Catching Up

I haven't blogged in quite a while as you can see.

However, that doesn't mean I have been idle at the farm.

In August, 2008, we started building the house. We are building the house slowly and hope to be finished in a few years. HOWEVER, we did actually move into the guest end of the house Christmas Eve, 2008.

In the spring of 2009 we began preparing the yard for grass planting and began with our landscaping. Close to 30 knockout roses, some loropetalum, 20 or so different azaleas, a bottlebrush, some weeping willows, viburnum, lantana, wildflowers and confederate jasmine, have been planted. We hope to get in a few bulbs before it gets too cool.

You can follow some of our progression through the photos of the house and farm progression

I will try to get some of the photos as well as the trials and tribulations up on a more regular basis.

Milieu Serene Food Plots planted 10-8-07

Saturday was spent cranking the tractor then looking for a part for the harrow. Uncle Glenn used the tractor and harrow on the tract behind his house to prepare for rye planting. Uncle Buddy and I reset the fish feeder to 10 seconds. I think I probably need to reset it to 30 seconds once the current batch is gone. I will also probably move the fish feeder to the west side of the pond.

Sunday, after Church and a nap, Mama and I went up to MS and rode around a bit on the golf cart. Watched the fish feed.

Sunday night Debbie and I (using IM) discussed butterfly gardens, possible front yard landscape scenarios. Debbie also provided some backyard to woods merge border pictures. Still need to do much more reading on the butterfly gardens as well as native meadow perennials. The UGA Butterfly Garden PDF says something about a commercial seed mixture they developed, need to follow-up on that.

Monday, harrowed everything well before lunch then planted oats and wheat on the 50' food plots. I also harrowed 2 harrow widths wide around the 15 acres and created a 3/4 acre food plot on the north and west of the bottom there.

Burned 2 of the limb piles again and watched the fish feed.

Fish up for 1st time today at Milieu Serene; Wheat up, all green

Today was a glorious day. We stocked 1200 channel catfish and about 1200 bream 2 weeks ago. I started the automatic feeder 2 weeks ago. I got to see the channel catfish come up and feed for the 1st time this afternoon when arriving from Atlanta. Really cool!!!

Water level today was 35" on short guage and 2' 7.5" on tall guage. There has been somewhere around 2 inches of rain during the preceding week. I installed the guages 34 days ago on September 1, 2007. Since then the water level has risen 24 inches.

I planted the wheat to control erosion on September 22, 2007. The stand is up approximately 2 inches and doing pretty well. The landscape is now green from a distance. Beginning to see the semblance of what the landscape will look like with grass.

I put the deer/turkey feeder out on Sunday, September 30, 2007. Deer are feeding fairly well but still have lots of other food so aren't eating all the corn. I'll probably scale back the amount until after the 1st couple of frosts. No need to waste the corn when the deer and turkey don't need it. Both the deer and turkey continue to enjoy the wheat. There were tracks from both since the last rain. That could have been hours before my arrival or some time the preceding night.

Once we get electricity on the site, I will probably install an automated weather station which reports via the internet and a web cam so I can check out the wildlife while I'm working in Atlanta. That will be a few thousand dollars and some time down the road. We believe it will cost around $1,500 to run underground power to the house site. The automated weather stations I have looked at run somewhere around $500 - $750. I would also require a building of some sort (probably one of those portable buildings) and a computer. I have a few spare computers or we might just use an inexpensive desktop.

Tomorrow is another day to be spent on the farm. I plan to adjust the fish feeder at some point this weekend and and adjust the deer/turkey feeder.