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.