Have spent a lot of time out at the farm the last couple of weeks.
Planted screened&caged more apple/crab trees, pruned all the fruit trees, cleaned out all the wood duck boxes, planted some more ROD along road from cuttings, cleaned up the trash along road in ditch and caged more of the white pines that are being molested by deer. I found a nice big roll of old farm fence while bunny hunting a couple months ago and the landowner I was on let me have it, was able to cage over a dozen more pines with it.
The whole time I've been messing around out there ducks and geese were coming and going from the ponds, in the last two weeks I've seen mallards/wood ducks/gadwalls/blue wing teal/ringnecks/hooded mergansers and canada geese on the pond this spring...lots of ringnecks. Yesterday a small flock of 30-40 snow geese flew down the river tree top high west to east, they were all white phase which was kind of strange.
There also hasn't been one day that I have been out there that I haven't see bald eagles... adult ones, juveniles and dirty headed/tailed younger ones. They are VERY talkative this time of year screeching and making that broken cackled cawing screaming noise, they are so cool to see and hear. There has been a nesting pair about a mile from me along the river for at least the past six or seven years, I have seen them pluck fish out of the front pond a couple times in the summer.
I've usually been out there from a couple hours to half a day and of course Darcy has to go along to worry the bunnies and mice, she is like a pinball bouncing around the brush piles and running rabbits past me. She will point rabbits while we are walking around and I will kick them up for her, the other day she was on point for about ten minutes as I watched her in the spruce along road. I couldn't believe she would hold it that long and got to thinking maybe it was a pheasant, I did see where a hawk killed one within the last two weeks in orchard. I walked over to her and at the flush....it was a bunny!
I'm going to have to start leaving her at home because the ground birds will be nesting soon along with the turkeys and I don't want her catching any baby rabbits.
I bought some silky dogwood cuttings from John-W-WI in 2019 to plant for road screen in the real wet spot along road. The other day as I was pushing in some ROD cuttings I almost stepped on one! I looked around and saw another and another. They are suckering great and a few were around 3' and budding/blossoming with kind of purple'ish pink catkins or pods on them...others were really browsed down by the deer but still thriving and suckering.
Spring 2019
Now
With some deer luvin
Some of the ROD in shrub strips is pretty bushy now, the deer keep it well pruned...some is 4’ some 2’ depending on how wet the ground and how much the deer bother it.
About the same with everything in shrub strips all depends on how wet and how much deer browes and beat on them, pin oaks look like bushes, cranberry looks great but still 3’ tall bushes along with the rest except for the hazelnuts…they look great around 7’ tall and suckering like crazy, we have a nice grove of them going by the back pond along woods.
We just had bud break on the fruit trees in the last two days
Hopefully the weather doesn’t freeze off most of the blossoms/fruit next month like last year.
