Adventures in land owning
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Long time no see,,,,,,
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Its been over 6 months since my last post. In that time, our goats have double we have 10 now(we bought a few and had a few). we bought one each a buck and doe Saanen kids and one nubian doe. Our neighbor lent us her la mancha buck last winter and he mated one of our does, so we also had a kid with la mancha features. We gave her to our neighbor. Lance & Rachel have been awesome friends and neighbors.
Our black lab went in heat and a stray gave her puppies. 12 all together. 2 didn't make it past birth and we managed to give the rest away in the parking lot of wall mart over a few week ends.
Our fruit trees have did OK, we had some plums,nectarines, and there is a lot of pears coming.
Thats all for now....pictures to follow. ]]>We got goats..!!!
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My neighbor Rachel showed me how to make mozzarella and ricotta from our milk and I made our first batch last night. we're going to try to make some Jack cheese next round.( it will take a while to cure).
Molly came over with Rachel and Emily to deliver the goats. Molly stayed awhile and played with Tommy.
Also last week-end I was invited to our friend Tim's place to shoot a few rounds and learn a bit about guns. I think out of the several rifles I shot I like the 7mm (7 mag) best. It shot the smoothest for me, even thought the 30.06 felt good as well, just a bit heavier and a bit harder to keep steady... I guess other brands may be better but so far that what I like.
We will be planting a couple of Grape fruit trees this week and hope to see our purchase of trees from last months order shipped. ]]>Sweet pear wine
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We harvested one huge basket of pears.The same amount had already fallen from the trees, that's why I decided to try wine rather than let the pears go to waste.
Shelly has been planting our fall garden, I need to till some more rows for her today. we decided to change the direction of the rows to help the watering out with the natural incline of the land. We also decided to make shorter rows with more space between so we could manage the weeds better( weeds got away from us last spring).
We will also try some new watering techniques this year. The soaker hoses worked well for a while but we have to much mineral content in the well water and it eventually clogged the pours of the hose, same with the drip line heads.
Ta Ta for now]]>Woooo Whoooo
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Our pond has came almost all the way back up, the ground is soaked and I can see the vegetation already starting to look greener. Since we moved here we have only had one other good rain.
Our fruit trees are doing well, (compare with the picture of the holes in an earlier post). The olive trees are still small but doubled in size since we planted them in the spring. I think we are going to plant an orchard of olives....at maturity they produce about a 4 quarts +/- of olive oil per tree, if you ever bought olive oil you know how much that might be worth.
I only have 8 out of 20 cypress trees left, the drought was hard on them as well as my nut trees. I only have 7 out of 12 pecans and all my walnut died.
more to follow]]>Hot-Dry-drought
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Its been the hottest summer on record here. I've lost about a 1/4 of my Cyprus and a few pecans. It can only get better from here ( or a least that's what we will tell ourselves.
On the positive side.... my pond is low so I was able to put some pillars in the bottom and built a small dock. (pictures to follow) its only 12' long and 6' wide, but good enough to get out over the water to feed the fish and fish the fish :)
The kids go back to school next week, the cat had a second small litter, we are down to 4 chickens out of the 35+/- chicks we started with( caught a 5' rat snake with chicks in its belly), the dog is looking nice and fit and we are getting ready to till the garden for the fall planting.
enough for now.
Chikies before the snake....
Kittens from first batch... yin and yang ? ]]>Rain is good
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late April we bought some small Bass to stock in our pond. we have lots and lots of cat fish and recently I caught a water snake trying to swallow a 7 inch crappie. so now I know there is other fish as well. picture is me and tommy letting the bass free.
We had a down pour a week later and our pond went from half empty to over flowing. when the level gets too high it flows into a slew of sorts and then through a covert pipe to a creek bed. anyways all the water life animals are happy again.
Im also building a tree house, but I'll post about it when Im done.
thats it for now.]]>spring update !
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The fruit tree's have all came to life and are looking good, a few black speckles on some of the pear leaves, but I think its some sorta of bug. We also planted a couple apple trees ( a Gala and a Red Delicious)
about a 1/3 of the pecans & walnuts have sprouted leaves. I'll leave them all in the ground till summer to see if any more make it.
My cypress trees that I received from the arbor society are all doing well except for a few that I didn't get in the ground soon enough. we had a freeze after I planted them and I thought we lost them but they have all re-sprouted and are starting to get bigger. great deal on tress from them Arbor Day society
My wife and I also visited a Olive orchard were impressed so we bought 20 olive trees of several varieties ( 6 Mission, 6 Pendolio, 8 Arbequina). they'll take about 4 years before they produce except for the Pendolio's that take 7 years.
and lastley for now, the Garden is almost completely planted. we broke down and bought a tiller and it works great. ( we got the rear tine cub cadet from home depot... (used a 10% coupon). We already have lots of sprouts, corn, beans, peas, okra, carrots, radishes, potatoes, strawberry's, asparagus and more.
till next time...]]>Bigger garden...more trees
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Today I had my garden tilled. I ask the guy before he came if he needed to plow first, he said tilling would be enough. WRONG. After he went over it 3-4 times I told him to stop, that He was just burning my time (money). He finally conceded, and said he would come back and plow & re-till and only charge me 1 more hour. well see if he comes back...
Also this week I planted 8 fruit trees. I had ordered 12 pecan & 6 Black walnuts from a nursery in Georgia (Ty-Ty), I wouldn't recommend them. After 8 weeks and several calls, I happily received a box of trees from UPS. to my dismay, there was only 8 trees and they were pear, nectarine & plums.... I called back, complained some more and a week later I get the trees I ordered... Now I have to dig 18 more holes.
Next project will be irrigation lines.....]]>We want more.....( garden space)
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This weekend we cleared around our runoff pond lots and lots of dead wood...almost a swamp... but its getting better.]]>
