Who's working in the woods this weekend?

Planted 10 persimmon and 10 crabpple seedlings this weekend. I also cut down a few more trees to open up some canopy around the food plots and provide some more screening around one of them. I also posted the southern and western property lines since I got my access trails cut all the way around the lower 20 acres back in January.
 
Speaking from experience, edge feathering has done wonders for the rabbit population on my place. I'm hoping it will help some with turkey nesting as well but time will tell there. We had a very cold spring two years ago and a very wet spring last year.
In turn will do wonders for your coyote population also. My rabbit population has skyrocketed also. Only now I have more coyotes. Can’t have it both ways though.
 
Prescribed fire planned for tomorrow. I dont like burning with light and variable winds but I have excellent control lines.
 
Beside adding more limb spacers to some of our younger apple trees, I dropped more pitch pines that were getting tall enough to shade 5 apple and crab trees. They're in a secluded spot that's an excellent archery stand location. I cut the limbs off the trunks and added to brush piles started last year. Deer, grouse, and turkeys make use of those brush piles. I have the piles arranged so deer get "steered" past a dandy hidden, shadowy tree for a ladder stand spot. Shorter white pines will completely hide a hunter in a ladder stand. :emoji_smiling_imp:

The row of pitch pines will be replaced with some 3 ft. tall Washington hawthorn seedlings. They won't get nearly as tall as the pitch pines had been and won't shade the apples and crabs. The red hawthorn berries will feed a batch of birds, turkeys, and especially grouse ( partridge ).
 
Last week I did some tree stand maintence and today I pruned my eight surviving pear trees and planted two more. I also had a chance to remove a fallen tree that had blocked one of my trails a little bit. Nice to be back out in the woods.
 
Cool pic, Boone. I like that hilltop.
 
Been working on the bedding areas passed two weeks. Figure 2 more days of cutting and then another day of cleanup and opening trails through it all.
 
I did some edge feathering. Nothing to serious but got off to a good start. I also frost seeded three plots of Balansa clover. Two will be tilled under Mem. Day weekend when I plant my Sugar Beets and the other will be a TNM August Brassica plot.
 
I got a little work done before mother nature had other plans. I was clearing some garbage brush around a plot to free up some better plants and maybe plant some better shrubs. I left the house and it was in the 50's with no wind and overcast. I headed out in jeans and a light sweatshirt. I was going to clean up around my wooded plot and then dig some trees to send to a buddy. Well I was 3/4 way done with my plot efforts and the temp dropped to the point I could see my breath, the wind picked up and then it poured! That 1/2 mile trip back to the house felt like it was 5... I went home and sat in the hot shower for 20 minutes and called it a day!
 
One of my ridge top/bench bedding areas. I worked the one edge of it for about 4 hours and dropped mature junk timber off the side of the hill. No openings before but now I’ve created 4 that look like this. 2E22670A-7559-4AE5-8242-F435A8DF953F.jpeg
 
Soil tests are in. Last year began with 5.3 PH. first year working rough rocky ground. More like boulders on a gradual sloped mountain basically. This year I’m sitting at 6.1. Pretty damn happy right now. Last year exactly one ton of lime was spread by hand. And minimal fertilizer. The kicker is even with surface broadcasting all amendments, I’m making good progress. Can’t till this ground nor do I want to. Last year I fall planted mixed clovers, chicory, brassica, winter rye. Despite the crap soil they did well. Looks like the roots breaking ground and decaying is doing its part. I got some lime out last week in advance of these results. Good news is not much left to add. And again minimal fertilizer.

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walked my plots today and boy do they look whooped, tough winter on em, and less than ideal sighting of clovers, kinda bummed. I did manage to find a half 6 pointer shed, and pulled all 7 of my trail cams, 3 of which were still chugging along taking pics, got lots of pics of deer, one cam got a ton of pictures of red fox, but also more than I care to admit pictures of yotes, damn dogs, I want em dead!
 
Planted buffalo berry and buttonbush yesterday.
 
The boys will be home so we are planting our ColdStream order in the shrub strips in the morning, around 175 trees/shrubs.
 
I'm hoping to to some more hinge cutting and hopefully get after cutting down some over mature crab apples. I also would like to cut up some oak trees/large limbs that have fallen over the past couple of years. If I get the time though it might be spent on a trout stream instead.
 
Score!

Looks like I will be cutting cages this weekend. Not ideal for fruit, but more than enough for shrubs. Cant beat free.

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I need to find a couple rolls of that to try and protect some young pine trees with. Used to be everywhere, getting hard to find these days.
 
H20 - ^^^^^ Probably hard to find these days because of you habitat guys. See how you habitat guys cause such problems …………………….
 
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