Praying For Rain

This past Saturday I opted to head down to the cabin to try and get some food plots planted before the foretasted rain on Sunday. Of course, that rain never came and there still has not been rain down there. For some reason, this year, my property lies in a small area of Iowa that is in a severe drought. I'm trying not to fret over it too much as mother nature is one of the many things that I cannot control.

I didn't arrive at the cabin until 6:00 pm so I had to get to work quickly. I did notice on the way in that although the clover food plots were very stressed, the plot screen on the big and small field was growing very well and had reached higher then the box blinds. I had left the sprayer on the ATV last time, so I filled it up and headed out to spray off 1/2 of each field that will be planted in cereal grains on Labor Day weekend.

Plot screen on the small field

Plot screen on the big field

After cleaning out the sprayer, I hooked up the broadcast spreader, mixed and filled up with fertilizer for the brassica food plots. 

Ready to spread fertilizer

Got a good burn down from spraying a couple weeks earlier

With the fertilizer spread I got the disc hooked up and grabbed the seed to plant. The ground was extremely hard and dry, but the disc did well given the circumstances. It was after 9:00 pm when I finished up planting the small field. It was a good thing that the ATV had head lights although their effectiveness was dampened by all of the dust that was kicked up while tilling. 

Dust hanging in the air after I was done

This ATV is a work horse!

Working  by headlight

Even with the drought and being attacked by Japanese Beetles, several of the apple and pear trees have produced a good amount of fruit this year. I can only imagine how well they would have done under good weather (and insect) conditions. 

Loaded with apples

I also got to do my first trail camera card pull of the year. I only had 1 camera up, but have added 2 more now. 

Turkey poults!

Plenty of fawns running around this year as well

I was very happy to see a good amount of deer activity, even considering the warm temperatures during the first week the camera was up. I also have 4 bucks that I would consider shooters on camera already. This was a bit of a surprise as I don't normally get many summer time pictures of bigger bucks. 

It will be a few weeks until I return, but I look forward to checking the trail camera cards again. In the mean time, I'm going to keep praying for rain.