We made it up to the farm last weekend and were blessed with beautiful weather. My pear trees came in from The Wildlife Group at the exact time they promised, so first on the list was planting the 10 trees. I split them up between 3 plots (4,3,&3). I used the 5' tubex combitubes, with pvc stakes and weed mats that I bought from Treeprotectionsupply.com. We soaked the roots in water for 5-10 minutes prior to planting, which required us to break ice in the pond. Once we got them in the ground, we watered them in thoroughly to eliminate any air pockets. We also got two solid rains up there the day after we left, so I'm optimistic the trees are off to a great start. I was mostly negligent in my documentation duties but did manage to take one picture after we'd planted the first 4 trees in our standing bean field.
One thing worthy of note is the amount of beans still present in the bean field was very impressive. We planted ag beans this year instead of eagle beans, and although they mostly didn't get as tall as the eagle beans usually do, they put on lots more pods. At this time last winter, the eagle beans had all been consumed. I'm confident the beans this year will still be available into spring green up. I'm optimistic that I'll have some luck shed hunting around that field next month.
You can see three other tubes in the distance on the left side of the picture... those are the chestnut seedlings WBPdeer hooked me up with last year. They all ended up 3-4' tall in their first year of growth and seem to be doing great.
We spent the rest of Saturday with chainsaws in hand and we cut about 1/4 mile worth of an access trail along our north property line. This will allow us easier access to the north perimeter of our property without disturbing the core areas of the property. We plan to have many more options this year to hunt with winds from the south, and this access trail accomplishes that. Not to mention it will make deer recovery much easier!
Last thing on the list for Saturday was to retrieve all our cameras and see what kind of deer we have still on the property. We had a few cameras to retrieve:
Not a whole lot of new deer on camera but we did have a busted up deer move into the back part of the farm, I suspect due to the neighbors killing Brutus, one of the 6.5 yr old bucks whose core area included that part of the farm. Here is the new buck, which I expect to be near the top of the hit list next year:
Our final project for Sunday was to trim shooting lanes at a number of stand sites. By the time we left on Sunday, we had trees picked out and shooting lanes cut at 7 different locations. I'm confident at least one of those locations is going to pay off this fall.
Thanks for reading along! More projects coming soon...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
