Locust trimming, spraying, and pecan planting

Locust trimming

I finally got to trimming the locust trees.  There are a lot of locust trees here!  The locust tree beetle is really doing a lot of damage to these trees.  I even saw some of the bugs!

Lots of trimmings!  I wanted to burn these but they are too green!  I will let dry a bit before burning.

Spraying the trees!

I didn't get any pictures of it, but I sprayed the bejesus out of the trees!  Not much to see anyway.  I sprayed the locust with dormant oil mixed with carbaryl (sevin), dormant oil on the remaining fruit trees, and deer repellant on the white pines, forsythia, choke berry/cherry, and elderberry!  Whew.  Lots of spraying!  Really.  It took most of a day!

Northern Pecans and Hican planting

Seems like I am missing a weekend here somewhere, but I can't figure out where, so I am sticking this in here!   The pecans and hicans arrived!  They are not of great quality - the roots are barely formed and the grafts are still wrapped.  I hope they survive!  

I had to plant these deep to accept the long root stem on these trees.  Also, I unwrapped the grafts, that seemed very new...

At 60 feet apart, it took the top half of the field to hold all of these!  I will need to cage these so that the deer don't damage and so the farmer doesn't run them down when he makes hay!

Ratatouille and locust tree deer damage

I made Ratatouille!  (kind of)

Remember those eggplant that I had no plans for?  Well, here is what I did with them.  I made 

Ratatouille.  Used all of those eggplant that I picked last weekend, some of the tomatoes, and some canned tomato sauce from last year (well, from a previous year).  I also used a jar of my home-canned salsa because I didnt have the right spices.  It was risky and almost ruined things, but it ended up turning out quite good.  Although, I doubt if anyone who has eaten Ratatouille before would recognize this as ratatouille - LOL.

This ratatouille tastes awesome over white rice!

Most nutcrackers can't crack hickory nuts! 

I learned this the hard way!  Bought these off Amazon.  Fortunately, I was able to return even after they broke. 

I actually repaired this one and broke it a second time.  I guess I will keep it now since I did get some of the nuts cracked with it.

This one, however, broke on the very first attempt!  I am not sure it wasn't actually a defective casting rather than just being overwhelmed by the hickory nuts!

Deer-tree damage

I walk the property usually when I first get to the farm.  This time I noticed something when I toured the locust tree grove.  Freaking deer!  They really hit the locust trees hard this year - maybe 15-20 trees are severely damaged. :(   The good news is that NONE of the fruit trees got scrapped up this year (so far anyway).  The tree cages seem to work! Yay

First mowing of the season

First mowing

I mowed a lot of the place, but some wasn't in need (back toward the mountain) and some was too wet.  The cub cadet really moved though.  Blades nice and sharp and was able to go everywhere on those hills!

The orchard really needed it.  Was too tall in many places.

Much of the black walnut area was "field" grass so it was a challenge.  It will get easier as the grass comes under control.

Lots of field grass here too.  

I don't plan on mowing all these areas forever, only as long as the trees are too small to fight with the grass!

New tool sharpener attachment

The "wide blade" attachment for my worksharp came in last week so I got to try it out over the weekend.  Overall it is well made and seems to keep the tool in good alignment (possibly  even better than the "under the disk" default method)!  Also, it is  nice in that it comes with some templates for determining the bevel angles and for setting the bevel angles.  The basic worksharp only allows for between 20-35 degrees (if I recall).   The only problem I have noticed so far is kind of unavoidable:  big blades take longer to sharpen!

Look at all those angles!  15 to 60 degrees!  The big planer blade I was doing was a 15 degree bevel so this capability really helped.

Saw-milling 

I continued to work on milling up the old tree trunks laying in front of the barn.  I don't really need the lumber right now, but those logs are rotting and in the way! Also, I could really use more wood chips for mulch for all the new trees.

I was surprised to find a decent sized locust log in the pile.  It milled into some nice boards and some good wood stakes.  It had degraded a bit, but not near as bad as many of the oak logs.  Most of the oak that I have milled this past weekend had the sap wood all rotted out.  I was able to get some 5x5's out of them, but little else.  Oak is not great for fence/arbor posts, so I ordered some copper napthenate solution to treat them with.  I wish I had more decent sized locust trees!

Locust boards from 4(?) year old log!

I thought about using this locust log to make a post, but the pattern of insect damage really didnt work in my favor.  

I brought the rough sawn boards over to the shop to clean them up with the 19" bandsaw.  I have a carbide tipped blade on it and it goes through this lumber like butter!  

Pretty Spring Flowers

We stopped by Mom's place for a visit.  Her flowers were really out in force!

Choke cherry and choke berry planting

Choke Cherries and choke berries

The ground was finally was dry enough (just barely) to plant the remaining trees from my Cold Stream Farm order.  30 Choke Cherries and 25 choke berries.  They get planted close together so they don't take up a lot of space like the other trees.  All of these pretty much fit into the old garden plot! Fortunately, these plants supposedly do well in wet soils, otherwise this would be a very bad place to plant them.    The evening of the day that I planted these it rained again and this area was back to being a big mud puddle!

At the end of the row on the right I extended the row to hold an extra 3 choke cherries and one leftover chokeberry

It was still damn muddy!  Water was standing at the bottom of some of the holes I dug for these trees

Transplanted some pine trees and some locust trees

I dug up some of the locust trees that volunteered in the front patch last year.  I moved them to fill in the 3rd (bottom) row along to steep hill where the other locust trees are.  I also replaced a few of the ones that died last year.  I didn't swap out any of the ones that the deer damaged. I am hoping that they recover on their own. The deer tore the tops clear out of some of them, but these are tough trees and the root system should be in good shape.  We will see.  I transplanted around 33 of these little guys.

Definitely  need to get more surveyor's flags!  These things will be hard (harder) to see when the grass kicks in!

These trees are really taking their time in growing.  I have some locust trees (in more hospitable areas) that have grown to almost 10 feet tall in the same period of time!

I dug these pine trees up from near my wood shed.  I think there are more here this year than last year!

Different varieties too.

Dead

A survivor!

Several of these died last year during the drought.

Deer trimmed this one pretty hard.  I hope it will grow ok.

I believe I took three bucket loads of transplants

I am planting some of these closer together.  They were plenty far apart.  I want to reforest this area since its so steep and otherwise unuseable.

I figure I put in at least 15 new pine trees and probably replaced 4 dead ones.  I really want to reforest that back hill.  It is so steep and rocky, I don't think I would have used to for pasture - I would be afraid the animals would hurt themselves on that slope!

Plane reconditioning continues

I unpacked all of my planes and ebay buys for some pictures.

My Wooden wood planes!  These have blades too wide to sharpen on my Worksharp machine I think

I don't think that any of these "extra" components that I bought will be useful 

My Adze!

I did start sharpening some of the blades for the "extras" and the small block planes.  I got about 5 done I think.  So far, the plane blades aren't as bad as the chisels were.  I am able to start with 120 grit (I ordered a bunch more 120 an 400).  Keeping the blades square in the sharpening jig is not as easy as I would like.  When making the micro bevels I have to be careful to get them even.