow the established people and atv trails.
Sometimes they make their own and just bed down right in the middle of a field.
Super-highways and intersections.
Triple bedroom.
Chomp, chomp.
Between now and May 1, this kind of damage really gets worse. They don't have much to eat until things start growing.
How hungry do they have to be to eat pine needles and buds?
And the poor pines are also the favorite target for the rubs too.
The trees usually survive if they don't get stripped 360 degrees around the trunk.
I stopped to buy them a couple bags of corn but the store was out of it. I got this mineral/protein block instead.
Both Sydney and Chloe were out for short walks.
More goodies for the deer.
Joan and I took a drive in the Ranger since the weather was nice on Sunday. There were a few obstructions.
It took some work but we got thru eventually.
More goodies for the deer. I usually don't do much in the way of supplemental feeding but it's been a tough winter.
It's just a little pile in front of the cameras.
I had heard about another farm in Adams County that is going to be auctioned next week. I went over for a look. I'm not really in the market but would consider an upgrade.
The driveway crosses a creek and it was running strong due to the melt. Then it went up a snow covered bank I decided not to venture over there - on foot or in vehicle. Don't think that I'll be attending the auction.
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