Had a great time with the kids hunting, playing board games and doing some farm work.  Definitely have to do this again when they are home for Christmas.  Emily got a deer the last evening we hunted, nice healthy doe that had some very choice cuts!  The next day we processed some into deer burgers and some into jerky strips which she is going to make when she returns to NYC.

Playing Risk

Crushing the kids

Heading out for the hunt

Pickup

Maddy running the tractor

Maddy splitting wood

Patrick loading wood to be split

Emily made us all breakfast

Processing Emily’s deer

Gourmet venison burger

We weren’t successful on the hunt, but me and the brothers had a great time trying!

View from the tree stand

Setting up a second tree stand

Removed 6 huge snapping turtles from the big pond. Only wish I had done this before I stocked the pond a year ago.  This occurred over the full month of September.

First time the farmer has planted it here, sort of like corn but it appears to attract flies.

Great long weekend, had all of the kids down, my parents, and two of my brothers.  We were busy all weekend:

• celebrated Patty’s birthday,
• brewed Springfield Farm beer from hops we grew and the local well water,
• Floated for countless hours in the well heated pool,
• Played corn hole, Left-Right-Center,
• Cut down a tree,
• Beepa bush-hogged the entire place,
• Communed around a monstrous bonfire,
• Vigorously exercised our second amendment rights,
• Blew up exploding targets.

See various pictures below.

Steve in the pool

Massive bonfire

Exercising our 2A rights

Snapper

Wonder if he bites ?

Patty making the monster bday cake

Grammy whipping up on the kids in corn hole

Michael got destroyed

Mirlo likes the smell of the kitty beds

Steve & Melanie in the pedal boat

Brewing

Master brewer

Pistol practice

Beepa heading out to do some tractoring

Late in the afternoon the sky darkened and then it just poured, and poured.  Probably a very hard rain for about 45-50 minutes.  When it was done me & Patty took a tour on the ATV to see what happened around the farm.  I was mostly worried about the big pond and the overflow as I’ve never seen it overflow before, although I suspect it had.  Our first stop was the driveway where it crosses over the stream that feeds the pond.  Seeing this I was pretty worried about what I would find at the dam.

Driveway inundated

This was the scene from the dam.

Water flows through the overflow

Overflow working perfectly, wide flat turf waterway keeps lots of water flowing smoothly but doesn’t erode the dam.

Dock is completely underwater

The ford over Mine Run is completely un-passable

Within a few hours the flow had subsided with little or no erosion thank god.

Mark relocated the hops up by the orchard.  I installed a drip line on a daily timer so water shouldn’t be a problem this year.  Expecting a big yield!!

New hops location

This red oak fell last year, and we’ve slowly been chipping away at it.  Today we cut off everything we thought we could split and moved the remaining trunk to an out of the way resting place.  JJ had his brand new John Deere tractor there to help as it was definitely a two-tractor job.  If it had gotten away from us when going down the hill it would have ended up in the pond.

Further down is a short video of the operation.

Double teaming the monster red oak