Little Paul got the first buck of the season!

Brewed our first batch of Springfield Farm Beer today (Mark ran the show).  This was using the hops that we grew over the summer, harvested and dried out ourselves.  Spoiler, the brew was really good!!

Finally got the brothers and Dad up to cut up the large red oak tree that feel down towards  the front of the property.  We made a large dent in it but still need to cut up the trunk.  It was tough work!

Splitting wood

Making a dent on a really large red oak tree.

Packing it up

What more could you ask for?  A day of tractoring,  exercising 2nd amendment rights, harvesting the Hops, and relaxing by a massive bonfire.  Good times.

This time of year the carpenter bees are everywhere.  In the past two years I’ve had ‘Bee Gone’ insecticide applied, but I could still see bee activity.  This year I’m going a different route by putting up traps.  After two days they seem to work pretty well, I’ve order three more so I can have them on all sides of the house.

Carpenter Bee Trap

The four guineas have been busy this spring.  They’ve laid a total of 23 eggs in the barn.  Unfortunately I couldn’t get the hen(s) to sit on them, in fact they laid them in random places all over the coop.  After about two weeks I took all of them and put them in an incubator, we’ll find out soon enough if they are fertile, they should hatch around the 20th of May.

In the incubator!

I put them all together in the barn but they refused to sit on them

Purchased a whole load of fish from a Zetts up in West Virginia, the containers took up the entire trailer and pickup truck.  The fish included:

• Large mouth bass
• Blue gill
• Yellow perch
• Channel catfish
• Fathead minnows
• Crayfish
• Shiners
• Giant tadpoles
• Koi
• Large snails
• Daphnia – water fleas

Maddy & Patrick helped me spread them around the pond.  Keeping fingers crossed that they will take.

Picking up at Zetts

Came in bags like this

At the pond with my helpers

Putting them in the pond

Snails are huge!

It was much easier driving in then getting out, even with my new 4wd pickup.

Inbound in the morning

Back yard

It was as cold as it looks!

Finally finished filling and now is draining from the overflow pipe.  Looks big!  Thin layer of ice covers most of the pond in these photos.

Normal outflow from the overflow pipe

Pretty happy that this 2 year saga is done and its looking pretty good!

Very close to being full, but the apparent rate of filling really slows from here on out.

I didn’t know it at the time, but sadly this was also the last day I would see Tom Bledsoe over at the farm.

Back to the road for the first time