My husband and I view weekends a little bit differently, I love a good weekend project while my husband would prefer to rest but he consistently indulges me. A few years ago I decided we needed to plant more trees (March 2020 planting pic below). I love planting trees, it feels like planting a memory or something permanent that I will remember decades from now. Typically I am very methodical about my planting because I am invested in taking care of these trees, ie. can we get water to this tree, can we mow around the tree, what is the canopy width, drought resistant, oak blight resistant, ect. But for some reason I convinced my husband to plant a tree near a tiny pond close to the hill where we plan to build our house knowing this pond dries up in a drought or pretty much every summer. We planted a beautiful Montezuma Cypress tree right before a massive drought in an area with no access to water. A tree that requires a lot of water but in my defense the pond was somewhat full at the time of planting. My sister in law dubbed this tree the "love tree" since it was clear my husband was truly trying to keep this tree alive to make me happy. Well right after planting the tree starts to get a bit shocky due to lack of water around April and my husband drew the line and said in no uncertain terms that we were not putting in a 6k water well for my $400 tree. So we hauled water, 150 gallons every weekend to our Cyprus tree. Watering the tree was the first thing we did when we arrived on Friday and the last thing we did before leaving for Houston every weekend for all of 2020. Fortunately ever since this long period of drought occurred our Cyprus tree is thriving after establishing a good root system and a return of wet weather we rarely have hauled water over the past two and a half years. We typically drive past our tree to admire it on the weekend. Well these past two weekends the tree was covered in bag worms!!! Our love tree is infected!! Gabe and I combed over this tree while standing on the roof of the ATV to remove every bag worm we could find. Once removed from their food source these inert looking cocoons come alive, they moved in their cocoons all over the back of the ATV. The kids were not impressed and there were many squeals of disgust, each one was disposed of in a fire. Needless to say after the second removal we elected to break our hard rule of no chemical and we sprayed our "Love Tree" to save it from this infestation of Bag Worms!! Fingers crossed this takes care of the worms.
As we all know it is hot but surprisingly not as hot at the ranch as it is in Houston. We spent most of this past weekend outside doing projects or hanging out in the blow up pool. My brother spent most of his time on a rented mulcher for Father's Day, I tried my hand at it and it is harder to run than it looks but I sure do love this piece of equipment. The tomatoes are very good and hopefully will keep producing in this heat. The peaches are ripe and those we do not eat are in the freezer waiting to be turned into my Mom's much sought after jams and jellies. Mom traveled to Michigan for the Premier Nationals and to drop off three Kangal Puppies to new homes along the way. She showed seven dogs (Australian Shepards and Kangals), For many people this was the first time they met a Kangal, she had a wonderful trip and did a great job being an ambassador for the Kangal Breed.
All the cattle will be worked soon and we will see what kind of success Power Ball has had getting the ladies pregnant this year, this is his first year with the whole herd. The most recent steer will be picked up soon. We have had a few orders placed in advance for specific cuts, we also requested 90/10 ground beef due to some of our clients preferences.
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