Cold, Wet January

It's been a cold, wet January, so not much has been going on down at the farm. All the kids activities, and wet weather have been collaborating against me going to the prop and getting anything done.

However, I was able to sneak down for a few minutes last weekend to check on things and snap a few photos. I had an interesting experience while I was throwing out some hay for the goats.

It was pretty quiet, when I heard a truck pull into the unfenced property next door. Pretty much anyone pulling in there is up to no good, so I wasn't surprised to hear the sound of lumber crashing to the ground. Even though there's a dump center about a mile down the road, people seem to like to dump their junk in vacant properties. Sure enough, this guy was doing the same.

I decided jump on the quad and go catch them in the act and get a license plate number, so I strapped on the .45, got the camera, and fired up the quad. As soon as they heard me fire up the quad, I could hear them scrambling to get in their truck and they tore off down the road. The race was on!

Unfortunately, trucks are faster than quads and all I caught was the sight of them going over the rise. Next time, I might have to sneak through the woods.

On a lighter note, it looks like it takes about a month for the goats to eat through a full roll of hay. Here's all that's left from rolling it on 12/20. They'd pretty much demolished it by 1/20

Before

From 2011-12-20

After

From 2012-01-24

The mushrooms are finally growing. I'd pretty much given up on them, but I was moving the logs around and noticed these oyster mushrooms growing out of the bottom of the log. Maybe there's hope after all.

From 2012-01-24

The interlopers ladder is still in place. Some kids dad is going to be real mad when he goes to find his ladder.  It's been here since mid-January.  It'll be interesting to see how long it's there.

From 2012-01-24

I've been too lazy to haul the endless bottles we find to garbage can, so I decided to start making a bottletree in the corral, to help the goats better appreciate art and the finer things in life.  Actually, it looks better in real life, when the sun is shining.

From 2012-01-24

Puttering Around the Farm

With all the schedule disruption and mud this month, we didn't get much work done on the farm. About all we accomplished were basic maintenance and setting up the Christmas toys. Since the kids had a lot of extra time on their hands, they came down and helped me out. Sarah's job was to be the archivist and take lots of pictures. Her other job was to sit in the tree stand and help me site a good place to put my new deer feeder.

From 2012-01-03

The feeder works well, but I'm going to have to experiment a bit with the siting. I'd like it to be somewhere close to the tree stand but not so close that the deer get disturbed by my comings and goings.

From 2012-01-03

I still have a lot of cleanup to do around the pond area. One thing I didn't factor in when I made it was that once it filled up with water, I'd be very limited on what I could do to it. Now I'm probably going to have to wait until it dries up in the summer before I can do any serious work. Here's Seth standing on some trees around the pond that I need to finish cutting.

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

Trying to start one of the brush piles on fire. Believe it or not, after dumping several cups of diesel on the pile, I still couldn't get it to start. It ended up fizzling out. It's tough to get things to burn in Tennessee.

From 2012-01-03

I love driving around the bulldozer. I took a full day off work and just bulldozed all day. One of the best days in recent memory. Having fun and being productive, what better combo could you get.

From 2012-01-03

Playing With Fire

Sarah did a cool photo series on us using my "gas fuse" technique to light a pile of brush. I think it looked pretty cool. Try to scroll through fast to get the full effect.

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03