Recent happenings

News of our demise has been greatly exaggerated.  We're still here, despite a nearly month-long layoff.  We're going to try to get you updated on stuff that we've been doing on the farm with the next few pictures and paragraphs.

Neta and I spent a weekend about a month ago doing some pruning of trees, bushes and the huge, overgrown grapevine behind the house.  Neta pruned back some of the blueberries, leaving enough bushes so we'll still have a decent crop, but getting about half of them under control.  I climbed the ladder and significantly cut back the pear tree.  It had gotten to the point that its limbs would bend to the point of breaking as they were so full of pears.  They're not the best of pears, sort of grainy, and they're better for cooking or baking than just eating whole or sliced.  There are plans for other varieties.

Trimming the pear tree

The aftermath.  It needed it.

We showed a before/after photo of the grapevine in our "Looking Back, Looking Ahead" blog post.  Below is a more recent picture after we burned up some of what we cut out.  We are still going to do some more clean up and cut back the vine that was in the fire (it survived) and see how it fares.

After a good pruning and burning (far end)

On a lighter note...this little guy was trapped in a rubbermaid container on the carport.  He was release unharmed near our small barn.

He's a cute little fella, isn't he?

In the spirit of pruning trees, one of our big pecan trees got the ultimate pruning.  If you remember back in October, after the hurricane, we lost a huge portion of one of our pecan trees.

A few weeks back, after a thunderstorm, we lost another piece of the same tree.

We already knew that it had a hollow spot inside and part of the remaining tree was tall enough and close enough to fall and take out the main power line that runs through our property.  We, and the surrounding folks, wouldn't be too happy if it fell and we lost power.  So we decided to call a company to come take it down as it's too big and too precarious for me to tackle alone.  And so it came down, piece by piece.

Crisis averted.

Once it was all down and cut up, he hopped on his tractor with the grappler and hauled it all over in the field where we had some pines cleared last year.  That's when the next guy showed up and turned it all into mulch and dust.

He made pretty quick work of that tree.  In about 20 minutes it was all chopped up and we had a field full of mulch, which has come in handy as we've planted some new trees (details in another blog entry).  The only thing left to grind was the stump, which was probably about 3 feet in diameter at its widest.  It was no match for that machine.

Before

Nothing left but wood chips the size of my thumbnail.

That's all for now.  We'll try to be more regular with our postings, but no guarantees.  The busy spring is upon us and we have lots to do.  We'll do our best to document our adventures with pictures so we'll have more to blog about.  See ya next time!