Someday Isle - Property tour

[Someday isle]

All last fall and through this winter we were in drought conditions. It’s started raining this spring and never stopped. This dry creek bed almost never has water in it unles there’s a big storm going on.

 

[Bill]

It’s started raining this spring and never stopped. This dry creek bed almost never has water in it unles there’s a big storm going on

That's how last spring was and then it shut off all summer. Hope we don't have a repeat.....

 

[Someday isle]

Continuing to open up a new food plot area. I love this piece of property but it’s all woods other than the clearings I’m creating. Year one we worked on the old logging roads. Last summer we created two more traditional plots. One was 1/3 of an acre and one was 1/4 acre. The 1/4 acre plot is the one we further cleared this winter and started our pear orchard. I’ve also been working on this 1/5 acre area for a new plot this year. It’s fun work, but it’s hard work. First we ran the brush mower and cleared the saplings and small trees. Today I cut down a bunch of the medium sized trees. There’s still a dozen or so trees to clear. There’s going to be some good firewood from the ones I cut down today. For now we’ll have to work around the stumps. I also checked on my water holes and took a picture of one of them after clearing out a few leaves. All this rain has them full and even through the dry fall and winter they never ran out of water. I’m really happy with how they turned out.

Turkey season is coming up but we don’t have much turkey sign and seldom get any on camera. I might just work rather than try and hunt, or maybe I’ll hunt a couple hours and then work.

 

[Bill]

Yep that's "Work"
Looks good though.

 

[Someday isle]

Thanks Bill! I was working the saw pretty hard. I started at about 9:00 and about 11:30 I started to feel my forearms and grip getting tired so I just stopped. If I were a little stronger and younger I’d have probably gone a few more hours but I don’t have anything to prove to myself and a tired chainsaw operator is a dangerous one. I just left the trees where they were and I’ll start cutting them up next week when I go out. One thing I’ve kearned in the last almost two years is that I don’t have to finish a project every time I go out. Early on I worked til I was ready to drop. I’ve realized I’ll never be “done” so I do what I can when I can. If I’m tired I stop. If I’m patient I can just work on it next time. I’m pretty sure the trees will still be there next week.

 

[Bill]

I hear you. I used to go hard dawn til dark then work in the shop under lights. Now I go dawn to dusk but the "hard" part stops before it get dangerous. I like hunting these critters but not enough to get killed over it. Must be an age thing :) that and I rarely ever shoot one anyway. Unless shooting video counts.

 

[H20fwler]

Opening up some of your wooded areas will sexy it up for turkeys, they like to be able to see everything.
Your place is really coming along.

 

[Someday isle]

Continuing to make progress. Today I got all the trees cut up that I dropped last time I was out. Lots of stumps to deal with but this new little plot is taking shape...and I’ll have some firewood from it next season too.

 

[Someday isle]

Gotta love cereal rye. It’s growing like crazy the last week,and the deer are all over it. I had 180 pictures of deer the last two weeks. I think it’s only about 6 or 8 different deer but they’re there a lot. The exclusion cages show how much they’re eating.

 

[Someday isle]

 

[Someday isle]

We had three hard frosts over the last week. Most of my new pear trees look ok but a couple I’m not sure about. I guess we just wait and see at this point.

 

[Telemark]

I might be alone in this, but I like the look of stumps in a food plot.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Boy, those exclusion cages really tell the tale, don't they ?? Nice work Someday. Everything looks really good there. Trees and cages -

LC sure was right about grain rye. Rye in the ground = deer.

 

[Someday isle]

Today was spent hauling all those logs up to my campground. I’ve got enough wood now to split for this summer and the new stuff from today can season until next year.

View attachment 18095View attachment 18096View attachment 18097

 

[Someday isle]

I disced up the new plot and measured it today. It ended up right at 1/4 acre. I’ll wait about ten days and go back and spray any weed growth that might have been in the seed bank. I plan to put down some buckwheat the weekend of May 12th.

 

[Someday isle]

Not sure why the log files wouldn’t load right. I’ll try again. It’s not exciting. Just piles of future firewood.

 

[weekender21]

The plots look great, I've been trying to decide if I want to go through the effort and significant expense of stumping my future plots but yours look amazing! I have a few I plan to plant with buckwheat next month as well then over seed with cereal rye and clover in August or September.

 

[weekender21]

Gotta love cereal rye. It’s growing like crazy the last week,and the deer are all over it. I had 180 pictures of deer the last two weeks. I think it’s only about 6 or 8 different deer but they’re there a lot. The exclusion cages show how much they’re eating.

When did you plant the cereal rye?

 

[Someday isle]

When did you plant the cereal rye?

I planted around Labor Day last fall. We had a long dry spell so it took a while to get going last fall. This has been kind of a late spring too.

Like you I wasn’t sure about clearing these plots myself. I tried several times to hire two different dozer guys but the locals where my property is don’t seem to be too reliable and it always fell through at the last minute. So while it’s been lots of work I’m pretty satisfied with my results and they’ve been fun projects. And cheaper too. A nice clean plot would
Be nice but on a small property these little plots with structure in them seem to get the job done.

 

[Someday isle]

Had a mostly solid week of work done this week. Only minor setback was the starter went out on my DR mower. I’ll have to order one. Fortunately they look pretty reasonably priced. I got lots of mowing done yesterday though so all was not lost. My plan was to disc up my new plot and three 1/8 acre trails that will be turned into clover plots this fall (at least two of them anyway). Then I planned on spreading buckwheat at #50 per acre and cultipacking. Then for an experiment I was going to overseed last falls new plot and then just mow the rye down on top of it and compare the results. Instead I just ended up discing everything. Last fall we had a drought right after I put in my falll plots. I thought they had germinated and then died so I overseeded heavily with rye. Then it rained and it ALL came up. My rye was really thick this week. 10 days ago it was four inches high. Today is was two feet tall. It took a lot of work with the atv to disc it in. Hopefully I terminated most of it. I can’t get out for another two weeks so it’ll be fun to see how it goes.