Burning The Brush Piles

All of our cleaning up has resulted in numerous brush piles in various places.  We have been scared to burn them because of the size of some of them and the dry conditions.  Well with El Nino here with all of its rainy conditions, we have started some burning activity.
First Peg pours diesel all over the pile,

then I light it,

and the pile starts to burn.

Here we have two piles going.  With the wet conditions of the surrounding grasses, there is little chance of the fires getting away from us.  We still watch each fire to make sure none does.

Twenty-four hours later this is what is left.  It started raining before this fire had completely burned everything up.  It is amazing how well everything burns.  We'll collect these remains and will put them into another pile we'll burn next time.

Random Pictures

We value each bit of grass that comes up right now as our yard, which was planted in Rye last fall, is dying.  I had noticed some holes all over and was wondering what critter was doing the digging. Well, early one evening last week I saw this guy making a mess of things.

When Peg comes on the weekends, the dogs love to go on long walks with her in the pasture.  She is using treats to try to get them to stay close by or to at least come when she calls them.  Here Beulah has gotten "the call" and it trotting over to get her anticipated treat.

Rooster is less interested in treats, but on this day he did hang close to Peg.  I fear fooling around in the hay grazer will not do his allergies much good.  Poor itchy poopy!

Hay Grazer

The guy renting our pasture planted hay grazer so he would have food for the cows come winter.  I hated it because I could not see the cows and we lost our view.

Because of the rains, I bet it grew over 6-7 feet tall.  The house was surrounded on two sides and we could see nothing!  I was really happy to see the mower come in to cut it last week.  We have a view again!

After they mow, they rake it into rows so it can be baled.  

I think they got about seventy bales from our little plot.  Now we are watching as it slowly begins to grow again in anticipation of a second cutting in a month or six weeks.  I'm a little worried because the rains have started again, and the hay grazer is starting to really grow!  I don't want to loose my view!

The Harvest

We found out who (what) was eating our corn.  Peg went out the other morning and saw something black and fuzzy under the propane tank.  Beulah went over to investigate, realized what it was, and hightailed it out of the area.  She has had other close "encounters" and didn't want to risk another. Rooster had his first "encounter" a minute or two later.  It was not a "direct hit" but he learned something. The black fuzzy critter came out from under the propane tank to reveal the rest of his coat; a white stripe down his back!  Poor Rooster; two baths and counting!  He enters a room and you know he's arrived!
Well we realized if we were going to have any corn left, we needed to harvest it immediately.  So we called in the "laborers" to pick and shuck our crop.

They worked hard and most of the crop was harvested and shucked in short order. When asked if they would remove the corn from the cob, we were informed that "knives are dangerous and we are not allowed to cut anything with them."  An adult was called in for this next step...

After removing the corn from the cobs, we packaged it for freezing.  Below is the 2015 corn crop ready for future enjoyment!

Although our yield was low by most standards, we learned a lot and have big plans for the future!

Loading Up For A Ride

This past weekend we had the grand kids visiting.  Of course the big event is to ride out into the pasture to see the cows, etc. in the Go-Buggy.  Here we are loading and settling in for some fun.

A great time was had by all!

Don't Count Your Chickens...

Yep, the old saying "Don't count your chickens (or corn crop) until they hatch" sure applies!  Went out this morning to view the corn crop in our little field.  I could not believe the devastation!

Not sure what hit us last night but saw bunnies and deer in that general area before it got dark.  This is something we thought would be a problem when we planted, although up until now has not been a factor at all.  So it looks like the garden area may have to become a "compound" type environment in the future if we are to enjoy any kind of success.
So...

It Lives!!!!

If you go back to the previous post, you can see what the wind did to our corn crop.  The day after the wind storm it looked like this:

Still falling over a bit but trying to straighten up.  And, there are baby ears!

Three days after the wind storm:

More upright than ever...  We saw enough progress that we did some fertilizing over the weekend. So maybe we'll get lucky??????????????  BUT we are beginning to think like farmers and not get our hopes up until we get the crop successfully in from the field.