Kratos

Kratos seems to enjoy sitting around with the sheep, the sheep are also relaxed around him.  He is one of our best guard dogs.

Feeding Lamb

This lamb is about a week old and is already starting to eat grain with the mom.  They are getting supplemental feed to help both the mom and the lamb.  No other ewes have birthed yet, but many look close.  They are getting molasses supplement tubs until they birth.

Fence End Posts

Today we put in nine end posts to finish constructing the alleyway fence going along the north side of the south field.  Auger on the John Deere 2955 drilled an 8 inch diameter hole about 4 feet deep.  Jeffrey used the manual clamshell post hole digger to clean out the hole and to deepen it to 4 1/2 ft to 5 ft deep.  

After dropping the post into the hole (Jeffrey did that), we filled it with sand and water, tamping as we put it in.  Sand is in the front end loader, water is at the back of the Fiat in the water tanks with an on demand pump that we use for fire suppression during prescribed burns.

In the first picture, Jeffrey is digging out a spot to put the concrete "dead man" that helps brace the post against the fence wire pulling against it.  Second photo shows Jeffrey finishing tamping the sand and adding water.  By adding water to the sand as we shovel the sand in, it settles and packs hard.  The sand around the post helps drain water away and preserves the post better than if dirt/clay were packed around it.  It is also a lot easier to shovel in and pack sand with water than to try and scrape up the dirt and clay the auger dug out and scattered around and pack that pack in the hole against the post.

Jeffrey is wearing the nice broad brimmed straw hat he got at Buc-ee's in Texas.  It does a nice job keeping the sun off.

Weekend update.   Put in 10 more posts on Sunday.   A total of 19, a record for us.

Kratos and Anneika

Kratos and Anneika, finished with breakfast, are in the lone pine field with their flock of sheep.  These ewes are either not pregnant, or not too far along.   The more ready ewes are in fields closer to the house, where we can more readily watch them.  We are switching to only Fall lambing and not all the ewes were able to get in sync with the program.   So far we have one lamb, with many of the other ewes near to term, looking ready to burst.

Geese

Canadian geese are back, either resting or grazing on the oats in the south field.

Fall Flowers

Fall flowers mark the end of the summer heat.  There are quite impressive displays in many of the fields.  Joy needs to help identify some of these.

Narrowleaf sunflowers around a young longleaf pine.

Narrowleaf sunflowers grow tall and surround a beauty berry bush.  I don't know the white flowers.

The fields are ablaze with yellow narrowleaf sunflowers.

I don't know this next one.  It provides some rare pink, non-yellow color.

A "foundation planting" of blue mist flowers came all on its own.  All I did was not mow it.

Its not a flower, but I thought the sun behind this cloud was a quite stunning effect.

Cardinal vine grows rapantly, I would almost believe feet per day.  It has a bright red flower that attracts hummingbirds.

Where it gets started, cardinal vine rapidly covers any tellis type of structure.  Here on the east side of the chick barn it is growing over a chain link fence gate.

Cardinal flowers have deep nectaries that the hummingbirds like.

The gulf coast fritillary butterfly is attracted to this frilly purplish flower.  I don't know its name.

Here there is a type of yellow goldenrod in the background.  Seeing this, I am reminded that I did not get a picture of the masses of yellow goldenrod blooming this time of year.

This butterfly posed for me.

Oats

2019-09-8:  In preparation for planting oats for winter forage in the fields where we had planted cowpeas for the summer, I sprayed weeds coming up after mowing a couple weeks earlier.  That same day, after spraying, Jeffrey followed with the Grassfarmer seed drill and planted Coker 227 oats.

2018-09-24:  Seed germinated rapidly, 2-3 days after planting.  Here a little over 2 weeks later, the oat plants are several inches tall.

This is the south field about 2 weeks after planting.

2018-09-25:  Some Canadian geese stopped in to rest and graze on oat seedlings.  This is in the south field again.

2018-10-05:  Here I am towing a fertilizer buggy around with the John Deere 2955.

This is the south beaver field getting a fertilizer application.  I fertilized all the oats and put a half dose on the the east and west bahia fields (we cut hay off these fields earlier).

There has been plenty of rain for the oats to grow, it would have been better to get the fertilizer on a couple of weeks ago to get them going better.

Another view of the oats in the south beaver field.  One problem with having to fertilize these young plants is mashing them with the tractor and buggy.  They will recover, and in general be better off than if we did not give them some fertilizer.