Ohio Hills

[CAS_HNTR]

MAN.....what a difference a few days makes in Ohio!! We went from 6-8" of snow to 65 degrees here today with sunny skies and no more snow!!

What a great day for the annual late-winter destruction on the farm!! We spent the better part of the day knocking down trees in bedding areas or in areas that we want to improve/expand bedding near the center of the property. About 90% of the trees cut or hinged were red maples, but we did cut some sassafras as well as a few locust treed to be used for fence posts on the soon to happen fence project......but that will have to wait....onto the day's activities!!

Several of the maples were pretty big (couldn't read around them).....you can see one in the background here (it was the first tree cut)....this is the basic "before".....

After some cuts and hinges....

Not all of the trees were cut down, we also ringed some due to them being hard to predict their fall, or just to allow the woodpeckers some places to eat bugs.

We also took a little time to (oddly) release some white pines that are growing in the woods.....this mostly consisted of cutting sassafras, locust, and maples from around them to get them sun!!

As I stated, it seems odd to save the sporadic white pine but the deer really like bedding under them in the winter and our hope is that it will be a good spot if the tree gets a touch bigger. These white pines were never planted are dotted all over the property as a result of natural growth from a few nearby sources.....never really been on a property where white pines just grow by themselves!! Ha!

One other way we have had success with helping "brush up" the areas are to drop trees along the edge into the fields and let them be.....it grows up real nice due to birds mostly dropping seeds as the crap everywhere!

Here are a couple trees we dropped from the edges...

Here are a few more pics of some big downed maples as well as some hinges trees along some edges.....this area was pretty heavily cut 2 years ago, but this will increase the size and sun ALOT!

The only other thing we got done was pick up this bad boy from my grandparent's farm......this plow is OLD, HEAVY, and was not super easy to unearth it from the field we left it last.....12 years ago!! Haha!! Needs some grease and a little once over, but my dad was excited to get it out on the property as he has owned it for about 40 years!

Until next time!!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

We have a big planting adventure scheduled this weekend so I am starting to gear up! Not only do we have 500 plugs (Norway) and 50 bareroots (PitchxLoblolly) in route, but I beat the rain tonight and unearthed the trees I put to bed last fall in my veggie garden at my house.

I dug them and used some damp paper and moisture crystals to help with moisture.....

All wrapped up....

I ended up with 5 bags....mostly Burr, Sawtooth, SWO, Chikapin Oak, Nuttall Oaks, and a handfull of strawberry bushes that have been there for 2 years.....total trees were right about 50.....so add that to the planting list!

Overall I was pleased with how the trees looked and the roots seem to be i good shape and should transplant well....one thing I am not so pleased with was the amount of rabbit damage I had to some of the trees. They found a way in and tore up some of the little trees!

SWO.....

Buckeye.....

Lastly....persimmons are coming on!

Ill be taking a bunch of pictures this weekend and hope to check the trail cams as well....looks like rain, so we may get wet!! Ha!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

We spent the weekend at the property getting some trees in the ground. Ended up planting:

500 Norway Plugs (Itasca)
50 Pitch x Loblolly Bareroots (MDC)
50 Assorted Oaks (1 gal) that I grew last summer
5 Strawberry Bushes that I never planted 2 years ago!

Both of my parents were there plus my whole crew to help for the weekend. The weather Saturday was beautiful, but turned WET with close to 2" of rain before 10 am Sunday.....so it was sloppy to wrap everything up that day! Hah!

Without dragging on and on......here are some pictures!!

Headed out to get started.....

My wife (sometimes) willing to help ;-)......

The general process......string the line out with spacing marks, make hole, place tree, stomp in.....repeat....a lot!

My mom got the girls matching "work pants"......they may not be carhartts, but jean overalls will help keep the brairs and mud off of them....plus, they are cute!!

And not sure how this happened, but my parents matched too!!

After a while, the girls were ready for a change of pace as wandering around aimlessly pulling dead goldenrod and iron weed can be tiring.....snacks help with motivation.....

...as do ample daffodils to pick (notice the short legged one in the background resting on grandma...hah)....

Hard to see here (pink ribbons) but there are about 100 oaks in this area now.....we will hit it hard with the mower this summer to clean it up and limit competition.

The rye is really starting to green up as well where we planted it last fall.....this areas and a few clover plots ought to be great for the gobbles in a few more weeks....

I had mentioned a week ago that we had to abandon the chainsaw bar in a tree.....we went on the rescue mission and fortunately the wind did all the hard work for us....this is how we found it...

ALL of these beech look like this.....they can be a challenge to cut.

Either way, this area should be good for bedding in a couple years.

Lastly....we burnt up some brush piles near the homestead to help make wish some visibility into the nearby woods....green stuff takes a while to get going, but playing with fire is always a good time.....

The girls like it too.....especially when smores follow!

Looks like my fruit trees will be arriving today or tomorrow from Chris at Turkey Creek.....so I will be planting them sometime this week after work. Look for an update on that event. One last item....looks like the bee starting kit will be coming around April 28th, so I have a few more weeks to gather my supplies.....hope to learn more about bee too before I jump in blind!! Hah!

 

[Turkey Creek]

Awesome looking place and looks like the family enjoys it as well, win win.

 

[CAS_HNTR]

Took half day from work last Friday to get my order from Turkey Creek planted, as well as planting some other crabapple, pear, and apples that I grew from seed last year. I ended up planting:

3 Keiffer Pear
3 Moonglow Pear
3 Enterprise (M111) Apple
3 Arkansas Black (M111) Apple
12 Assorted Seed grown fruit trees
6 Chestnuts (left from last year)

I had originally planned on using remesh for the cages, but I opted for 60" welded wire fence instead. I wish I could say it was cheaper, but it was really just a function of me wussing out and not trusting myself to be able to wrestle a large roll of the remesh by myself......160 lbs is too much!

As I stated, I opted for 3-50 ft rolls of the 60" welded wire fence and used about 12 feet for each tree that I fenced. I once again used PVC pipe for stakes as they just work! The majority of the seedling I planted were whips, so they went into tubes but I did have a couple wild pear seedling that grew like crazy and ended up in a fence in lieu of a tube.

Here's my "pile of goodies".......jamming all this into my poor car made me miss my truck!! :(

You can see the height of the trees I grew (bags) as well as the ones I got from Turkey Creek (box).....which had been pruned some for shipping.

FULL LOAD!!

Here is a better idea of the caliper of trees I got from Chris......they all looked really good, especially the apples!

Here is a close us of the typical planting.....I added screen as well, although I am not sure I need it considering I used the welded fence. It will keep the little baby bunnies out though I guess, plus an other rodents!! I did forget my stapler, so I will have to watch them a little closely as I ended up zip-tying the screen on the trunk (it was still loose though).

Here in an Enterprise apple.....they were BIG ones!!

My planting method was to try and add food in/near our existing plots......here are some pics of the plated trees....

Seedling crabapple trying to break bud.....

One of the last spots I was planting got delayed slightly as I looked up and saw this dead sassafras leaning ominously over the spot I wanted a tree......nothing a log chain and tractor cant fix!

Before....

After....much better!

It was a full days work in about 6 hours!! I did manage to get it all done, but planting trees and fencing them is not a quick process......and if you are by yourself, its even slower!! I worked hard by ended up planting my last few sapling under the light of the tractor!! hah!

Snapped this shot of the last of the purchased fruit trees....sun was just going down over the rye plot with my new trees!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

As usual, time ran out and I wasn't able to check my trail cameras or look for any sheds :(

BUT.....even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.....while driving across the property I noticed what looked like a shed sitting near the field edge, sure enough a little 8 point had dropped half his rack right along the road! Goes to show you that sometimes you don't have to find them, they find you!! Hah!

I am nearing the end of my spring plantings.....still have 200 michanthus rhizomes coming, so that's next on the list!! Plus, we will be working on getting several tons of lime spread (hopefully) this spring too!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

I ended taking pretty much everything outside over the weekend.....they have had good weather with 80 degrees and sunny. They are on the NE side of the house and get a few hours of sun in the early morning. I will say its amazing how much greener they get after a few days of REAL sunlight!

I saved back a couple persimmons to grow another year just for kicks....you can see them on the right in the first picture. One got nipped off by my rabbit nemesis, but you can see that are getting going! They will be transplanted into larger pots ASAP!

Looks like my gala apple in my yard may have some apples this year.....being year 3 for thus dwarf tree, I was hoping for something. A little surprised I don't have any other blooms on my other 3 fruit trees, but Ill take anything over nothing!

With rain predicted I got a bunch of seed into the ground in my garden....technically out last frost day isn't for another few weeks, but I think we are out of the woods and I planted pretty much everything!

I was also please to see one of my grafts taking off. This is a golden delicious on B118. The other 3 aren't faring so well. One got eaten! One had leaves started but they are now dry and brown. And one has leaves below graft but none above at all. So.....looks like I need to read up on grafting a little bit more!! Hahah!

I was able to get out after some turkeys the other day but have nothing to show for it.....had 3 gobbling up a storm at 80 yards but they wouldn't leave the woods edge they were strutting on to come into range! Next time!!

Had a pretty busy weekend! I have been scrambling around trying to get the last items checked off my spring "to-do" list while managing the family life and was able to keep moving forward......which is always best as sometimes I move BACKWARDS!!

I started off the weekend with a box from Maple River......my 250 michanthus x gigantus rhizomes came in! So....that was one item that needed to be done. THEN, I got a call that by package of bees would be coming in late Saturday and I had 24 hours to pick them up and get them into my hive! So.....I now have at least 2 chores on the property!

But first......the "fun" stuff.....we had a wedding to attend in Lexington, KY on Saturday night!! I have been to Lexington several times and its a real nice city.....seems like it should be bigger than it is, but it seems really quite small.....and I like that! The reception was at the Carrick House, which is an AWESOME place! It was fun to get out and do some socializing, drinking, and dancing....always nice to catch up and my parents liked spending the night with the kidos!

Back to the work! I headed right up to bee supply place when we got back home on Sunday morning and picked up my bees! If you don't like bees....you would hate this place. There were thousands of bees just flying around! Hah! Each of these "packages" has about 10,000 bees and 1 queen.

Here is a close-up of the bees in the package..

About 5 minutes into the drive I noticed that some bees were clinging to the outside of the mesh and some had also found their way into the car....so I had an 1.5 hr drive down with about 30 bees flying around inside my car! Hah! Like I said.....if you hate bees, you would hate it!

Anyways, I got to the property and loaded up!

The bees will be living in here...

This feeder will be filled with 1:1 sugar water until they build their stockpile. Their are floats (ladder looking things) inside the feeder for the bees to stand on so they can drink without drowning.

The stand I built is made of galvanized tube....the pipe caps were added after I read that ants can be a problem with bee hives. To prevent ants from climbing into the hive, each leg has a pvc cap that is filled with high-temp axel grease....the grease traps ants and thus an ant-free hive!! Not sure if ants will actually be a problem, but I figured better safe than sorry!

Now, I wish I could say that I had some "action" shots of me frantically dumping 3 lbs of bees into this hive while scrambling to get the queen in, the feeder filled, and the lids on.....but I was a one man show and I didn't get it done! Hah! Here is the after with some stragglers that are trying to figure out how to get into the hive.....they are trying to get in the back.....they will have to learn! Hah!

Final produce.....the grass will keep robbing bees out and prevent the bees from all leaving the first day. It will be removed later by the bees or myself.

So......that task was done....not to the REAL work! Planting 250 rhizomes!! I had two bags full and I don't know how many there really were in there, but there was enough that I was glad I was done when the bags were empty!

They were planted to help provide a screed of this view (some of you may remember me showing this before). If you look closely you can see the lines of flags that had been sprayed the previous day with gly and 2-4d.

So.....a few hours later and 4 gallons of perspiration, they were all planted!! I used the planting instruction from Maple River.....2-staggered rows at about 18" spacing. I didn't actually measure them out, but more or less eye-balled them all! Hope for a heck of a screen in a couple years!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

DCO that I grew last year and fall planted UNPROTECTED.....it lives!!

Nuttall Oak....

Rye is looking good too...

I will say that I learned a few things since starting planting a few years ago. Almost ALL of the oldest planted trees (3 years) are dead or struggling. There trees were grown by be and planted WITHOUT shaking off the excess growing media. I think thus was a HUGE mistake as the fluffy media settled out and has exposed the roots in many of them.....plus, our clay soils hold so much water that it then floods them out. Needless to say, I have about 15 chestnuts that will be replaced this fall with fresh trees.

One additional bummer of a finding is that I believe I have lost ALL 10 of my sequins and several Allegheny chinkapins since last summer! That's a real kick in the nuts and I REALLY wanted them to thrive. I am thinking that my soil may be to heavy for them. Who knows but I will wait a little longer to see if that are just late to get going, but it doesn't look good!

I will have to get an update together on my trees I grew this year too.....I have been transplanting them like crazy and am almost done! Plus, my damn paw paws are almost ready to have a leaf.....FINALLY! HA!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

Been a bit of a crazy month of June thus far with the kids getting out of school, sports wrapping up with tournaments, family vacation, and all the other stuff with work and life!! Needless to say I have not had a chance to update my thread for a bit......so, here it goes!!

My family took a week vacation to go visit my sister and brother in law in Colorado......which was great! I love the mountains and the BIG country out there. We traveled from near Denver south to Colorado Springs to check out the Garden of the Gods....

(me looking like a true tourist!!)

Then north to Rocky Mountain National Park.....

They said it was peak flow this time of year.....and I believe that as the mountain streams were like rivers and flowing HARD and FAST!

Here are my two girls and my new niece (11 weeks).....they had fun walking the mountains as well as playing with their new "baby doll" :p

 

[CAS_HNTR]

My newly planted Michanthus screen is coming along.....most starts are about 18-24" tall. Will have to hit with some 10-10-10 and maybe some 24D in the near future to help them out.

New clover plot is coming along, but needs some weed control!!!

Turkey Creek apple tree (enterprise) looking good....that's a broken limb, not blight.....

This plot appears to have transitioned into a flower plot.....damn!!

Plum from MDC continue to grow well......deer are nipping them each winter though, so I likely will have to add some protection before fall this year....

We even made time to hit the pond up on a property we have access on....

Heck......even my garden at the house is growing well!!!

Should have some squash and beans pretty soon and currently have all the kale, chard, and lettuce I can eat and then some!!

On the plan for the near future is to mow and start spraying some spots to get lime on ASAP!! I have a few plots that need established as well as an area (1/2 ac or so) that will be plated in a pollinator mix for the bees......plus have to move/add stands, trim, etc, etc, etc!!

Hope everyone's summer is going great and looking forward to the fall already!!

 

[CAS_HNTR]

Wanted to update the property thread.....nothing too important happening right now besides getting some prep work done for fall plantings. As I had stated earlier, my dad unearthed his plow and gave it a few runs on some areas that will be planed this fall......that old rusty thing still gets the job done!!

The plan will be to disc is down and get it seeded pretty shortly....still need to spread TONS of lime, so that will be needed before we get the cultipacker out.

I also spend some time fixing the mistakes I have made on tree tube purchases.......I remember reading "back in the day" that the 4' tubes are not much of a deterrent from browse on the top, and man is that right! I have had many nipped off over the winter months, but the final straw was the amount of new growth that was eaten off in about April.....I want less than pleased!

Anyways, I had a bunch of thus old vinyl fence in the grade that I tore out of my house garden, so I cut it in strips and wired it to about 50 or so tubes. Should do the trick! Here is a nice chestnut that I am hoping to put on another 6-12" this year!

I am also busy with my garden at the house.....already have 45 quarts of beans canned and will likely can about 24 quarts of pickled beets this weekend. We need some rain still, but it hasn't hurt it too much besides my spinach and lettuce!

One last update on my bees......I have failed! Not sure what happened to them, but they went from thousands of bees before I went on vacation to hundreds a couple weeks later. They used to have a lot of new eggs/larva and now none. I am thinking the queen died and there wasn't any eggs left to make a new one and thus the bees bailed, or the hive swarmed (which is a little odd this time of year)......either way, I contact several "smart" people and they agreed that trying to save the hive is likely a futile effort with as little amount of bees as are left. Sooooo.......I will be giving it a go again next spring and will likely add another hive so that I have 2 at once such that if there is an issue, I can more easily combine them and save at least one hive. Live and learn.....its hard to start a brand new hobby with no experience and little knowledge.....gotta take some hits along the way I guess, that's how you get better!

Regarding the upcoming season....I put out 6 cameras so I am anxious to see what may be strolling around. It already looks like there is more deer activity that in years past based on trail wear, but time will tell. Unfortunately, I am in the process of studying for my SE (structural engineering) license that I will take this fall and it will likely eat into a lot of my hunting time early in the year. I have my PE license already, but this is another engineering licensure that I want to get done. The exam is 16 hrs long and is really going to be a pain to prepare for due to the volume of material and pass rates of about 30% with only a few hundred people take it yearly nationwide! My head hurts thinking about it already!

After that is done, I should be free in November though.....perfect timing for the rut! :-)

 

[CAS_HNTR]

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I added MOST of my personal posts from the last several years.......I will apologize in advance that I did not copy over everyone's messages along the way. I just cant handle it!!! Haa!!

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[bueller]

Amazing thread. Looking forward to the updates as time goes on.

 

[CAS_HNTR]

bueller.........I somehow missed the most important part of the weekend we had 2 years ago...MY DAD'S BUCK! I have edited it...take a look!

Thanks. Stay Tuned.

 

[bueller]

bueller.........I somehow missed the most important part of the weekend we had 2 years ago...MY DAD'S BUCK! I have edited it...take a look!

Thanks. Stay Tuned.

That buck is beast and i love the uncontrollable smile in yours dad's face!

 

[Weasel]

Good to see my Busch Light Ohio buddy over here!

(Formerly Stickbowcrafter)

 

[Buckhunter10]

Happy to see you over here! As always great thread!

 

[scott44]

Great thread! Lots of work you guys have done, looking forward to more posts.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

Wonderful place and family you have. Maybe I can score some hazelnuts for you this year if you're still needing any. I just gotta get after them earlier lol.

 

[H20fwler]

Great thread, good looking family and sweet property.