The Hunting Times

Following the grass planting on Friday night, we planted 1,300 trees on Saturday.  Read that again, One Thousand, Three Hundred TREES. I ordered the seedlings from Jasper-Pulaski and they cost about $550.  That's cheap!  I got 100 black walnut; 200 tulip; 200 shingle oak; 200 river birch; 200 black gum; 100 shagbark hickory; and 300 white pine trees.  They were already out of Norway Spruce or I would have put some of those out. I rented the tree planter from the Madison County S&W division.  I had to drive to Anderson to pick it up (3 hour round trip).  Fortunately it was on a trailer and not bad to haul.  It cost me $50 to rent - cheap! We probably spent an hour trying to rig the Deere to hold up the tree planter - it is one heavy dude and we couldn't get the plow off the ground.  Finally we did, but it was SO back loaded that the front tires would come off the ground.  You had to go REAL SLOW in order to make any turns. The way this thing works is that a single bo

The trend around central Indiana is for farmers to clear cut woods or take out trees to make more ground for crops.  It's sad, but I've seen 3 different woods fall in my lifetime right here from my house. Going against that trend, I decided that we should take farm ground out and plant trees.  Neat concept, eh? I contacted the Clinton County Soil & Water Conservation office and asked for help in the design and species of grasses and trees to plant.  Shout out to Ben Reinhart and Leah Harden for all their help. Ben got me the details on grass, flowers, and trees to plant - and hooked me up with contacts for obtaining the proper machinery to drill the grass seed and plant the trees. Charlie Davis was instrumental in getting the grass seed ordered.  I consider him an expert in prairie grass / CRP.  Thanks Charlie! We (Dad, Nick, Alex, Kathy, and I) planted 3.2 acres of prairie grass where we intended to plant the trees.  Then we planted prairie grass, wild flowers, a

The 143rd annual NRA convention was held in Indianapolis this year - so Dad and I went.  It's been held here in town one other time and Dad said he kicked himself for not attending.  So maybe this is a twice in a lifetime event that it will be so close? The event ran from Friday through Sunday, April 25, 26, and 27.  We went on Friday and fought traffic.  We ended up parking at Lilly and walking to the convention center. We were mainly there for the exhibits - and spent no time in meetings or the rally, headlined by Sarah Palin. If you can think of a gun manufacturer - they were there - along with thousands of people.  Expected attendance was north of 90,000; but I have no idea how many were there on Friday. We did speak with one guy who drove over from St. Louis to attend. Getting in was easy.  All you had to do was show your NRA membership card - or sign up on the spot.  We are both members, so got right through. We walked the convention center for 3 - 3.5 hours, st