It has been 8 weeks since I was last at the cabin. During that time, my parents made 2 trips down to mow and did some other chores as well. When they went down on July 5th, they were met with several downed trees that blew over in a wind storm that came through the previous week. One of the trees fell on our entrance gate crushing it. Luckily the gate still swings open and closed but will need replace in the future.
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| Crushed Gate |
In addition, they found several of the food plots overrun with foxtail which required dad to do some extra spraying. The highlight of their trip was our new acquisition of a riding lawn mower. One of the biggest challenges that we have had over the past 6 years was the limitation of relying on the ATV to do nearly all of the work. The lawn mower did a great job and allowed twice the amount of work to be done in the same amount of time.
This morning, I picked up my brother-in-law, Ben, at 6:00 am and headed for the cabin. We made quick work of my ToDo list for the day and ended up spending about the same amount of time working as we did driving. It is always great to have help down there and this was the first chance that Ben had to see the cabin and property. I was very surprised how green everything was when we arrived, especially with just a single rain event over the past few weeks.
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Ben is off and mowing
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| Everything was green and growing well |
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After figuring out the mower for myself, I got Ben started on the mowing while I started working on planting my brassica food plots. I knew for sure that I had 1/4 acre to plant in the small field, as well as a 1/4 acre in the middle of the big field where the sugar beats failed to establish but I still wasn't sure what state the beans were in. The report from dad a couple weeks ago was that they were overrun with foxtail although he could dig down and find some soybean plants alive. I had him spray them with glyphosate to kill off the grasses as a last ditch effort to salvage the plot. I was very happy to see the grasses completely killed off and the soybeans growing well over about 1/2 of the food plot. I would estimate that they are about 3 - 4 weeks behind where the should be, but I'm hoping they will catch up now that they aren't competing for sunlight, nutrients and water. Additionally, all of the grasses have fallen over and are acting like mulch on the ground.
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| All ready to spread some fertilizer |
After the mowing and planting were done, we loaded up the chainsaws and headed for the south ATV trail. Dad cleared out a lot of the downed trees a few weeks ago, but didn't make it to that ATV trail or the couple of trees down in the big field. Running 2 chainsaws, we made quick work of the downed trees and mowed off the ATV trail as well.
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| Clearing downed trees from the South ATV trail |
After refreshing the batteries and cards in a couple of trail cameras and putting up a 3rd, we headed for home. It is a very short but very productive trip and thanks to Ben and the new lawn mower, we were able to accomplish it all very quickly. I'll be headed back down to the cabin in a few weeks to assess the food plots planted today and start prepping for our last big work trip of the year on Labor Day weekend. It is hard to believe that deer season opens in just over 2 months but I'm happy to say that I'm feeling more prepared then I have in several years. Now it is time to pray for rain and good growing conditions.
