When it gets below 45 or so these old tractors wont crank. Some diesels have heaters or glow plugs to help 'em start in the Yankee weather.
Thought I would show a picture of the Durana clover strip, it is doing pretty good. The adjacent oat patch is being hammered. I'm surprised they wont eat the oats where we were loading the fertilizer spreader from the back of the truck, 3 times as dark and tall?
Just started a timber harvest and I hope it doesn't mess up the hunting too bad. I'm having a bunch of volunteer pines, oaks, popcorn trees, anything they cut is being chipped and goes to a mill where they produce wood pellets for fuel. We are also cutting some 35 year old pines in the next month or so, some of those will be going for poles.
Very little evidence of the rut starting from any of the camera pictures. The little 4 point I killed was acting kinda' frisky when a big doe ran him off. He chased a yearling around the pines and the he strolled out into the oats where he met the .243. Rut is still several weeks out.
Treefarmer
370,000 oh that all, after the cut you gonna replant?
Yes, Sir. We hope to plant longleaf pines next time. The ones we've been harvesting over the years are the Improved Slash variety. When we 1st planted, we spaced the rows wider than normal so as to be able to continue using the land for both cattle and pines. We had to keep the cows off each planting about 18 months so that they wouldn't destroy too many by stepping on them, seldom will they eat a small pine. We were able to get about 10 years additional grazing before too much shade chocked the Bahia Grass production, plus our cowboys went off to college and never came home. We've clear cut several small tracts and have thinned others 3 times. So we will clear cut and replant for somebodies' future. My wife and I would be blessed to live long enough to see any trees harvested from a new plating next year.
There is a big market for the less desirable wood that is found along with the maturing pines on some plantations. There is a facility in Cottondale, Fl. just few miles east of us in Jackson County that buys the stuff and processes it into wood pellet fuel. Most is shipped overseas from Port Panama City. The timber harvester pays so much a ton for the junk and the land owner gets an almost clean slate for replanting a year or so later. Stumps are always an issue but reestablishing the same patterns parallel to the old stumps is pretty common. The part that is being cut now is natural growth and it will probably need more land preparation because of no parallel rows to follow. Usually a chemical spray to kill everything that sprouts will give the pine seedling a fighting chance.
There must be money in the harvesting side or the man wouldn't own 4 chippers. I guess these are what folks use when the hurricane debris is so overwhelming. If I had $370K I sure wouldn't buy a chipper!
Treefarmer
Edit: I checked the specs on the chipper, it has a 700hp Cat engine!
I could use that chipper, if you get one drop it by my house . Haha
merry christmas
The chipping of the natural growth trees was completed yesterday. Kinda' figured this would change the deer patterns around the house for a while. The actual logging operation will start later on, not sure when. The company that is harvesting is working on another tract about a half mile north of us, maybe they will be here is a week or so? They can wait for all I care but business is business.
I decided to go to my shooting house this evening, I got there right a 4pm. Right at 5, almost dark, 2 does stepped out of the woods and just stopped and stared off into the planted pines. I finally saw what they were studying, a deer moving around and then there were several and the one was chasing them all around the pines. Way too dark to tell how big he was. Had his head down trailing, sure got my old heart to beatin'! Had he come into the oat stip I could have seen him. All this only lasted a few minutes and then they all went into the rough woods on the west side. So the rut is beginning, tomorrow and Sunday are the last 2 doe days. Hope to go to the lease and bust an old nanny.
Hard to imagine other than Thanksgiving when the grandsons were here, I've only been in the woods 4 times. I'm gettin' old.
Y'all have a great new year if I don't have anything to report the next day or so.
Treefarmer
