Journal November 1, 2004

A gray, rainy weekend – great for seed cleaning, but frustrating for mowing.
Mike finally went out on Monday and tried mowing up some hillsides – even though it was very wet. It’s nice to find out that the powertrac works even on wet hills. We took a walk later to check it out, and the only damage to the ground was where he had tried to turn too sharply, and one place where the mower got too low and scalped the surface. I couldn’t take pictures because it was still raining – but he mowed in the woods between 3 Finger Valley and the Cabin Road, and then on the point below Hidden Oaks Prairie. I would be great to get that point cleared – then we would have prairie/savanna all the way from our planted fields at the top, to the planted fields at the bottom.

Not many deer this weekend – it was a hunting weekend – so the few we saw were moving fast from one safe hideout to the next.

We saw a fat raccoon in a field with crows squawking at it. It put up with it for a bit, and then waddled off into the woods.

I worked hard on seed cleaning all weekend. I’ve gotten most of the big piles cleaned, so most of what’s left is small amounts of special seeds. Here’s the collection of cleaned seeds – not including the wetland seeds.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s much more than I’ve collected in previous years, and it’s been a big job to clean it all.