Last weekend my wife went out of town for work and it was just me and the kids for three days. I still had a lot of dozer work to do so they spent most of the weekend with my parents and I spent the weekend on the dozer.
First order of business on Friday was getting milk for Legacy. Alex wanted to ride along and they were still milking the fresh cow(cow that just had a calf) and we had to wait a few minutes for her to finish. So Alex climbed up on the stool in the neighbors milking parlor and observed the process!
I cannot ever remember, nor can anyone around me, a stretch of 7+ days of 70-80 degree weather in the middle of march. It made for great weather for running the dozer but was quite misleading if you walked into an area I had just finished and didn't know how wet things were.
Below is Michaela. She is friends of the neighbors and comes down a lot to help around on the farm for the neighbor and I went she is not working. Her and Steven's brother Josh stopped by to bring me something to drink and to go get me some more fuel for the bulldozer. Michaela unknowingly followed Josh across the ditch I had just filled in and didn't watch where he was stepping and stepped right into a very wet spot and lost her boot. She couldn't get it out and had to wait for him to come back and help her. She didn't find it funny at first but laughed about it later!
In preparation for the oncoming landscape season my boss ordered several semi loads of specimen trees from several west coast nurseries. We unloaded four semi loads this week and staged in the nursery to line out next rain day we have. It is so warm that everything is starting to open up already. It is supposed to get down to frost over the next two nights so some of it may get burnt but should be fine in the long run.
Below is a picture of one of the older and very expensive Japanese Cutleaf Maples that I unloaded. I would love to have one of these at my house. I will have to take some pictures of the rest of the stuff after we get it all lined out and opened up.
Last year at this time we still had several inches of icy snow on the ground and it was raining daily for almost two months. This year it has been sunny and warm since mid February. So we have started having our weekend cookouts already. Lisa was begging to have one Monday night after they all got home from school and made it a picnic with the whole family. It was awesome to get some time together with everyone outside at this time of year. I even got bit by the first mosquito of 2012, and it was the middle of March!
Our dog, Daisy, kept wanting in and out of the house. So at one point I just left her in there to get the point across to make up her mind and stay one place or the other. She finally decided she wanted out but I made her wait a little longer to be sure. She got quite impatient and stuck her head out the cat door to stare me down till I came and opened the door for her.
We had some rain the night after our picnic so I had to wait for the areas I cleared of trees to dry for me to work down to prepare for seeding. By Wednesday I was able to get started. I had one very large oak stump I could not remove with the dozer so I asked one of my snow plow subcontractors from work to grind it for me. His business is Rick's Stump Grinding based out of Alliance Ohio. I was excited to see his rig after hearing about it all winter so I stopped to watch. His unit is around 80-90 hp and is remote controlled. It only took him about 15 minutes to take out a 46 inch oak stump.
The before.
Size reference with machine.
In action. I posted a clip on youtube if you would like to see it in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gW89_MbYRU&context=C4c6428fADvjVQa1PpcFP3bvprvK2bqhIq_2Xr0pO3KTj5c9qHhuM=
I was back to my favorite project ever to straighten a couple of trees blow down in a storm. I took a couple of pics to show how it is looking already this spring and it isn't even close to being pretty yet!
At this time last year the entire area these pictures were taken in was covered with icy mud and you couldn't even drive a dozer around the site. Now it looks so awesome. I can't wait to see it in a couple of years when it is all filled in!
I put up a temporary fence around my wife's garden at her request yesterday to allow the pigs access to it. They were hesitant at first to go out there as it has always been off limits but by this morning they had already rooted 60% of it up. By tonight they have almost rooted it all up. We are letting them eat all the weeds, leftover crops from last year, and insects that eat our plants. Plus they are tilling it all up so we are hoping to just rake it out, mulch it, and plant it! I will post the pics later this week.
Well, I am gonna get a shower and get to bed. Another long busy week ahead. We are supposed to have a couple of cold nights and then back into above average temps! I am loving it. If every winter was like this I would be sooooooo happy!
Kenny
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