More spring preparations

Cherry trees are blooming

The cherry trees in the front are blooming - the ones that survived that is.  Actually, some good news on the survival front, one of the tress that I thought had died is showing signs of life!   I didn't trim these trees this year in hopes that letting them go might help stabilize them a bit.  

Young (2nd year) sour cherry putting on some leaves!

Sweet cherry trees are blooming up a storm!

Thought this guy was dead, but see?  New leaves are coming!  The top did die out though.

Garden Preperations

I tilled the front patch in its new extended form, connecting the old front patch to the new big patch.  Now its all one big patch.  The front portion of the patch will hold strawberries and blueberries.

I just added two "permanent" fence posts for the corners.  I plan to just pound in some metal stakes to support the rest of the fencing.

Cleaned up the existing strawberry row.  There was quite a bit of weeds trying to take over.

I put the fence back in place until I can get the final fence put up.  Mom says that deer love strawberries so I figured I had better try to make them a little bit difficult to get to!

Tree Cages

I started putting up some more tree cages.  I started with the hazelnut since I figure they are the most at risk.    I used the old fencing from the big garden for a lot of these but I still had to use some new fencing.  I will need to buy more fencing!  I got all of the hazelnuts caged.  I also found another stash of old fencing that I will use first before any new fencing.   I also caged the new pecan trees.

I mowed this area too - it was still fairly wet as you can tell from the mower wheel marks.

Hazelnuts

Speaking of hazelnuts, the "old" hazelnuts are well into coming out!  I wonder if they get nuts on this year?

Birds nest

I found this bird nest right on my fastener shelf!  Even has eggs in it.  Damn bird.  Turns out to be a house wren, so I want to leave it alone.  Sigh.  Stupid birds!

I have seen her sitting on these eggs.  I try not to get too close, but its near where most of the stuff I need is!

Table-saw pusher

I was watching you-tube videos and noticed someone using this type of pusher.  Then I realized I didn't have one like this, so I made one out of some of the scrap locust.  I just eyeballed the design - sketched it onto piece of wood and then traced the handle from a hand-plane.   Then I used the little band-saw to cut it out.  I used the big belt sander to smooth most of the edges and the little belt sander to get into inside curves.  I discovered I needed some new sandpaper for the little belt sander!  I ordered some more from ebay as well as a new small belt sander!

I think it turned out pretty nice for about 30 mins of work!

More plane-blade sharpening

I continued to put my new wide blade tool to good use sharpening the wide hand-plane blades.  It takes a long time - so much more metal on these big blades!  I really like the new sharpening jig though.  I also attached the honing wheel and polished up the blade to razor sharp!

I also read about how far back to put the chip-breaker on this type of plane.  Basically, if you want big chips, pull the chip breaker far back.  If you want fine chips (ribbon thin) put the chip breaker about half a mm from the edge of the blade.  The chip breaker itself should have a clean edge - maybe run it through sharpening process to be sure (don't sharpen so much as put a clean edge on it!)

I put the micro-bevel on using the finest grit wheel that I have (I think its 3000).  Then polished it with green chromium polish on a leather wheel.  Mirror finish!

Amaryllis still going crazy!

These flowers are doing great things this year!  Beautiful!

More garden cleanup and deer hunting

I am a deer hunting fool

Probably should emphasize fool, lol!  I went up to the farm late Friday and was able to get out and do some hunting before sundown.  It may just be my impression, but I kind of feel that they (the deer) are watching me go to the blinds in the daylight but don't see me going out in the morning.

Is nice though, in the woods

Nope, no deer up there!

I get bored sometimes when I am waiting for these deer!

Tiller upkeep

Getting ready to till the garden patches so I can plant my cover crops (or grass - as the case may be) I had to hook up the tiller to the tractor.  Well, the tiller had rolled on its side and allowed the gear oil to leak out!  Arggg.  I had to search online to find what kind of oil to use - 80-90W!   I searched all over the farm for my gear oil - of course I found it just a few feet from the tiller!  Of course since that's the only thing I use it in!  I only found one bottle of it and it was already open, so I just added all I had and hoped it was enough.

 

Several nuts were missing or loose so I had to get these all fixed up as well.

Oil add port on side of tiller.  I must have had enough in there because after i was done tilling I noticed some had leaked out

All ready for some tilling action!

Front patch cleanup and till

The front patch still has strawberries in it that I want to try to preserve for next year.  The strawberries are NOT hilled this season and I did put plenty of wood chips on them so they should survive the winter this time around.  Anyway, I tilled as close as I dared.  I did mash down some of the fence, but nothing that I can't fix.

I managed to pick a few more daikon radishes that had come up from an earlier planting (the early radishes went to seed and that's where these came from!)

The paw-paw patch

Or the sweet potato patch, since that's what I grow in there now.  It tilled up nicely, even though I had the tiller set to the wrong side of the tractor for the direction I was tilling.  I seeded this patch and the strawberry (front) patch with hairy-vetch.  Hairy vetch produces more nitrogen fixation than any other common cover crop.  It does have the draw back of being quite invasive though.  I have to make sure it is plowed under and tilled in (or sprayed down with roundup) before it goes to seed, otherwise it goes wild!

This patch still has some uneven spots due to the fact that it is on a bit of a slope and this is its first year in this configuration.  By next year it should be looking much more uniform.

The "big" patch - no more!

This patch was cut in half this year and still I had more then enough work to keep me busy!  After the problems I had getting the corn to grow here and the need for some decent space to plant more cherry trees, I decided to remove this patch entirely.

I planted elderberries where the other half of this garden was.  They took some heavy deer damage.  I hope they get a good foothold next year.

Before

After

I did a lot of landscaping to get this area leveled again.  hard to tell from the pictures but there is a bit of a slope on this lot and because of the way it got plowed and tilled a large raised ara developed on the right and a large ditch developed on the left.

I planted grass here.  Next spring I will plant my sour cherry trees here.  I may also plant some more apple trees further out along the hill.

Deer damage to apple trees

This is why I am hunting this year!  I have put up special fences, baited zones and have even taken to putting up wire mesh protectors around my trees to keep the damn bucks from scraping the bark off. But still, I get damage (well, not the trees that have the wire mesh - that's on the list of things to do for all trees now I guess).  

This one should recover ok.

This one will be a close.

Healing up from last years deer attack.  That white stuff is a parasite that gets into the trees bark when it gets weak like this.  If I am lucky the tree will recover.  

Another one too close to call.

This tree will probably die - the bark was stripped off too far.

This is the type of wire mesh protector that I guess I will need to put on all of my trees!  Over 42 trees to put this on.  Not counting the new cherry trees next year.  Ugh