Another Flood Scare

We had some huge storms come through this week. In fact, they were so bad that several hundred people were killed across the South. We escaped without much damage, but we did get a huge amount of rain. To give you an idea of how much, check out the sink holes

The first picture is what it normally looks like. The bottom of the sink hole is about 25-30 feet deep at the deep end and probably 15 feet wide.

From Mahaley Portfolio

Another view

From Mahaley Portfolio

Here's what the water level looks like after a major storm a few years ago. Notice the hole is about 1/4 full

From Mahaley Portfolio

Now here's the hole after the storm last week. Doing a rough estimate, it would hold about 20000 gallons of water. Also, it probably would have been more full if it hadn't been draining at the bottom, like a bathtub.

From Drop Box

A few feet away is another sink hole. It's not quite as deep, but it's a lot longer and has a big cave at the bottom.

From Mahaley Portfolio

Amazingly, it's filled up to within about 3 feet from the top. What an amazing amount of water. The weird thing is that both these holes will be completely dry within a couple days. Where does it all go?

From Drop Box

Making progress

Spring has hit with a vengeance and we're scrambling, trying to get the cedar logs out of the forest, that we cut last year when we made the perimeter trail.

I'd kind of forgotten about them, out of sight, out of mind and all. Well, I talked to a guy who mills cedar and found out how much we get could get for the finished boards from milling some of the big logs and my motivation was rekindled.

From Drop Box

It was pretty tough work getting the logs out of the forest though. We had to go in with the quad and chain them up, one or two at a time, and drag them back to our sorting pile.

It also helped talking to the miller about how to size the logs. We've decided to make the 4-5 inch into unfinished fence posts, 6-7 inch into to finished fence posts and mill 8" and higher into 1x6's or 2x4s. As you can see from the picture above, we're starting to get a pretty good pile, that mainly comes from the trail I built last year.


On the mushroom front, things haven't been going as well. I think the spawn we bought last year was killed when it sat on our porch for a couple days in the middle of summer. Why is it that UPS always delivers when your gone. It's happened to often to be an unlucky coincidence.

None of the spawn I planted has grown yet. However, I have an old hay bale sitting around that has sprouted grass and mushrooms like mad. Now if I can only get the same thing to happen where I want it to.

From Drop Box

New Donkey

Well, the right deal finally came along and we got ourselves a donkey. It's all part of the master plan, to get a small herd of goats to clear the massive undergrowth we have on the property.

From Drop Box

The female donkey (a jenny) seems to be a nice donkey. It lets the kids approach her and she eats out of their hands. However, she hates dogs, so the dogs who've been roaming the property better watch out. Their days are numbered.

From Drop Box

Suz went down this morning to check on donkey and she was instantly on alert, looking for anyone entering her area. She should be a great goat guardian. Now I have to get busy fencing in a bigger area for donkey and the goats.

Clearing the field and turkey hunting

Once again we had beautiful weather and we took advantage by getting in a little turkey hunting and continuing to clear the new camping area. The brush pile just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I was hoping to light it this weekend, but it was a little windy and I didn't want to take a chance of it harming our big oak that is the center piece of the field.

From Drop Box

The graveyard is starting to shape up though. I'm hoping the new field starts looking like this soon.

From Drop Box

We also got a chance to go turkey hunting with Andrew which was AWESOME! I had no idea how much psychology there is in it. Andrew is a walking encyclopedia on them and started showing me the ropes.

Here's a turkey scratch we came across in the middle of the trail. Sawyer and I scared them off as we came around the corner on the quad. We tried to get a picture but they ran off too quickly.

From Drop Box