09/01/12

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in quite some time. That is partly due to a lack of motivation on my part, and partly because I haven't accomplished a whole lot during that time. I've not been completely unproductive, but its been close to that.

Today, however, was very different. I've accomplished several things, and am feeling good about that. I hope that today was what I've been needing to jump start my motivation. When I woke up this morning I wasn't feeling well, so wasn't sure how much I'd get done. It was around 9:00 AM before I felt like going out. The first thing that I did was finish moving the pile of branches to the burn pile that I started on last week. They were in my way and were preventing me from getting the big mower out past the compost pile. After getting those moved, I hooked the mower to the front hitch of the RTV and experimented with pushing it so I could more easily back it into previously uncleared or tight areas. It worked out great. I managed to clear a much wider path out past the compost pile than I've ever had cleared before. I think that this approach will definitely help me to clear some of the areas I've been wanting to clear. Backing the mower into those areas is much easier to do when its hooked to the front of the RTV rather than the back.

I came in for an early lunch around 11:00 and rested for an hour or two. I then went back out and mowed some weeds. I mowed around the pile of stuff that needs to be burned, as well as around the area where I've burned stuff in the past. The weeds in that area were out of control, with most being chest high and some being above my head. Thankfully it wasn't a big area to mow, thought, so I finished up in an hour or so.

After mowing I decided to go ahead and burn some stuff. The weather forecast was calling for rain all weekend, starting this afternoon, so I figured it would be a good time to burn what I could before the rains started. It started trying to rain before I even got the fire started, but cleared up quickly. I ended up being able to burn about half of the stuff in one pile before quitting for dinner around 6:00. It never did rain, but I'm hoping that we get some overnight.

After dinner I made a couple of trips to check on the fire. There had been some small flames when I initially quit, and those quickly died down. The last time I checked on it there were no flames, but were still some red embers.

Around 9:00 Andrea went back over to the garden with me to try out a method for destroying yellow jacket nests. We tried it on two different nests. I'm hoping that within the next couple of days I'll be able to tell if it worked. I'll do a post about it at that time, detailing the method that we used. It actually went much more smoothly that I had anticipated. I just hope that it took care of the problem. Assuming that it did, we can begin prepping the plot for next years garden soon, and hopefully even get a cover crop planted.