Saturday was a fun-day!

No "walking" yesterday or today.

I am feeling a few physical issues. I have a warm-patch on the sole of my right foot that suggests a blister is thinking about forming. And I have similar things happening across the tops of my left toes.

I also have issues with muscle pain in my right trapezius muscle and tingling down my right arm that triggers when I turn my head to the left. The pain is not sudden onset.That sounds like some kind of pinched or compressed nerve.

The good news is that pain is not triggered by my normal walking gait AND the issues I have with the two toes (next to pinkie toe and the one to the right of that) goes away after walking for a bit. So that makes me think that the flossing action of walking "fixes" that issue.

Tomorrow's route is 11.5 miles and it makes sense for me to cache some bottles of electrolyte. My fanny-pack can hold 2, 20oz Gatorade bottles and a 0.5 litter Pepsi bottle. That SHOULD be enough for a 12 mile walk but it strains the zipper and it isn't that hard to squirrel-away a bottle some time today.

The Property

I spent three hours at The Property yesterday.

There is a pole barn. The pole barn now has a commode (and bucket and bags and other supplies) for emergencies. Did I mention that there are very large amounts of poison ivy there?

I am getting into a routine. I visit the varmint traps and remove old catch and reset if needed. 

If it is not a mowing-day, I care for the young orchard closest to the road. Yesterday that involved spreading red clover seed in the herbicide aisle-way beneath the rows of trees. I am in a Catch-22 situation. The soil is woefully short of nitrogen and organic matter. I prefer growing the organic matter in-place when I can but the shortage of N in the soil severely limits that...plus the cover-crops will compete for soil moisture with the baby trees.

Red clover fixes nitrogen out of the air but it still competes for moisture.

It may be wishful thinking, but I hope that by seeding the red clover in early-July the seedlings will not be large enough to compete for soil moisture if/when we have our typical 4 week period with no rain this summer. I also mixed in some kale and daikon radish seeds that were in the seed-locker. If nothing else, it will be attractive to the local wildlife.

Sighting-in a .22 Rifle

A typical trajectory for "high speed" .22LR ammo. BC of 0.125 and a 36 grain bullet were assumed.

Then I got to try out the shooting bench. I sighted in a .22 rifle.

For those who are not into the intricacies of "sighting in a rifle", the shooter must have some vision of his primary target. If it is primarily to be used as a target rifle at known ranges, then setting the second "zero" is straightforward. If the target will be varmints...what kind of varmints or more precisely HOW TALL will the lethal region of the target be? 

Another factor is whether you intend to retrieve the varmint and eat it. If you REALLY want to retrieve the carcass then you might restrict yourself to head-shots.

The height of the lethal region has a great influence on the maximum, mid-range trajectory over the line-of-sight that you can tolerate. A maximum, mid-range trajectory of 1.5" above the line-of-sight is too great if your intention is to head-shoot squirrels but peachy-keen if your main targets will be woodchuck and raccoon sized animals. That is precise enough to hit their heart-lung area although you will lose a lot of woodchucks because they will make it to their hole.

That is not a horrible trajectory for squirrels if you restrict yourself to 15 yard-to-20 yard shots. While that doesn't sound like very much range, squirrels feel pretty safe when they are in a tree and flattened out on a limb. They will let you walk right beneath them.

After sighting in the rifle...

I used loppers to cut more Autumn Olive out of the mature orchard. I sprayed stumps with Gordon's Brush Killer as I went. Those newly cut stumps become invisible almost immediately after cutting, so even though it wasn't efficient to put down my loppers after cutting each clump and spraying it was effective.

I have a few more clumps within the orchard and a windbreak along the west edge that I need to deal with. Removing the Autumn Olive in the windbreak creates the opportunity to replace them with something more interesting. Prunus americana/nigra seedlings, Hazelnuts, Pawpaws, Redbud and Wafer Ash are possibilities. The last two species on the list don't "sucker" but the first three do. A mix of the two types is ideal.

I need a plan on how to deal with the trimmings. Autumn Olive wood rots very quickly when touching the ground. The rose canes are a different story and they are a pain to transport. I might end up dragging a small chipper/shredder around the orchard to each clump of canes. More bloodshed is anticipated.

And that is how I finished the three hours I had budgeted for working on The Property yesterday.