Sunday, August 26, 2018

Plot Planting, Pond Process, Pumpkin Progress, Etc


 It's been raining for weeks and the lime guy hasn't had a chance to get it spread on my fields.  On Friday night, we met him and finally got it done.

Saturday morning I was racing the rain but I got the plots disked, dragged and planted. A mixture of oats, brassica and peas in this field.

 And a mixture of clovers and rape in this field.  It drizzled a little Saturday afternoon so I was still able to get some other stuff done.
 On Sunday morning, it opened up and we got another inch of rain.
 Which wasn't a bad thing for the fields that I had just planted.
For your amusement, here's a link to some foxes frolicking in a park where I walk after work.  Fox Frolic
 So while waiting out the rain I tried out this cool laser target that I got for my birthday.
 It comes with a compact and full size Glock imitation.
 On Saturday I gave the pond another treatment.
 It looked much better but there was still some green slime on the one end.  I think the 5+ inches of rain in the last two weeks might have diminished the effectiveness of previous treatments.
 The slime on one end.
Sunday morning after the rain - no evidence of the slime.
 The pumpkin patch is going wild - both pumpkins and weeds.
 It's so dense in there there's no way to get thru the field.
 I walked around the edges to check things out.
 I saw a couple of rotten pumpkins but some nice ones too.
 Also ornamentals.



Even some butternut squash.  I did find a few zucchinis and Joan was making bread.
Looking like a good harvest this year.
Several of the clover plots were just overtaken with grass or weeds.  I did manage to bush-hog some of them.
 Joan saw a deal on Amazon so I picked up a couple of Bushnell cameras.  I have a few older ones on their last legs.  I thought the Cuddeback looking at this salt lick wasn't showing enough activity so I set this new camera on the same settings to see if there were more triggerings.
In the first night there were - this doe never showed up on the Cuddeback.  It's old and has been back to the factory for warranty work.
But here's some turkeys that it took
 Orchard field clover is great.
 When the rain stopped Sunday morning, I decided to break in some new insulated hunting boots.  I got about a mile in them and my feet were sweating.
Driveway field - clover pretty good.  The spray did a good job on the grass in this field.  I walked right across it to a camera.
It didn't trigger until I was this close.
 This is the other new camera position.  I hoped to catch traffic all the way down that trail behind me.  It didn't trigger until I was this close.
But, on its first night, it picked up several coyotes.

An absolutely loaded persimmon tree.
 Moth and caterpillar in the barn.

I had another interesting education on Pike County real estate taxes this week.  Everything that I was told about the CAUV program last year has been reversed.  I'm still pursuing the OTFL (forestry tax abatement) program.
I broke the disk again, the John Deere was cutting out, and I overheated an atv dragging the fields.  I guess that I'm tough on equipment. And the internet has been out for two weeks,  Frontier Communications says they will try to assign a Tech to the problem by September 5.  Really?  The log showed that it went out on August 5.  A month - really?  No manpower available - really?
But there are flowers in the prairie plot.

Trailcams 8/26/18


Mom enjoying an apple while fawns sample clover.  
 There were two weeks on the cards so there were a lot of images to sort.  These cameras  by the apple trees had about 800 images each.
 This was interesting - what is it?
 I thought so - an owl.
 Lots of coyotes.
Lots of turkeys.
 I liked this one - be sure to check out the shadows in the background.
 Possums like apples too?
 Turkey parades.








 The coyotes showed up in many of the same spots as the turkeys - coincidence?


 Feral cat.
 And bucks.




 Mutant Jr.