Busy weekend on the Wanch

Friday afternoon saw our Boy Scout troop arrive and set-up camp across the stream in a small pasture up on our wooded hill side.  Both the rain and temperature began to fall before they got all the tents up. The cold weather was actually a blessing in disguise - it got rid of all the nasty ticks for the night. Temp got down to 37 degrees F by morning.

Thank goodness for my brother-in-law's tractor! After driving up and down my muddy track several times in the rain guiding various late arrivals, my truck got struck half-way up hill on last trip. Had to walk home and get tractor to pull it out. Didn't have good camera with me, so had to resort to the iPhone camera which is not my favorite

The camp-out was only part of the reason the Boy Scouts were on the Wanch. They were here to earn money for their summer camp by working all morning clearing brush along our fence lines. This was the last major job I wanted to accomplish on the north 20 acres.

The sun didn't show itself or warm up until after the scouts finished at 1:00, but the boys and their adult leaders sure did a great job.

I have cut-up logs to donate as firewood and several large brush piles that will be burned after a few weeks of drying-out.

It is still early spring, and we have many flowering white dogwood and eastern redbud trees in bloom along the road and on the hill side.

Another logo, this one for our Farm business

 I asked my brother-in-law Kevin to create a logo for our farm business. A little green glen (valley) with a stream running through it inside an egg with a jagged edge. It was too hard to try and cram cows, sheep, goats, chickens, etc. into one logo. So, what do you think? Do you like any of these candidates? If YES, which one(s). If NO, give us some artist feedback, or a description. I'm partial to #5 thru #8.

The other side of the stream

I have been so busy working on the house, farm, and pastures that I rarely cross our stream  to visit our wooded hill side.

Dandy and I took a little trip over the water last week to study it before the woods leafed out, and the ticks and snakes started moving. The  road curves up and to the right of photo, and leads to the top of steep hill. We have a small pasture of about 4 or 5 acres at the top. My goal over next few years is to thin out the woods and underbrush, fence it in and move cows, sheep, and goats onto the hill side so we can increase our grazing area and herd size. All it takes is vision, time, money, and good hard sweaty work.

Our first logo entry...check it out!

S's brother Kevin created this pic...actually a series of moving pics that show the goat getting fat on milk and breaking through the ice (just click on the pic for animation). Kind of reminds me of something...I like it and very happy it does not have any purple or pink colors. What do you think? Any more entries coming from our vast legion of blog followers?

Water Eating Dog

Its hard to water the fruit trees when Dandy is around...she loves to chase the stream of water coming out of the hose.

She is also shy of the camera, so I had to sneak these shots holding the camera by my side while watering. 

The fruit orchard is planted.

Planting anything directly into the ground in the Ozarks requires you start with a pick-axe to break the hard earth and dig out the rocks.

K6, friend, and K7 did a great job planting our orchard on the backside of our pond's dam, which faces south. The bee hives are just to the left.

We have 3 types of apple, 2 peach, 2 plum, 2 cherry, 2 pear, and a nectarine laid out in two rows. We can't put any sheep or goats in the yard for quite a while.

Seed + Dirt = Garden

Spring is just around the corner, and it's not too late to start some seeds indoors. S has several of these boxes around the house.

K2 built six cedar garden boxes for Mom...

...then had to level them. I have 20 blackberry plants along the fence line in upper right corner of photo.

K6 and friend build muscle while filling S's garden boxes with top soil. We are just waiting until last day of frost, 15 April, to transplant seedlings into the boxes and add lots of other seeds as well.