With our first major trip out to the land this year under our belts, we feel a bit better about the amount of work that we got done in one day and made some plans for future trips. My only concern was that things (plants) were waking up much sooner than in previous years. I've made notes about that and hopefully we can get on top of things sooner next year. This trip was mainly to work on the watershed, since I had looked at the calendar recently and realized we had less one month to work out there until October. We knew we had some invasives left to cut, but weren't exactly sure how many. We stopped working on that project when we cut nearly a dozen invasives, mostly Autumn Olive, and moved on to the next one.
Woodchuck has been wanting to make a path on the South side of the watershed, so that would enable us to walk it starting from the North end, walk West, turn South, and now we would be able to turn East. His plan is to continue that path along the entire property line to meet up over by the blueberry bushes, just sightly Northeast of the watershed. Eventually we would also like to clean up along the West edge of the watershed pond. Various spots we want to be able to walk thru are an absolute mess of fallen trees, thick patches of invasives, and weird property lines. They did not make it easy on us when they divided the properties.
While Woodchuck took the tractor out to the watershed, I walked on my own so that I could look at areas along the way, and I was greeted by two hunting hawks. We usually hear her at the same time each day that we are out there and I am assuming it was the mother hawk teaching her juvenile to hunt. The juvenile landed in a tree directly above me! Once again I was in awe of all that I am witness to out there in such a wild and natural place! I caught the juvenile taking off from the tree! 👇
We used a GPS map I have of our property to walk where he should flatten. He did not mow it, only flattened it. This was before he started, while I stayed about halfway down the path so he knew what direction to come. I am looking West towards him.👇
While we were making our plan about the path, I saw some garbage in a matted down area of tall grass in the watershed. Unfortunately, someone had been out there hunting yet again and doing some target practice on a plastic jug. I did find some feathers and bird poop by it too. We have signs, boundary markers, etc. but do intend on stepping up our signage and getting cameras out there. I just don't understand why people mess with what isn't theirs.
On our regular land that is not in government programs, we plotted out where we will be planting new trees next month. Although I don't have the land as set up as I would like to be planting new stuff, I jumped on the opportunity. That way they will have a couple of years growing time before we move out there. Later on, once we are out there, we will plan on doing more. I ordered elderberry, service berry, and arborvitae. The arborvitae will go at the front, just outside of the forest line, to help give some privacy. The service berry will go along two ditches (I'm thinking that it will eventually help with erosion), and the elderberry was the hardest for me to place, since Woodchuck loves to mow everything down. I've got a couple of places in mind for those, but need to clear those areas up first and am running out of time to do it. Rush planning seems to be my new norm.
We also cut down the the existing fruit trees. The apple tree wasn't providing fruit, and the two pear trees looked like they could have been Callery Pear and the fruit was always rock hard. We will start over in the next couple of years. I am ordering some stainless steel tree tags, so there will be no guessing what we planted. I am also making notes about where they are going and how many, so that we don't have to try and remember and then guess later on.
We started making plans on cleaning up some trashy areas of invasives and fallen trees, and talking about the pond. We have a guy coming out on Monday of next week to talk with us about getting some clean fill to build up and fill in the area of leaking, and Woodchuck and I are going today to treat the pond with Barley Straw Extract. It's our first time trying this and I don't intend on doing it every two weeks like the bottle says, just the Spring and Fall. We are already behind because the pond meal is showing up already, but I want to give this a shot. I am still worried that we are going to continue to spend money and time trying to fix this thing, and will fail or a neighbor will mess with the ditch that runs from it and back us up again. But I guess it's worth this last try before throwing in the towel.
We recently went to get our taxes filed and she has a pond and has a windmill set up to aerate it. No electricity, which is what we needed. So I will add that to my list of things to research.
Big storms are on the way late tonight into tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see how the pond holds up when we go to see it in a few days after! Always a plan, always an unknown, and always an adventure! 💚
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