Winter is coming

The looking west on southern section of the walnuts:

Taken 12/1/13

Wednesday Wildlife, 12/4/13

I've taken more pictures now that I got a "new" camera in order to chronicle my adventures in amateur forestry. This is the background picture for the blog of our single red oak at the top of the hill but take a look at the speck on the left:

I opened the picture to edit it and found this:

That's either a six foot bee crawling near the paw paws or a regular honey bee at about the same distance from me (about 12 feet) from the red oak. Since the neighbors have a hive, I'm leaning towards the latter.

Nothing's guaranteed

This cage was around a white pine that the previous owner planted:

If you can look closely, you can make out the woven wire cage that a deer got on top of and mashed it to the ground. They then proceeded to tear all of the branches between one foot off the ground to about six feet up.

This was the second white pine that deer attacked. On the first pine, the deer broke the post off at the ground. I'm hoping that deerzilla met up with one of many hunting parties in the area.

Working weekend

Fall planting has completed and temps reaching 50 on Saturday and 40 on Sunday. Perfect weather for some work:

I'm not a professional and if David watched how I cut, I'm sure he would take this away from me. But I still have all my fingers, limbs, etc. so I'm lucky. One of my rules is always have an escape route and I learned that taking a step while trimming, a branch can kick up to trip you. Turn the saw off.

This 14" saw is big enough to cut most of what I need to clean up but small enough for me to realize that I better not try to cut more than it can chew. If I had a bigger saw, I might try cutting larger trees and then drop one on top of me. The wife gets an insurance check and I go through eternity realizing that yes, it was a stupid idea to cut that 3 foot silver maple in the SE corner.

I thinned out the cottonwoods and several leaning elms, all in the 6-8 inch range. For some reason, there is an overabundance of boxelders in the fence rows. Most have nice leaning branches. The ones that haven't fallen off yet, that is. Half a dozen of those in the 8-10 inch range came down, along with several of the leaning branches.

This one was down but was hung up on a couple of smaller boxelders and grapevines, my other annoying invasive species that I need to eradicate. I'm now buying Tordon by the gallon. After cutting the "hangers," I have this pile:

I used a bow saw and axe on some of the hung up branches. I didn't want a running chainsaw in my hands if the tree started to roll towards me. No issues though and I made it home. I still have a lot of clean up to do, but it's safer now that it's not leaning.

With the area opened up, I'm thinking that a few red oaks should go in there as well as a picnic table in the shade. I estimate a month of 8 hour days to get the fence rows cleaned up or maybe a half day for someone who knows what they are doing.

Wednesday Wildlife, 11/13/13

The larvae of what is commonly known as a hummingbird moth. 

The Hyles lineata aka White Lined Sphinx Moth, is common in Iowa and throughout North America and feeds on the nectar of flowers and plants as it competes against the hummingbirds for the same food supply.

This caterpillar was one of two we discovered on the 10th of October this fall and was probably feeding off the elm and apple trees from the property. This late in the year, it should go into hibernation and enter maturity next spring. The pupae stage is spent in shallow underground chambers.

There's more information at the bug guide from Iowa Sate University.

2013 Fall Planting Update

In mid-October we planted all the seedlings that David aka Sam delivered up to us. A couple of swamp white oak, a couple of catalpa and what ended up with 5 Kentucky coffeetree (a few volunteers were in the pots). The chestnut is planted in what is our new grove. I planted 5 more chestnut nuts so I think that qualifies as a grove.

The catalpa are framing the cedars as "bookends" on the west and the coffeetrees were added to the row with our showcase tree and to a couple of other rows with smaller coffeetrees. The swamp white oak were planted in the last row next to the willows.

Of course. all were caged with woven wire and chicken wire or hardware cloth to prevent the large and small vermin from doing damage.

Catalpa:

Swamp white oak:

Tree number one of the chestnut grove:

I planted 51 swamp white oak acorns up the bottom three rows using an old brass planting stick. I have 100+ planted in planters in the back yard of the homestead.

50 black oak acorns are planted in the northern three rows at the farm. Another 190 black oak acorns are in a bag of peat moss in the bottom of a fridge in the basement.

I have a couple of tubs buried in the garden that I sowed aronia seeds and planters that have paw paw seedlings and hard maple seeds that fell this fall from my neighbor's tree.

After a few more chestnuts get in the ground, I think I've just about finished with the fall planting.

Wednesday Wildlife, 10/30/13

Picture taken on September 22nd.

For more information go here.

And here.

Wednesday Wildlife, 10/16/13

From July, 2012:

This immature Eastern Meadowlark kept its eye on me while I cut weeds. The higher pitch song distinguishes it from the Western Meadowlark and plenty more of this guy's friends entertained me during my work this year.

Acorn and chestnut inventory, 10/08/13

Last week I received about 500 red oak acorns from Acorno.com. They're supposed to have come from Iowa, but I'll have to take them at their word. I still ended up with about 500 after floating them and at a price less than what they currently list. The reason for ordering was that my local trees had none. Not a single acorn from any of the red oak trees that I know of that are easily accessible.

About 300 swamp white oak acorns from a local college campus. Floating was about 80-90 percent successful. The four trees had a good crop this year and I've been battling the squirrels to get at them. A couple of the locals aren't too happy with me taking their food supply.

The black oak inventory nearly doubled to 39 acorns on Monday after I stopped to pick up #2 son on campus and I went to my source. This one tree sits very close to a linden and I picked up a few dozen of those seeds to try my hand with. Only about 5% of the acorns have been viable after floating. I've been checking this tree for the past month to try to increase my numbers and only getting a couple of good acorns on each visit.

I get some strange looks as I pick up acorns and seeds from around campus. I'm thinking of wearing a tuxedo while picking but someone is sure to call security and I'd rather not be chased about by net-carrying guys in white coats.

David aka True Blue Sam and his mom, Bea, stopped by and dropped off at least 2 gallons of Chinese chestnuts. With a very good flavor, some of them will not make it to the tree farm. But I have a planned spot where the chestnut grove will be and I'll be getting some in the ground this fall. With his generosity, I have several to experiment with to see what works best for my ground.

Here's the inventory:

 From left to right - swamp white oak, Chinese chestnuts, red oak and black oak.

We have a good supply for this year's fall planting and for spring. An old fridge in the basement now holds our inventory and the "crisper" drawer is a little full.

The Reason for cages

In a word --- deer.

I mowed about a half acre of goldenrod and sawgrass to plant our aronia plants and we found several small elms and a couple of good sized cottonwood saplings. And more walnut trees. I decided to not mow them over with the intention of transplanting the elm and cottonwood elsewhere. With about 3000+ walnuts on the place, I wasn't worried about those. I ran out of time to transplant or cage them and decided that I would put them on the list for the following week's work.

With clearing off the weeds and grass, now the trees are visible and vulnerable to deer. They were hidden before mowing and now it was like I put a spotlight on them and a giant arrow to point the deer right at them. Below is a cottonwood sapling at about 8 feet tall:

And this is what was left of the walnut:

With the rut starting earlier this year compared to the past two years, the rubbings started in late September and are about a month ahead of last year. Repellents do nothing to discourage these giant rats, and with three trails that cross the property, hunters have not been able to keep the population down.

The trees should recover, but they are set back years. All because I waited a week.

I found that it isn't always necessary to wire the cages to posts but just having the woven wire cage surrounding the tree is sometimes aggravating enough to confuse the deer. Because of the numbers of walnuts we have there is no realistic opportunity to cage them all. But others, like the coffeetrees get caged up.

The best supplier of fence, wire and posts has been farm auctions with my latest acquisition of about 800ft of 30" woven wire and another 500ft of barbed wire. I loaded up two pickups and an 6x8 trailer with rolls of used and new wire for $70, disappointing an older farmer in the process. Earlier this summer I was able to get 90+ steel posts for $40 with a few wooden posts thrown in.

It's best to protect the trees and berries as much as I can