nwmn
5 year old buck +
Hey everyone, I've been busy the past couple years trying to formulate a long term plan at my place and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together to make it a reality on top of multiple house projects to keep the homestead happy :)
Back story -- we moved to my fiance's family farm in 2020. Her father passed away from pancreatic cancer in May 2016 and her mom lived out here by herself for 4 years. I tried to help as much as I could for mowing and helping with storm damage trees falling down. My dream has been to move out here, but under better circumstances, but life presented it this way, so we had to act. I wanted it to stay in the family so we both decided to make it happen with a baby on the way.
I'm going to post pics starting with this year first and go back and grab some pics I feel can add some context with a layout of the property and what my plans are etc.
The year is now 2022 and our covid baby is now a 2 year old and loves to help whenever she can. Last year my dad and I planted an area about the size of quarter acre in pumpkins last minute as I got seed days prior and wanted to plant pumpkins. They did great and so did the pigweed, even during the drought. I spent hours each evening for a week hand picking pigweed in the pumpkins. They grew up to 3' tall in about a week and it was daunting to keep up. Long story short, I ended up with a great crop of pumpkins and searched for better methods on making it easier to manage my crop. I brought trailer fulls to town each evening in late september and ended up making decent money. Enough to justify buying a water pump, 600' of lay flat hose, and a massive sprinkler to keep it watered during the drought.
I expanded my pumpkin variety plantings and moved the patch over to a location closer to the river in the event I needed to borrow some water. I also did research to find a product that I could use for weed suppression, which would have saved me significantly last year. Stadia is the chemical I went with. It's a granular that you apply .5-1 oz per acre, and it should last me a few years so I split it with another guy that plants pumpkins.
Here are a few pics of the pumpkin patch planting. My goal is to make it a yearly thing so the kid(s) are able to help plant and can have fun with daddy until it isn't cool anymore.
I plan to check the picture archives to add a few pics and then I will add pics from current going forward as projects progress. Last two pics show canadian thistle and reed canary dominated area to the right of the pumpkins and to the right of that is a row of 35 maples I planted on the bank. Goal is to have the trail just to the left of that and have it be full of color in the fall. It'll probably all come to fruition once I'm retired and finally move on down to lakes country :)
Back story -- we moved to my fiance's family farm in 2020. Her father passed away from pancreatic cancer in May 2016 and her mom lived out here by herself for 4 years. I tried to help as much as I could for mowing and helping with storm damage trees falling down. My dream has been to move out here, but under better circumstances, but life presented it this way, so we had to act. I wanted it to stay in the family so we both decided to make it happen with a baby on the way.
I'm going to post pics starting with this year first and go back and grab some pics I feel can add some context with a layout of the property and what my plans are etc.
The year is now 2022 and our covid baby is now a 2 year old and loves to help whenever she can. Last year my dad and I planted an area about the size of quarter acre in pumpkins last minute as I got seed days prior and wanted to plant pumpkins. They did great and so did the pigweed, even during the drought. I spent hours each evening for a week hand picking pigweed in the pumpkins. They grew up to 3' tall in about a week and it was daunting to keep up. Long story short, I ended up with a great crop of pumpkins and searched for better methods on making it easier to manage my crop. I brought trailer fulls to town each evening in late september and ended up making decent money. Enough to justify buying a water pump, 600' of lay flat hose, and a massive sprinkler to keep it watered during the drought.
I expanded my pumpkin variety plantings and moved the patch over to a location closer to the river in the event I needed to borrow some water. I also did research to find a product that I could use for weed suppression, which would have saved me significantly last year. Stadia is the chemical I went with. It's a granular that you apply .5-1 oz per acre, and it should last me a few years so I split it with another guy that plants pumpkins.
Here are a few pics of the pumpkin patch planting. My goal is to make it a yearly thing so the kid(s) are able to help plant and can have fun with daddy until it isn't cool anymore.
I plan to check the picture archives to add a few pics and then I will add pics from current going forward as projects progress. Last two pics show canadian thistle and reed canary dominated area to the right of the pumpkins and to the right of that is a row of 35 maples I planted on the bank. Goal is to have the trail just to the left of that and have it be full of color in the fall. It'll probably all come to fruition once I'm retired and finally move on down to lakes country :)
