Turn the lights out on 2014

December sundown at the Stranded Tree Farm

We wish you all a safe and happy New Year.

Wednesday wildlife, the not-so camera shy deer

She slipped away

In one of the better pictures from the trail cameras, this doe proudly poses while looking up the hill to the west.

Not two hours later, friends of ours missed their chance. They would be standing over her shoulder walking up the hill while she was probably closer to the English River by that time.

Another season is just around the corner.

Have yourself a very Teddy Christmas

Teddy and Tom, a series of cartoons created by a nephew. Give it a look-over and sign up for email delivery to brighten up your mailbox.

End of the day colors

We were able to get a few hours of work last Sunday afternoon and the Mrs took this picture while I was downloading from the trail cameras. Pointed to the southwest, she was able to capture the shades of the cloud filled sky as the sun departs for the day.

Getting ready for more work

I've ran a chainsaw without protective gear for years. Have I been a fool? Probably, but I've never tried to bite off more than I could handle and I'm overly cautious in every other way. The number one rule of mine is having an escape route.

But while looking at helmets a few weeks ago, I remarked how expensive they were. Two steps later my thought was how expensive medical bills would be if something very hard and heavy landed on my hard head.

Helmet and chaps arrived the other day:

I've got boxelders that I need to remove from the south fence line and I've been nervous on how I'm going to deal with them. Having some protective gear won't prevent accidents but it should give me a better chance for surviving one. I'm not going to fire up the saw until my life insurance kicks in at the beginning of the year. (Just in case.)

Wednesday wildlife, winter deer

The slow camera exposure gives us the effect of streaks against the sky. White ribbons of snow blowing across the way.

And the lonely doe making her way between the young cottonwoods. From the trail cameras during our first snow in November

White pine update

Deer are especially attracted to white pine. The fragrance is compelling to them during the rut.

Despite our efforts, an aggressive male will mash the cage and tear things up. This was the worst of the pines they got into. After a rough winter last year, I didn't think the 5 ft. pines we planted in the spring of 2013 would have made it. Their growth surprised me and they looked good but the deer nailed two plus several that were planted years ago.

We recruited a few hunters to try to thin the herd and I'm placing a bounty on every one they bring in. In the mean time, I made repairs and reinforced the cages.

Among the missing

"What's been going on?" You may be asking.

No posting , no news, no updates, no new deer pictures. Although I've been hoping for some additional wildlife to come into range, they've been lacking for the most part.

The family has been a little busy with a new job both for myself and the Mrs. With trying to make a good impression, I've spent some extra time both at the facility and also taking some extra education/investigation on my own time. The Mrs. spent a couple of weeks at training and her hours on the job have increased.

Number one son had some minor surgery but his recovery took longer than expected. Number two son has been getting overtime which takes him out of rotation for assisting at the pond. We've had some additional family needs that were on the table.

Add it all up and productivity has gone down for work on the pond, especially with a few days when the weather doesn't cooperate.

Things are calming down. I hope.

Wednesday wildlife, standing on their own two feet

Another interesting photo of deer behavior. This must be how they act after tearing into one of the pawpaw trees that was caged and destroying it. It seems to be celebrating a little too much but more than likely a defensive act to a deer off camera.

Get to work, 1203 looks like a good number

This weekend, we planted a couple more red oak seedlings and another 15 white oak acorns. That brings our total of 1203 trees, seedlings, acorns and nuts planted for the year. We might get a few more in the ground but I think it's time to wind things down.

My goal of 1000 was met and exceeded for the year. Now, if we can keep the critters away so they can have a chance to grow, we can relax on the numbers in the coming years. Our fall harvest will be used in the spring to replace any seedlings lost over the winter.

We planted another 38 aronia berry plants and put up fencing in our attempt to keep the deer and rabbits out. We called it a day after running out of chicken wire and will complete the fencing next weekend. If time allows. more aronias will be planted (and maybe a few more white oak acorns.)

Wednesday wildlife, I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille

This buck didn't spook after getting his picture taken. The camera has a fairly loud click but this guy stuck around for another 5 pictures.

Chinese Chestnut update

How's the Chinese Chestnut tree that David over at True Blue Sam gave us last fall?:

I was a little worried after our harsh winter but it's doing well. I didn't measure it but it's about 16+ inches tall.

Get to work, new beginnings

This was the first weekend in over 8 years that I didn't carry a "smart" phone. No emails and no texts all weekend long. It was surreal not having that leash.

I took the time to get some assessments for the coming winter which is a good time to warm up the chainsaw and clean out a few unwanted trees along the fence line.

5 more red oak seedlings planted and another 25 white oak acorns brings us to 1186 new plantings in the ground this year. I think I can plant another 14 next weekend to get us to 1200.

One of the red oaks planted that I planted by acorn this spring:

Wednesday wildlife, October buck

One of the newly deployed cameras picked up this nice buck in the SE corner.

A light weekend and not much work was accomplished

I had a short weekend to get much done and the planting season is beginning to wind down..

I did take an assessment of the box elders that need to be taken down, downloaded the cameras and handled a few minor repairs.

Gone are the blackberries as the walnuts trees are nearly bare. The red maples are in full display while the oaks are beginning to turn. I found a couple of red cedars and I plan on transplanting them next spring.

We accomplished quite a bit this year while we didn't get a couple of things done that we wanted. Once we get through this week of rain, the weekend looks to be a good opportunity to get back to work.

Wednesday wildlife, not another deer picture

Yes, it would seem so.

Taken with one of the new cameras we deployed, she is trotting away towards the northwest. To the right is one of the Gala apple trees we planted last year.

1000+ in the ground this year!

The oldest son and I planted 80 white oak acorns Thursday. The last 6 black oak seedlings and our last 4 black hill spruce were also put in the ground.

That gets us to 1048 trees, seedlings, acorns and nuts in the ground for the year. That's so far, of course.

I took a couple of days off from my "regular" job and I wanted to get a big push to get as much work done as we could while the weather cooperated.

Now we'll see how much we can get done on Friday.

White oak harvest

It was definitely a mast year at the tree by the school.

Most of which have started sprouting:

We'll get some of these in the ground this weekend and a row against the south fence sounds like an ideal spot for a few dozen of these. In the mean time, these are packed in moist peat moss in the spare fridge.

Wednesday wildlife, morning mist

Taken just before sunrise on a lazy weekday morning

Another weekend of planting seedlings

We're now at 952 total (645 trees + seedlings and 307 acorns and nuts)

We finished the red oaks that were grown in the star trays, a few black hills spruce and more swamp white oaks.

And I cut weeds (Big Surprise)

2014 acorn harvest has started

For the past couple of weekends I've picked about 100 swamp white oak acorns and planted 60. Of the three oaks only one is producing a moderate number of acorns. Not much from the other two.

Below: swamp white oak, black oak, red oak and four bur oak acorns on top.

The white and red oaks have plenty more acorns to fall from the tree and I fully expect to gather more. Last year produced very few red oak acorns and this year it seems that the black oaks are the species that aren't yielding much.

A camera shy red squirrel was stuffing his cheeks while I picked up the 150 or so red oak acorns last night after work. Maybe his descendents will be nibbling acorns from one of the seedlings that will sprout up from this harvest (20+ years from now.) Another squirrel would take a few bites from an acorn and drop the remnants on me while I picked from the ground. After the second acorn to wiz by my ear, I decided this was enough for today.

I floated off the bad acorns and bagged the good ones into ziplock baggies with peat moss. I have about a couple hundred feet to finish off the row to plant the white oak this fall and what I don't plant this fall will be left in the spare fridge to plant in the spring with the red, black and bur oaks.

These will fill in nicely where we lose a seedling this winter.

Wednesday Wildlife, full moon and the demon deer

This doe's attention was towards the camera which gave us this "deer in the headlights" look with the bright full moon over her shoulder.

Deer numbers are up there, but I have no baseline to compare to if this year is higher than previous years.

I ordered a couple more cameras in hopes of getting another picture of our "big kitty." I may have to replace the one by our shed since I opened it up this weekend and found it full of ants and I couldn't pull the pictures off of the SD card. I cleaned it out and it snapped off a couple pics so I'm hopeful it will recover.

Get to Work, another 100+ weekend

On Saturday and Sunday we put in a couple of days of clearing weeds to plant our red oak seedlings and some more one-off jobs.

We planted 60 red oak seedlings on the south section, in between the walnuts where space was available. And planted 50 swamp white oak acorns in the draw below the pond. We are now at 811 trees, seedlings, acorns and nuts planted this year.

I regret that we knocked off early on Sunday afternoon,  we should have spent more time getting work done. Hopefully that won't come back to bite us, but I have an big week ahead of me that I need to prepare for.

A couple more weekends and we will have our thousand in the ground.

Wednesday wildlife, coyotes are back

The trail cameras hadn't picked up any signs of these predators since December when I first put the cameras up. I placed one in the SE corner of the property during the winter and dropped it while moving it which cracked a plastic piece holding the batteries in place. I set it aside until last week, I fiddled with it and was able to patch it together.

I placed it under a mulberry tree facing west towards the berries and captured this picture:

I'm hoping this coyote would spend its time going after the rabbits and leave the farm cats and the neighbor's chickens and pets alone. I'm not encouraged that it will.

The acreage comes alive at night and it looks like I need to deploy a few more cameras to capture more of the action.

(Ed. I had this tapped for Wednesday but didn't publish it until I realized it late. Sorry)

Get to work, planting and cutting weeds (of course)

57 seedlings planted this weekend: chestnut, red oak and a couple of catalpa. I started the catalpa from seed from a neighbor who moved to a new house last fall and I picked a few seed pods from his yard. Germination rate was about 10% and I only have about 5 seedlings that were okay and one that excelled.

Acorns have been falling for a couple of weeks and I picked some swamp white and red oak acorns from a group of trees at a college in Cedar Rapids. I get a few looks from the drivers as they pass by but no one has called security yet. I'll be stopping by a few more times over the next weeks and I'll get as many as I can before the squirrels can bury them before winter. After float testing them, I ended up with only a couple dozen good acorns.

I planted 10 white oak acorns yesterday. This makes 458 fruit trees and seedlings, 242 acorns and nuts for a total of 700 new plantings this year.

Not bad for couple of part-time conservationists and their son.

Wednesday wildlife, late night bandit

One of too many we have at the pond:

Smile at the camera

Get to work, hard maples in the ground

With rain coming, we planted a couple of cherry trees to double our grove to 4 trees up by the pond and planted another 20 hard maple seedlings that were started in the star trays earlier this year.

That now brings our total of our planting to 372 seedlings, and 232 nuts and acorns to over 604 new in-the-ground plantings for the year.

Update: Monday, Labor Day, means Get to Work, right? Another 29 hard maple seedlings in the ground.

Chestnut update

We planted close to 80 Chinese chestnut seedlings this year and here's one that is doing well:

From nuts that David gave us last fall, I set aside about 100 for planting this year. We had a nearly 100% germination rate from nuts in a peat moss and sand mix that was in a plastic bag left in the bottom of a spare fridge.

In March, I took the now-rooted nuts and planted some in star trays and some in used #2 plastic containers from earlier planting projects. Both types thrived and I've transferred nearly all down to our new "grove" and among the walnuts.

With the number of seedlings that we're planting this year, we haven't caged all of them. Some seedlings were clipped by deer and/or rabbits and some others suffered through the drier weeks. After some timely rains that have come the past couple of weeks, most have responded back with new growth. I'm constantly impressed when a seedling bounces back from the dead.

In a few years, we'll be roasting chestnuts. Thanks, David, for sharing your largesse with us.

Blackberries!

This one blackberry bush has been producing for about three weeks now. Just enough for a handful of berries every 5-7 days. This Triple Crown thornless variety has excellent flavor for us to enjoy.

 

We planted 4 last year and this bush has given us a taste of what could come in the years ahead. We added more Triple Crown, and then Chester, Navaho and Apache cultivars this spring to make two short rows. All are thornless which means it is easier to pick and easier for the critters to steal from us. The Apache is borderline for our planting zone, but we'll give it a try.

Raccoon and starlings have plundered this and another bush. They seem to know the perfect time that the berries are ripe and have gotten there ahead of us more than once. We added chicken wire to the defenses and now we have had a few berries of our own to eat.

Wednesday wildlife, is this the big cat we've been looking for?

What do you think?

This was taken from our trail camera pointed towards the berries. At the moment between light and dark, I've found that this camera will sometimes create these odd, grainy digital recreations. Neither a daytime picture, nor is it a nighttime IR picture.

Our neighbor's son reported a sighting of a mountain lion to the south of us and with the quality of a Bigfoot sighting, this may be a visual recording of that cat. Let me know if you think I'm full of it, but I'm leaning towards it is a mountain lion.

It's not one of the neighbor's dogs, it's not a deer and it's a whole lot bigger than this guy:

Both predators are welcome if they take out the rodents, rabbits or raccoons. At least until the big cat takes a swipe at me. This little black cat has been a frequent visitor and I'm sure it's gotten its fill of mice.

Wednesday Wildlife, Pheasant numbers are up

We've counted more pheasant this year than we've seen in years and this are but a couple of dozens that the trail cameras have picked up. I haven't mowed around the pond and below the dam and it's provided habitat for our native wildlife. Pheasants and song birds have benefited from me being too lazy to get all my work done.

White oak update

One of the swamp white oaks that David gave us last fall.

It stands about 18 inches tall now. Although a little insect damage on a few leaves, this has good color and new growth as you can see on the top. The deer and rabbits have left this alone and I think we have a good start to this one.

Get to work - another 34 trees planted this weekend

With showers coming, we planted another 34 seedlings: red maple, hard maple, red oak, and white oak. We've had a cool, although dry, summer that's allowed us to plant seedlings in July and now August. Hauling water in the 80's is sure easier than hauling water while in the upper 90's.

That brings our seedling plantings at 317. With 184 acorns planted in the spring, we now have over 500 planted this year.  

And I got the chance to mow:

 

Too bad I didn't have shade like that the whole time I was mowing.

Wednesday Wildlife, young and old

I did not get them to pose for this, it just lucked out that way.

These were taken about 10 days apart from the trail cams. With hunting season coming up, they better move on.

Wednesday wildlife - bees and thistles

No bees were harmed after taking this picture. I can't say the same for the thistle.

Get to work - planting 80 more trees

For Sunday's workday with the wife and #2 son helping out: with the forecast for rain, we planted the last of our black oak (61), the last two coffeetrees as well as a couple of white oak and 5 red maple. Another 10 chestnuts planted below the pond were added to the "grove."

The forecast changed a bit last night and we're looking at a lesser chance of rain over the next couple of days. I may be hauling water this week if my regular job will allow it.

We weeded the blackberries we planted this spring to round out a hot day for us.

Wednesday Wildlife - "two for one"

Twins racing towards their mother

15 minutes of weather - clouds rolling in

I heeded my instincts this time and decided to get to the truck before this hit us:

At the top of the hill (cutting weeds, of course) and looked up and it was coming in a little faster than I thought. I snapped a picture and ran down the hill to my truck in time. Not as bad of a storm front than a few weeks ago.

Wednesday Wildlife - Common Yellowthroat Warbler

The Common Yellowthroat Warbler captured my attention recently. This pair did not appreciate my presence recently and the two of them chipped at me as I tried to get a few pictures.

The female

And the male with his mask

These little insect eaters are welcome all summer long.

Keep track of the rivers and streams in Iowa

I was informed of a tool this weekend that provides a comprehensive look of the major rivers and streams around Iowa. Using data logging devices of their own and United States Geological Survey, the Iowa Flood Center is operated through the University of Iowa department of Hydroscience and Engineering.

You can get up-to-the-minute information at the Iowa Flood Information System or IFIS, Launch IFIS by clicking on the IFIS button on the upper right and you'll bring up a map of Iowa and the monitoring of the flood center.

Click on the radar symbol on the right of the display and you can add stream gauges, rain gauges and other sites of information throughout the state.

Click around the site for plenty of information such as precipitation levels over the past few days or weeks by clicking on the rain cloud.

This is a useful tool with the main site offering information on the application and you can download data to a delimited file or xml format. Mobile apps are under development (click on IFIS APPS button) although one is ready for Chrome browsers.

Get to work - trees and weeds (again)

As the war on weeds continues, I planted 36 more trees this weekend, bringing the total just shy of 200 planted so far this year. (I miscounted, otherwise we would have 200+).

These tiger lilies grace the lower driveway and will not be subjected to the blade of the weed trimmer:

These ubiquitous flowers are almost a requirement for every farm in Iowa. 

Wednesday Wildlife, new brood hatching

While cutting weeds on Sunday, I came across several nests of red-winged black birds in the small walnut trees. All were empty but one had three newly hatched young along with a fourth emerging from its egg.

 

Of course, the parents were none too happy with me and I moved on down the row after taking this snapshot. I hope I didn't disturb them too much as I'd like to hear their songs from the electric wire next year.

Notice the workmanship on the nest with its interwoven grasses. With that kind of quality, it should have withstood the wind and rain that hit the acreage on Monday.

North English River reaches 30 ft

The north fork of the English River reached the 30 foot range overnight, flooding bottom farmground and threatening Kalona.This is the highest the river has been since we purchased the farm three years ago.

Farm runoff endangered the shed at the acreage but came up a couple of feet from reaching it. With 4+ inches of rain on Monday, it took a lot of backtracking on my part after reaching closed bridges and washed out gravel roads.

I put my back to the shovel to dig ditches to drain standing water on the trees, shed and newly planted asparagus bed. After battling sump pump issues at the homestead on the Iowa River, it has been a long couple of days.

Get to work - planting more trees

We received a couple more apple trees from Stark Brothers on Friday and we rushed to get them planted on Saturday before a storm front passed by.

Suncrisp - a cross between golden delicious and an orange pippin, this is supposed to be cold hardy and should store well.

This more than doubles our apple trees, honeycrisp, red and golden delicious, gala and now suncrisp.

The question has been asked of us regarding why planting this many different varieties of apple trees. The short answer is before we invest in dozens of trees for our orchard grove, we want to find out want grows best.

Also on Saturday, we added a couple of concord grape vines next to the neptunes we planted a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, cages all around which is putting a strain on our depleted fence post inventory.

Four more chestnuts were planted on Sunday to bring that total to 13 (so far).

In between planting, weeds needed cutting and I had to oblige. I'm way behind in the weed management department. But the upcoming 3 day weekend might be dry enough for us to get ahead.

Wednesday Wildlife, 6/25/14

It's been a while since I posted a wildlife photo, and I decided a Rose-breasted grosbeak sounded like a good candidate. I don't remember seeing these in my youth but we've been finding dozens of these around the acreage.

Here's a male that perched on the fence protecting the aronias:

We noticed the behavior of "sharpening" its beak on a mulberry branch in between sharp "chip" noises. An omnivore, I'm hoping they will feast on some of the grasshoppers that have recently invaded the juneberries.


Not the best photo as my small camera was extending a bit much on its range as he kept his distance from the crazy bald guy with a tiny camera. A storm approaching on Sunday probably increased his anxiety beyond seeing my ugly mug that afternoon.

First day of summer - nearly out of time to plant a tree

Time is running out for planting trees in Iowa. The hot summers can make it difficult for roots to get established, especially after the past three seasons here in SE Iowa. We've had success in fall planting and are already in the planning stages.

From our new additions to the apple grove, planted on 6/17:

The two gala:

And a red delicious:

These were purchased from Stark Brothers on their "End of Season" sale and delivered within a week of ordering.

Thanks to our 2014 suppliers

David over at True Blue Sam helped give us a start a couple of years ago with our coffeetree seeds and last year gave us a few seedlings (swamp white oak, catalpa, chinese chestnut, and a few more coffeetrees). And the gallons of chestnuts nuts. From those nuts, we have about a hundred growing and have transplanted a few to our new chestnut grove.

Chief River Nursery in Wisconsin was our source for 100 (plus a few extra) black hills spruce seedlings and river birch that the rabbits got into and clipped a few. Both have been doing very well for the little amount of rain so far this year.

Stark Brothers out of Missouri was our source for a couple of grafted pecan trees and a dozen blackberries. We thought we lost a few of the blackberries as I didn't think I hardened them off well enough but all are responding well with good growth. We decided to try a couple of nectarines to add to our fruit trees and they are doing well. The pecans? Here's a look:

Stark Brothers have discounted many of  their plants and we decided to add gala and red delicious apple trees to our small orchard, adding two more nectarines and started a vineyard with three grapevines. We planted these on 6/14 and on the 17th they looked well coming our of dormancy.
 
Henry Fields was where we got a couple of butternut starts and a few more pecan seedlings. I'm reserving judgement right now as this has been a difficult start of the year. One of the butternuts is showing good growth but the second one is slow coming around. The pecans are a bit behind as well. We also tried some juneberries to add to our fruit section and all are doing well so far. Lastly, we got a couple of sweet cherry trees but have them potted right now instead of planted at the acreage.

Our local Lowes had a few larger blackberry plants that we added this year and a couple of nectarine trees. We purchased an 8ft red oak from them last year and planted in recognition of the Mrs and I being together 25 years and it's done well, so we decided to give them another chance.

Theissens had a couple of ranier cherry trees that were on sale, so we decided, "why not?" They look very good so far where we planted them just below the pond and caged up to protect them from deer.

My acorn sources have been native red, black and swamp white oaks around the area. The red oaks have had a nearly 99% germination rate while the swamp white oak have been disappointing. The germination rate of the neighbor's catalpa seeds have been at about 10%. Another neighbor's hard maple tree was very generous last fall and I have plenty of small starts so far. My red maples at the homestead also produced a good crop of seeds this year and I have about 25 potted "yearling" red maple seedlings ready to go.

If I get every seedling transplanted and every seed and acorn planted, we will have nearly 1200 trees in the ground this year. 

Get to work on the weeds (and plant more trees)

Those weeds won't cut themselves and I've fallen behind.

The row of black hills spruce along the northern border of the acreage: 

 

And leading up to the pond:

These pictures were from a couple of weekends ago as I spent about 5 hours on the Stihl trimmer until the lightning flash convinced me to call it a day. I was able to clean the row with the spruces and where the nectarines and chestnuts are growing.

Speaking of chestnuts, we planted two more this past weekend on the 14th. And three more apple trees (gala and red delicious). And our last pawpaw replacements. And four more nectarine trees. That means another 12 is added to the list for a YTD of 156. Almost forgot, we dug an asparagus bed and started our vineyard with three grapevines.

Is the asparagus a vegetable? I don't know but we should harvest them in a couple of years.

Of course, we caged these up to restrict rodents and deer, as demonstrated below by the Mrs and #2 son.

Yep, it was a busy weekend.