Portable sawmills

I thought David would appreciate these:

It doesn't look like the Farmall C is powering the band, but Grampa and team were captured on film in March of 1954.

Move up 41 years and a crew using a Woodmizer bandsaw while my dad inspects the logs:

I must be getting nostalgic in my old age.

Headed to -20 at the homestead

But at least my water pump isn't frozen:

Grandpa found his pump frozen during the winter of 71. Grandma, in a safe warm house, chronicled him carrying a bucket down the hill to gather water in the creek in a series of photos. He would have been 72 at the time.

1971, Iowa, no running water in their house and I never heard them complain about it, but I imagine they did on days like this.

One of the neighbors thought I was crazy for working on the deck during the past couple of weekends of mid-twenties. Since I can't stand on the pond in the summer, this time of year is my only opportunity.

I think of my grandparents and their situation 40 years ago, and I think I can handle carrying 2x6s up the hill to the pond. Grandpa had a much steeper hill to carry his load.

Wednesday Wildlife, 1/1/2014

Predator and Prey edition:

Looks like a bounty on coyotes is in order.

In late October I discovered a doe dead in the hay field. I thought the neighbor's dogs cleaned the carcass, but now I'm confident they weren't the only carnivores picking the bones of the deer. 

Wednesday Wildlife, 12/18/13

While not technically wildlife, these tracks display the various animals around the pond. The neighbor's son has been trapping the raccoons and I placed a bounty on any groundhog or muskrat he captures. I may be in the hole before end of the year.

6 days to Winter? It's already here

15 degrees on December 15th

I have this to look forward to in four months (taken last April 20th)

Even though the temperature was in the low teens, it didn't seem that cold with barely a wind. This time of year is for repairs and planning for spring planting. This week, I put up trail cameras that was purchased at a good Black Friday price from Scheels. I'll post if anything decent is captured since all I have now is my goofy face triggering the shutter.

 

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.