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Sorry, I haven't posted for a while. Life has been very busy. My forage base has flourished. Fathead minnows, blue gill and red ears have spawned well and have taken over the pond. I also have thousands of tad poles and little frogs, and I'm not exaggerating on the thousands. The BG's and RES are growing well and are a lot of fun to feed. But they won't leave you alone when your swimming, lil peckers! We haven't had much rain so the pond has dropped with our leak but fortunately it has only dropped 2.5-3'. The spring is helping it maintain. My contractor has been out and has a plan to fix the leak. I am confident that he will do so. My bass are coming in October. The place that we are getting them from did not want to hold until spring. I think that will be fine based on our numbers of forage. We had our 4th of July party and a party for the baseball team that I coach at the pond. Plus multiple evening get togethers with friends. We love our place. We are putting our current home on the market soon and hope to be building soon.

On another note, my food plots look amazing and I am getting some great pics of deer, turkey and other critters.

Well we put some of the final touches on our initial stocking plan last week. We received our bass. To my surprise the bass were much larger than anticipated. We ended up with 11"-13" and 5-7" bass. Originally they were supposed to be 7-9" and 4-6".

thats an awesome feeling.....

Those are some nice bass!

After the recent rains the pond is almost full again. We have been feeding the bass, bluegill and sunfish about 4 times a week. Just hand feeding at this point. Been busy working on building plans for a house and a shop. Pretty stressful to say the least. I had no idea how costly things are now. Things have changed since my dad built houses 20 years ago. We plan to put our house just uphill from the walnut tree that is in the pic.

My son finally pulled the trigger on a buck that we put on the hit list. He wasn't as mature as we like but his characteristics were hard to pass. We have over 500 trail cam pics of this buck we called "Split Brow". But we hadn't seen him in person until the 2nd weekend of firearm season. My 14 year old spent many hours bowhunting and passed up several young bucks. I spent a few days in the stand as well but neither one of us had seen "Split Brow". My son and his buddy filmed the entire hunt, dropping "Split Brow" in his tracks. Its a pretty awesome video. He ended up with 13 scoreable points. I'm very proud of my son and his patience in the woods.
My 12 year old shot a young buck during youth season as well. I have the boys participate in taking care of what they harvest and having the benefit of knowing what they are consuming.

That is a very nice buck. Would have been very difficult for me to pass up.
Congrats to your son!

Really nice one.

Very nice work and well done on all accounts !

Thanks for the compliments. I appreciate the feedback!

that's one heck of a kitchen meat grinder

That is a .75HP LEMS Grinder. A friend of mine gave it to me because he had never used it. It works great! I worked at a meat processing plant all of the way through college so I have the experience to do it all. I am getting ready to build a new shop out at our pond and I plan on having a hoist, hot water and proper drains so we can make our processing easier without taking it into the house lol. Might keep the wife happier. Actually she doesn't mind, she does the grocery shopping and knows how expensive beef is anymore.

My 12 and 14 year old went out on their own this weekend with the electronic game caller. They took these two big female bobcats within 10 minutes of each other. More wildlife management practices going on at the farm!

That is so cool. What a great thing for those two to do on their own.
Probably saved 100s of quail in the process.
Ha! Good shootin!

indeed, Beef is getting out of control....Deer is better for you any way,

I do mix about 15-20% chuck roast in when I grind for burgers though.

If I'm doing burgers I like to mix a little fatty beef as well. But for jerky and some other dishes I prefer it as is. I normally grind some of both. We are getting ready to make some brats and summer sausage as well. I will be mixing some pork for the brats.

Great to see the boys becoming stewards of the land! Good teaching pop! Pass it on!

Doug

Sorry, I haven't posted anything for a while. Things have been very busy. I caught a few fish back in March and everything seems to be growing well. My pond is still leaking which makes me sick. Luckily my spring helps maintain it. We are finishing up a 40x60 shop with a front porch and a full bathroom w/shower, and a kitchen sink. It is turning out real nice. I really enjoy feeding my fish and every once in a while I turn the kids loose to catch a few.

This sunset never gets old!

40x60 shop, 12' walls, scissor trusses, 2x6 frame, spray foam insulation, full Bathroom, kitchen sink, 3 12'x11' insulated doors, loft living quarters, with a front porch for some easy nights! It will be great to have a place to store everything instead of hauling it every time.

Well done; beautiful place.

Very nice work - could use some shade around the pond.

Thank you. Yes we do need shade! We plan on building a house soon and we have been waiting to make sure everything is exactly where we want it! I have planted 18 fruit trees though.