Getting ready

Wednesday I am traveling via train to North Dakota to see my brother for a while.  Naturally I am not done with my Fall work here, but then I always have something to do or that needs to be done around the ranch.

Today I finished my weed spraying for the year.  Even if I stayed here I am done spraying weeds for the year as I used up all of my herbicide.  This year I have covered the most area ever.  I got everything but one quarter of the south pasture completely sprayed.  I got twice as much sprayed as my previous total area.  As I do see improvement over the years in the areas I have sprayed I am looking forward to less weeds next year.  That is if the thousands of thistle seeds from Wyatt's sister's field don't sprout.

I know I will have weeds to spray next year nonetheless as today I used the last half tank of herbicide on the NE and north pastures; pastures I have sprayed repeatedly in the past and several times this year.  And yes, I still found some weeds growing.

Other projects...

Painting.  I didn't get it done.  I pretty much got the major areas painted.  What is left is the trim and the extended area of the garage built when cars got longer.  I have to replace the sides of the extension as the wood is bad.  I finished painting the back of the garage today.  I think I have enough paint - though it will be close.  I probably will have to get one more gallon as I imagine there will be some areas that need a little extra paint.  I noticed today a few areas that needed more paint on the garage as the wood had sucked the paint in.

I am up to 197 pocket gophers trapped.  Even with this upcoming break I expected to exceed 200 gophers for the year.  My traps are up to the power line transmission towers and if the weather is decent in November I have hopes of maybe finally reaching the end of the hayfield.

I have half my garden in.  The corn, beans, bell peppers, cabbage, broccoli, squash, cucumber, pumpkin, beets and some of the onions.  I got some of my tomato plants pulled and have a good number of green tomatos.  More than I need.  And I haven't even pulled half my tomato plants.  I hope to get the rest of my onions and some of my potatoes dug tomorrow.

I picked the rest of the apples today.  There were not many of my transparent apples left.  The hornets were gorging themselves on many of the remaining ones.  With few transparent apples left, the hornets were working on the pie apples.  The last of them were a large size and red and not so sour to eat.  I filled a couple of 5 gallon pails with the pie apples.   Here's to them not going bad the time I'm gone.  I can make lots of pies out of them.

Jan will give me a ride to the train station so today I hauled their little trailer of tree, garden and yard trimmings and dumped them in my pasture.

I got my replacement backpack sprayer (model 64) from the RL Flomaster company.   They replaced the one with the crack in it with a new sprayer.  Yay!  Fed Ex delivered my new sprayer this morning.

Still plenty to do tomorrow before I even start to pack.  This is like this every year.  I have stuff to do right up until the time I leave.  The only time I wasn't doing stuff like this was the year the bad winter weather delayed my trip to North Dakota for a number of days.