4th fun!

Just kidding, regarding the "fun".

Here is what I was up to on the farm.

Friend in the basement

When I went downstairs in the farmhouse to turn on the power to the pump and outdoor outlets I found this guy:

Its neat that you can see his eyes reflecting the camera flash!

I left him alone.  I figured that he may eat some of the mice down there!

Turtle friend is back!

This time I found him trying to get into the dog fence area from the opposite side as last weekend.  He never did get into the dog pen (that I saw anyway)

he is actually close to fitting under the fence there!

And a groundhog too!

I saw this guy just taking his time walking across the driveway!  Just as long as he stays out of my gardens!

Pretty sunset

Slow weekend so here is a picture of a sunset!  Colors just don't come out as nice as real life!

Trimming around things.

The blueberries aren't looking too good.  I decided to trim around them before applying more mulch or chems.  The sawdust really doesnt seem to be decaying as fast as I would like.  Maybe next time I will mix with wood chips, or just use wood chips for mulch.

These plants are definitely missing some nutrients! 

The blossoms of these blueberries must have been caught by one of our late frosts - only 6 berries on all of these plants!

I also trimmed around all of the forsythia this weekend.  This was way more work than I remember! While trimming around these a dang yellow jacket stung me on the wrist!  Was bad sting - hurt for most of a day and swelled.

Also trimmed around this wampus ornamental grass that I planted.  Its hanging in there.  I would like to see this well established by the winter though.  It had better get a move on!

I trim around these plants because they are soo small that the grass and weeds can overwhelm them.  After they get big I wont need to trim as much!

Roundup!

Sick and tired of weeding and trimming, I finally broke out the roundup to try to keep things under control. I sprayed the driveway weeds up near the house and also around all of the garden patches.  I even sprayed some around some of the orchard trees!  I hope I didn't get too close - it can kill trees too so I have read.

You can see some of the weeds turning brown where I sprayed

Elderberry trimming

I can't remember if I trimmed around these berries this weekend or last, but in any case I also put some mulch on these berries this weekend.  The deer are hitting these hard!  I finally baited the electric fences with peanut butter.  We will see how that does...

More garden de-weeding

This time I attacked the brassicas.  Good thing too.  They are getting eaten up by bugs!  After I deweeded them (and the onion row next to them) I sprayed them with sevin.  Of course, it rained the next day so I had to reapply the spray.

The onions were really hard to weed.  The weeds would just break off because that ground has so much clay in it!  I need to cultivate that soil.

Corn issues

While I was de-weeding the brassicas I happened to look up and see a mole snipping off a young corn plant!  ARG.  I am going to have to address these buggers.  This is the 3rd planting - I am not doing any more this year - its too late in the season.  I hope enough of the corn survives for me to get some!

You can see some of the corn that I planted last weekend are coming up.

I saw a mole on the upper side of the patch.  He was trimming a corn plant off at the ground!

While I planted 3-5 seeds per hill this time, it still looks like the moles may have wiped out a number of hills completely!

Spearmint progress

I checked 2 of the 3 spearmint plantings and they look good!  The ones up by the woodshed are really kicking in!  I didn't check the ones down in the swamp - they weren't too happy the last time I looked.

This is the spearmint out near the stream.  I will need to trim this up a bit - weeds are encroaching!

Dusted Grapes

Just before I left I decided to dust the grape vines with sulfur and sevin.  I even dusted the concords which you are not supposed to do.  We will see how much they are damaged.  I had to do something. The weather is very humid now and the rust is really taking over the wine grapes!  Other fungicides just don't seem to outlast the fungus,  Stopping the fungus only to have it come right back is not satisfactory - it just does more and more damage faster than the little vines can handle it!

General Farm pictures

Blackberries are actually looking good!  I am thinking I might need a way to keep these off the ground though

One of the arbor day shrubs to survive.  I forget what this is.  It's twin died (never even sprouted)

Beans are doing well (considering the soil)

I replaced one of the Japanese beetle traps bags - the old bag wasn't quite full but it was heavy!

Nifty orange fungus that I found growing near house.  Very orange!

Another weekend of mowing! Well, a few other things...

Lawyer and Tractor fan

I got up to the farm early friday so that I could go to the lawyer with Tom and Connie (and Mom).  I think we got this stuff all settled now so that should let mom relax about it a bit!  Anyway,that pretty much took the entire day.  I think I did do a little mowing Friday evening.  I did have time to replace the broken tractor fan blade with a new one that I ordered.  Thank goodness it fit.  Its a bugger to replace that blade because of the limited room between the radiator and the fan.  I did remove the shroud/duct bolts from the radiator, but it only helps a little bit since I didn't want to remove the hoses and the shroud wont move too far with the hoses in place.  After install the blade I fired the tractor up - seemed ok!  I haven't used it yet but I am fairly confident that that should fix the overheating problem.

Mowing and planting over again

Anyway, besides mowing all day Saturday, I also managed to over-plant the beans and corn in the big patch.  The wet weather had caused some of them to rot so I went back and replanted where I saw some missing.  The weeds are starting up in my patches - I wish the plants where big enough to put down some mulch!  Well, technically the potatoes are big enough, but I didn't have time anyway.  I did set the mower to a lower level, hoping that will buy me some time - maybe I can skip mowing next weekend!

Grape trellis progress

I noticed that the grape vines were really getting to the size where they will need to start being trained on a trellis.  I decided to put connecting beams across the tops of my posts before stringing the wire so that I don't have to brace the posts at the ends.  I measured the distances between the posts on the first (top) row and then I went into the red barn with my chainsaw after I spent about an hour replacing the chain (turned out that I grabbed the wrong chain initially and it was the wrong size - I didn't know I had different size chains in that length!)  I found some old wood that was long enough so I sawed what I needed and took it back to the vines.  I got the tops put on the first row of posts (after trimming the posts to same height with the chainsaw), but I only got two wires strung on the first two posts - the wire I have is not high-tensile so it breaks easily when tensioning.  I need to find my high-tensile wire!

Trimming, removing weed protectors and SNAKES!

I removed the black plastic weed protectors from the cherries, paw-paws, and persimmons.  I had caught those damn plastic things in the mower enough and I don't think they help anyways since I mow around those trees!  I still need to remove the ones around the apples, pears, etc.   While I was removing the plastic around the persimmon trees I found a couple small snakes.  The first one was about the size of a large earthworm and I was pretty sure it was a rat snake.  Anyway, considering the number of moles around there, I had no problems leaving the snake alone!  The next one was considerable larger - a bit over a foot long.   I first thought he was another rat snake - similar markings.  I left him there and continued working.  Then I though that maybe I had better get a better look at him...  lo-and-behold, it was some kind of venomous snake!  It had the big diamond head and you could see the venom sacs!  The body was wide, reminding me of the rattle-snakes from last year.  I dispatched him after he struck at the stick about 10 times!  I am still not sure if it was a baby rattle snake or a copper head.  Anyway, I was very cautious while mowing/trimming for the rest of the day!

Big spider scare

Oh, and I found this HUGE spider in the house last night while I was relaxing:

I checked it out online (after spraying and killing him!).  I think its a fishing spider.  Mostly harmless to humans.  Scared the crap out of me though!

Beans and electric fence at mom's place

Oh, AND I set up the electric fence around mom's garden and planted 2 rows of green beans in the garden over there.  Please note that in the future, maybe wait until late May to plant the beans and corn as the ground seems to be too cold and wet before then and they just rot - and even if they don't rot, they don't grow much!