Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
It took a few years in life, but today we closed on a piece of property. Welcome to Maple Hill Farm! Pretty exciting to finally own a piece of dirt that has hunting potential. One of my bucket list items was to eventually own a piece of property that I can step out the back door and hunt. There has never been a lot of things on my bucket list, but this was one of them! Next year good Lord willing another one will get checked off the list as we hope to start building our new house on this property. I have always wanted to build my own house, with my own hands, and that is still a possibility to some extent. However, I know at 50 years old I am not physically what I was at 25.... so I will do as much as I feel we can still tackle and sub-contract out the rest.
This piece is 87 acres, a good mix of timber and what was formally crop ground that is now hay ground. Our western border is a creek that typically always has water and a couple of county roads that dont see a lot of traffic. The limiting factor in the neighborhood is "food", we do have a few oaks in the area, but crop ground is pretty limited within a 3 mile area. There are 3 small "ponds" on the property and we hope to rework the 2 ponds in the northeast corner into a larger one at some point. Big enough to sustain some fish. The Red "X" is the general location of where the new house will sit and the property drops off elevation wise 200-300 ft as you go down to the west property line. Which will give a great view of a large portion of our property. Probably not much, if any habitat work, will get done this calendar year. I will spend the winter trying to get a feel of how deer utilize what currently exists and then develop a plan from there.
This piece is 87 acres, a good mix of timber and what was formally crop ground that is now hay ground. Our western border is a creek that typically always has water and a couple of county roads that dont see a lot of traffic. The limiting factor in the neighborhood is "food", we do have a few oaks in the area, but crop ground is pretty limited within a 3 mile area. There are 3 small "ponds" on the property and we hope to rework the 2 ponds in the northeast corner into a larger one at some point. Big enough to sustain some fish. The Red "X" is the general location of where the new house will sit and the property drops off elevation wise 200-300 ft as you go down to the west property line. Which will give a great view of a large portion of our property. Probably not much, if any habitat work, will get done this calendar year. I will spend the winter trying to get a feel of how deer utilize what currently exists and then develop a plan from there.
Last edited:
Not good! Luckily the old trunks look solid yet. Think we will top work them over to a few varieties next Spring. Might be a frost pocket down in the creek area. Lowest ground around and boxed in with trees so there might not be a lot of air flow. I am sure we will give it a try though!
I used Foldform brand ICF’s and I believe Menards may even be caring that brand now. I used their fully formed corner blocks on this last place instead of cutting straight blocks into corners. The preformed corners make assembly go very very quickly. I even poured the interior walls of our utility room and used the FEMA safe room plans available online for that area including ceiling of 2x10 on 12” centers two layers of 3/4 plywood and 1/8 steal on top of that. After we moved in the tornado alarms where going off in the town we live relatively close to my wife asked what we should do. I said I’d bake cookies we live in a bunker.
