April 22 2018

So it's been a year since I've posted anything. BFD
I've cut two finger off and had my right shoulder replaced and nearly
wore it out already. My rack holding up five of the bee hives I had fell and pert near ruined the hives. Two of them eventually died out and I got no honey last year. Last year was a bad year for the bees. Only two swarms. Both got away. So far this year I've had five swarms and managed to catch three of them put two in ten frame Langstroth boxes and the other in a quickly constructed top-bar. All three are doing good so far.
Got twenty chicks from tractor supply last year and managed to raise eighteen. The girls of the bunch are laying for us now and I am slowly working my way though the roosters. Made a smothered greasy gravy with one of the rosters day before yesterday.

June update

June 8th 2016

The new chicken yard. It's 25 feet by 25 feet should be enough for at least 20 hens and a rooster.

If you look closely you might be able to see the first five hens. They are about seven or eight weeks old, so no eggs yet. There is a rooster there somewhere. We call him number seven. He got the name because he was always the last one of our previous flock to come to the roost at night. They always packed themselves closely together so the only way to tell they were all there was to count heads. So the name stuck. Ignore that derelict lawnmower in the background. 

The bees are wide open. This view is from the southwest looking northeast. That first hive in the line looks like it could use some attention.

Yea! I will put another box and frames on top of this one in the morning. This shot was taken late in the afternoon so it looks a little worse than it really is. Not all of these bees are at the hive during the day, what with the pollen and nectar collection going on. I can hardly wait to sample some of that thick sweetness they are making in there.

The aquaponics tank is doing really good. Those are volunteer tomatoes that are starting to hang over the plant tank. And yes that is another bee hive on top of the drum next to it. I think that I have fifteen hives here, nine at brothers hose, and five more at another friends house. I had FOUR in January.  

View from the northeast looking southwest. Tree farm way in the background. They make really good neighbors.

May 5th update

It's high time that I did an update on the homestead so here goes.
Things have really started to grow around here the garden and the weeds are glad of the rains that we've had over the past three weeks. I've neglected to keep an accurate record but a close guess is about seven inches at least.
We have corn, although a small plot of four feet by fifteen, there

are some 50+ plants in this planting. Should be enough to get the summer started. We plan to put in several more of this sized plot in before the end of the growing season.

Also tomatoes actually several different types all of them heirlooms

this one is  Creole and a couple of Black Krim as well as a cherry type. A total of sixteen plants. That should keep us in 'maters for a while. 

And beets and if you look closely carrots as well in the cold frame. 

The cold frame was made of six layers of brick topped with a couple of old windows that provided a little extra warmth before

spring really started to show itself. This arrangement gives a good foot or more of loose soil for the carrots to grow in. Yea I know I really do need to to do more weeding.  It's just hard on the old backbone.

After all of the green onions have made their seed heads I'll pull them and dry them for this fall planting. These are more of a bunching onion than a shallot type. This little four by four foot area will provide for a nice long row this fall.

Here are five elephant garlic plants that I've babied for the last three years, at one point I had a large bag of  these. That is when I broke my back in an accident and these are the only ones that i have left.

If all goes well with them there should be a good sized bed this fall as I plan to keep all that they produce for seed.

These are the cherry tomatoes on the left, kinda scrawny aren't they? Actually they have only been in the ground for a week or so they will jump up here shortly. If you look closely there are eggplant on the right side of this bed.

The mulch that is seen in some of these pictures is planer shavings that I got from a local fellow who does custom flooring for folks. I can't say enough about how this works as a weed barrier. Here at the cherry tomatoes there is a layer of cardboard under four to six inches of mulch. This bed has not been weeded at all this year and the grass is just starting to creep in on top of the bed. 

Sunflower volunteer from last years crop. We use these as bird food, the chicken get their share also.

Here is one of two Burr Oak seedlings from seeds that I got from a friend that sells forest tree seeds as a business. These oaks produce acorns that are as big a extra large hen eggs. Some of the biggest acorns that I've ever seen.

This little pie pumpkin sprout needs some mulch too!

  

Here is a three seed grouping of Jubilee watermelons. Sure do love me some watermelon. Yea yea I know GRASS but I'll fix that with a one gallon can for some protection and a flame weeder and then a scoop of mulch.

Just a quick shot of the one hundred or so long row of red potatoes

BEES BEES and more BEES. The first three boxes on the stand are the Nucs that made it through the winter. I think that I posted a link to a video earlier showing me moving one of them to a full size box. I've also had to add a second deep super to each of them as they keep growing. Hive number two also has a medium box between the bottom and the top deep. It has been an exceptional hive so far this year. The other single boxes on the rack and cinder blocks on the ground are all swarms that people have called me to come over an retrieve from their yard trees, swing set seats, and other spots around their houses. So far we are up to fifteen hives here on the homestead, five hives at a friends house and four more over at brother's house. The Ligustrum shrubs across the road from here on the tree farm are in full bloom right now and the bees are going crazy. Should lead to a good honey harvest Lord willing.

We planted three Blood Bananas on the west side of the house to help with a little sun protection. These are transplants from a friends house and should really help with some needed shade once the reach maturity. 

This is what was done to most of the older homes around here to help with the sun's heat in summer. Wish that it had gone all the way to the next corner. It doesn't show in this pic but the banana trees are just to the left of this awing. Wish that it had gone all the way to the next corner. 

Mulberries are really putting on a show this year. This picture doesn't do this old tree justice. I wish that you could see just how many berries are on this thing. The birds are having a field day not sure we'll get many cause they eat them as soon as the turn red not even making it to black.

Anyone need a fig tree? Seriously. I took cuttings from some trees at the same place that the bananas came from. Out of the eighty one cuttings that were stuck in pots all except for five are rooted and are putting on new growth.
Well that's all for now, time for bed Alpo. Awww dad can't I just sleep in mom's chair tonight?

April 1st

No not April fools day just the first of the month. Things have been crazy with the bees here lately. My brother and I have collected 14 of the last 16 swarms that have been found or offered to us around here. Four of these have been from the hives that were here on the homestead and the others from folks calling or the eagle eye of my brother. He can spot a swarm hanging in a tree while driving down the road at any speed. Most of the spotting has been at low speed thank God. But it is uncanny how he does it. As close as the side of the road to as far as 100 yards out behind the house in a jumble of saplings that passes as a planting of trees for management purposes. We now have 14 hives here and 4 more at his house. Can I tell you we get from 1 to 3 swarms a day and have now for about 2 weeks. We can't even build enough boxes to keep the new arrivals happy much less the ones that have been here for a year now.
On a good note Sutherlands a store in Alexandria that has anything you want or think that you need. This is a store with anything from building materials to bluejeans. Gardening supplies to grills has started carrying beekeeping supplies. A little expensive but real handy for things that you don't want to have to make or wait on a small order for. We bought all of the deep frames and foundation that they had in stock day before yesterday. There will be more in on this coming Tuesday.
Oh yes and I have to tell that I did a bad thing this past Monday. I sold 2 single box hives to a couple of local guys without telling my brother. I had to promise not to do it anymore. He wasn't happy but it didn't last long because we caught 3 swarms the next day and the money from the sale made it possible for us to shop for supplies without having to come up with anything out of pocket.
We may start a small business building hive bodies and frames out of cypress lumber that brother's eldest son cuts and mills locally. This is what we've been building boxes out of for the last two weeks and it makes some really fine boxes. This should do away with the need for painting the bodies as well as the cypress turns to a really beautiful shade of gray left on it's own. I guess it depends on if we can produce them at a reasonable cost.
Did I mention that there is a YouTube channel involved with this blog now? If you go to YouTube.com Aand type in itsmesrd in the search window it will take you to my channel. So far there is only a few videos one on transferring a nuc hive to a full size box and one showing how to can pork. The technique used in the pork video will work for any meat that you would want to can.
Follow the link for a video of me working the bees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mfby_wr8fw

A light frost last night

Today is the 21st of March and we had a light frost last night. The temp was 34 when I got up this morning but must have dipped lower at some point last night. The Irish potatoes at the far western end of the row show some slight damage but not enough to outright kill them. I hope. The ones at the beginning of the row show no damage at all. It's a good thing that I closed the lid on the cold frame yesterday evening or all of the tomato and bell peppers that have come up from last years seed would have surely not made it. Last Friday brother and I made a trip to Mansura to pick up his car from the mechanics shop and on the way home I picked up some transplants from the local nursery. I got 6 Cherokee purple, 6 Creole, and 6 cherry tomatoes. As well as 6 egg plant and 6 bell peppers. The ones in the cold frame are not quite ready to be put out. Funny how I always end up with too many plants and not enough space in the garden.
The corn is up and shows no damage from the frost and really is probably ready for a side dressing of fertilizer. I'll probably hit the beets and carrots with some at the same time. Ineed to hill up the potatoes also. I am going to try using the mulch that I got from the molding shop for this an see how it work out. Some of the potatoes that I planted late summer last year were planted in this mulch an did pretty good. I had several folks tell me that it wouldn't work  but the potatoes didn't seem to know that. They didn't get real big, about the size of a tennis ball, but tasted just fine.

Bees Swarm

Well I've put off posting this as long as I can. Earlier this week maybe Wednesday the Easter hive swarmed on me. It's not like they didn't give any advance warning or anything like that. We had a really wet week the previous week and there were actually bees bearded on the outside of the hive during the 4.5" that we got last Friday. I know I know what's the matter with you fat boy can't you see and understand if all the bees can't fit in the hive during a storm then they are bound to swarm.
It all started while I was putting a few bulbs in the bed next to the hydrangeas and I heard this buzzing sound. I stopped and listened for a few seconds and knew it sounded like bees. Looking over at the bee yard and there is a cloud of bees that looks like it's 15 feet in diameter floating up from the Easter hive. They didn't stop till well ensconced on a pine tree limb about 30 feet in the air. There was nothing I could do... except put the trap hive I'd been working on last week on top of a 24 foot ladder tieing another ladder to it making an a-frame monstrosity that didn't fool them for a minute.
After my wife and I got this thing up we sat down and waited. Within 30 minutes while we were watching a softball sized clump of bees fell from the swarm and exploded in flight within 10 minutes the whole swarm was 60 feet off the ground headed southeast. I tried to follow behind them with a big cardboard box in hand. Half an hour later my wife found me about half a mile from the house in the middle of the tree farm next to our place. The bees... nowhere in site.
All I can say is I'm trying to do better. I've built new boxes and installed them on the hives that John and I transferred the week before. See this link for one such transfer, five frame nuc to full sized box
Now I need to get 5 other hives down the road home and worked also.

Nuc to full size box

 Nuc to full sized box

This past weekend John and I finally moved the last of the three Nuc hives that we have to a full sized 10 frame box.
Click the link for a video.
https://youtu.be/2mfby_wr8fw
We both know now that he should hold the camera sideways to get a full frame shot. Hopefully we can post more a little later.
Beets are up.
The beets that were planted mid February are growing wide open. It took a full two weeks for them to germinate.They are an experimental planting. Just to see how late in spring beets could be planted and still make something before bolting into seed. We'll see if the planting dates that LSU suggested will actually work. The latest date they gave was the 28th of February. With our early spring, thanks Phil, I am wondering if they will make it.
I have a good collection of used bricks and several old wood framed windows. So I put together as a cold frame in the garden to get a start of tomatoes, bell peppers, and egg plants. So far only some of the tomatoes are coming up. I think that the soil isn't quite warm enough for the others.
Hope to get around to canning some pork meat today, that should be the next post.

Spring 2016

Well it's been a while since I've updated anything so here we go.
Finally made it thru 2015 it was a long year. seems funny how time goes by sometimes in flashes and other times as if crawls by.
Picked up 4 more bee hives this past year. I don't have them on the homestead yet, they are about 1 mile south of us right now. Will move them when the Ligustrum starts to bloom. There is about 1 and a hale acres of it about 300 yards to the southeast of us on the tree farm. The plan for this year is to really work with the bees. I posted earlier that brother and I had caught a swarm and brought them home. Well they are wide open by now. I've built and added two full size supers that were added to the top of the original one that we put the swarm into last spring. I will have to check them during the next sunny day we have to make sure that they aren't planning on swarming. If so I will split them and make two hives. It's been in the upper 60's and partly sunny for the last few days, but I've let other folks take up some of the time that should have I should have had spent here working the garden and bees and such.

LSU puts out a planting guide that gives dates to plant what and how long it should take to mature. So I've planted a 4 foot by 5 foot area of the garden in beets yesterday and will do carrots today. This is first time I've ever planted these in the spring. Next up is corn on the 15th of February and planting another area of corn every 4 weeks after that until the middle of June. Then Pole snap beans, Irish potatoes, and turnips by the end of February.
I'll post pics in the next few days.

Farm update June 8th 2015

The plants are really going wild in the fish tank. We've picked 3 tomatoes and 2 bell peppers so far. I'm trying to get a gutter set up on a portion of the garage to catch water for the fish. On one of the last really heavy rains that we had the fish tank was in danger of running over so I opened the valve at the bottom of the tank just a tad bit to drop the level... you guessed it, later that day I realized that it was still draining the tank so the water level is about 2 feet lower than it should be. I'll add pictures a little later.

One of the ongoing projects here is to get the south side yard set up with a brick paved patio. We had about 250 bricks from an old fireplace that a friend let me have just to get that part of his yard cleaned up. A pretty good haul but not quite enough to do the job. Well I've had my eye peeled while driving back and forth to Bunkie and have spotted at least 3 fireplaces that will never be used again. So ask and see all the owner can say is yes or no. Well it turns out that one of them that said no has changed her mind and let me have the fireplace that was left after the old house that used it before was destroyed by termites and then fire. I've been getting about 100 bricks a day for the past few days and should have a total of about 400 when the job is complete. These added to the ones we already have should just about make the patio happen. Now I need to get a couple of yards of sharp sand for the base. I hope to have pictures of that soon as well.
The garden is doing great considering that I don't commit very much time to taking care of it. Still have a problem with grass but we've started picking green beans every other day, a few bell peppers, Gypsy peppers, okra and fresh new potatoes, as well as 2 ears of sweet corn. The pumpkins are down to just one plant but what a plant it is going wide open and has at least 5 baby pumpkins on it now. I've also planted a patch of zinnias  for the bees.

The BEES are doing great even better than I thought they would. they have almost filled the top box that I added a few weeks ago. They are flying from first light to almost dark hauling pollen and nectar as fast as they can. The worries that I had of causing a slow down when I had to remodel some of the brood comb that they had attached to the top cover of the bee box seems not to have had too much of an affect on them.

Also go a new bulb planter shovel.Works even better than the little one that I started with. Pictures a little later

Pecan Trees

We had something happen just last week that really surprised me. There is a rather large pecan tree on the south side of the house that makes the small size pecans. Think about the end of your little finger. It made a bumper crop last year and had only one guy picking them, consequently there were quite a few left on the ground this spring. Well last week the came up! Yep seems like every last one. Now I've seen a lot of pecan trees come up from the nuts missed last fall picking but never in the number that we have here now.

This shot real doesn't do justice to the number of seedlings that are in our front yard. There are at least 200 baby trees.

Now if you've ever tried grafting trees the best root stock for for the grafting is going to be a hardy native tree species.

One of the local nurseries will give me $5 for each of the seedlings that make it to the one year old mark. The price goes up from there for every year older that the trees get. 

The best way that I could think of to get the seedlings up and into pots is a bulb shovel. The wife just happened to be in Alexandria the day that I had the idea for potting up the baby trees. She was able to get me one at a local big box.

Just center the seedling in the opening give it a good push and twisting action till the little tree spins around with the shovel as you're twisting it.

I tried to get at least 4 inches deep on each of the baby trees that way if I did happen to not get all of the tap root, it was only a very small portion that was exposed during uprooting and re-potting procedure.

Here are the seedlings potted up and under a red gum tree on the south side of the garage. Also on the left side of this picture are some wild persimmons that I got from seeds last fall. There are 50 pecan and 46 persimmons seedlings here. Those 4 spindly little trees right up front are black locust.

The chicken found out that there were bugs and stuff in the trash bag that I used to collect the persimmon seeds last year. Once they had broken the bag open the ants moved in to eat the rotting persimmons. Along with them came a ant nest with dirt and there you have it a bag full of persimmon seedlings. The hunters around here love to plant them on their food plots.

This is the tree that all the seedlings came from the coke can for scale. The seedlings will probably be at least 3 years old before I try to do any grafting on them. I may sell them before that.

Honey bees at Mulberry Farm

Two weeks ago this past Sunday my brother got a call about a swarm of honey bees at a friends house. We went right over and found that they were about 18 inches off the ground on a guy wire to a power pole in the guys side yard. A fine bunch of bees. We were slightly worried that the queen may be inside the yellow plastic covering that the owner company uses on the bottom ten feet or so of the guy wires but no problem she wasn't. It took us a few tries to get all the bees into the box. We finally just stopped and watched, some of the bees at the entrance of the hive started fanning with their butts up in the air. This is a dead giveaway that the queen was in the hive. It was a couple of hours before dark by now so we left the hive in place for any scout bees that would come back. Well it turns out that we left the hive there for four more days just due to scheduling conflicts.
On Thursday night I went and retrieved the hive and brought it home. I carefully sealed the entrance with a stick of wood an a couple of screws. This is when I got my first sting. As I was lifting the hive box to put it into the truck it slid off to the side of the bottom board just enough for a few bees to get out. As I lifted I held the hive against my stomach mashing a bee. BAM she popped it to me. I know that it was completely my fault that I got stung because these bees have shown themselves to be completely gentle during all of the handling that I done to them since then. When I got them home I put them on a couple of cinder-blocks to keep the hive up off the ground.
Friday morning I removed a 2 inch chunk of the wood blocking the entry. It only took a few minutes for the bees to find the feeder jar just outside of the hive and get right to work moving the sugar water. The feeder jar is just a pint mason jar with five small holes punched into the lid. Once it is turned upside down a vacuum form in the jar to hold the feed in place till the bees suck it from the holes.
The area where we live is definitely in the country and there is lots of forage for the bees. Two days and 4 pints of sugar water later and they are bringing pollen into the hive. We feed them for one week and they haven't missed a beat. The only problem that I've found since then is that they have taken over one of the hummingbird feeders the wife puts out. No biggy though.
I've ordered frames, smoker, and a hive tool from Dadant as they are the closest supplier around here. Also built two more deep boxes as I had a couple of 8 foot 1x12 pine boards in the shop. The frames will be filled with pure beeswax foundations when they get her in a couple of days. It won't be a minute too soon as I was checking the hive day before yesterday I discovered that we had left an empty frame slot in the hive box and the bees are starting to build comb from the cover, not something that I can let them do.
I hope to get pictures and an update here when the supplies arrive.

Aquaponics at Mulberry Farm

Aquaponics at its cheapest

I'm thinking that I first read about aquaponics, a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture about 4 years ago. I was instantly intrigued with the notion of growing plans and fish in the same system. I had known about hydroponics for quiet a long time and was toying with the idea of trying it out. At the time I had watched for over a week as it rained and rained and flooded my garden to the point of killing some of the plants. So I was on the web reading about hydroponics when I came across this site that used a re-purposed IBC tote to grow fish and plants. I just had to try and do this.
Within 2 weeks I had my tote and was happily cutting away at it.
Using the top section that was cut off for the grow bed.
However finding a medium for planting in that was cheap wasn't easy. The stuff most folks were using Hydro-ton, little clay balls was very expensive and not readily available in my area. Some people were using small gravel but this seemed too heavy for the simple structure that makes up the grow-bed. Then I found out about expanded clay that is used for light weight concrete. There is a cement plant about 15 miles from here and they were happy for me to have all of the light weight aggregate that I could load as it was a left over from a job from years ago. This stuff was full of poison ivy and weeds from being left in one spot for so long. I managed to get enough of it cleaned up that day to get 12 five gallon buckets. This turned out to be enough to fill my first grow-bed. Now a trip to the discount store for a pump. Did I mention that this whole thing needed to be cheap to build?  Two years later I'm on the second pump. The first one was too cheap and only lasted about 8 months. The new pump is from a big box lumber store and has a two year warranty. The pumps for these systems are small needing a flow equal to the total volume of the tank to be pumped in one hour. A year an a half later and this one is still going strong. I think that I'll try a solar powered one after this one. This one uses only about $0.70 cents of electricity per month so the solar one will have to be cheap to buy and last a long time as well. The pump runs full time filling the grow-bed with fish waste water. As it reaches a preset level the water overflows into a siphon pipe that drains the grow bed back into the fish tank even as the pump continues to fill it. The whole process takes about  minutes to do a cycle. So the grow bed fills and drains 3 times per hour.
As there are lots of sites on the internet that tell how and why these systems work I won't go into a lot of detail here.
What I can say is that of the plants that I've tried cabbage,bunching green onions, and mustard greens. They have all flourished. This year I'm trying tomatoes and bell peppers as well and so far it seems like they are wide open an growing. I will follow up as the season progresses. I am hoping that the tomatoes will drape over the sides and stop some of the sunlight entering the tank.

4 Catfish and 4 berm those marshmallow looking things are pieces of floating fish food. We are thinking about adding a dozen or so of goldfish to help boost plant nutrients 

Green bunching onions are over 2 years old.
I just keep pulling them up breaking them apart
and putting them back in. I need to add a wooden
rail of some sort to cover those pieces of steel frame
from poking me when I work around this thing!  

Where we're at now

Welcome to

Mulberry Farm

Today is April 22, 2015 and we've come a long way since moving in. We haven't did a lot to the house yet besides tear out two small closets that were back to back an make one large one for the wife and me. New handicap toilets for the extra height that they provide. I'm getting a little older and it's not as easy to get up from the lower models of some toilets. Also tore out a cabinet on the washroom back porch to make room for the upright freezer. The back porch is totally enclosed with windows on the two exterior walls so it makes a great laundry room as well as doubling as a place for a storage pantry of all the canned goods that came with us and the ones that we'll do this year. The dogs Pam and Alpo also have their kennels there as well.
We installed a timer for the electric water heater

 so that it runs 8 hours a day instead of 24. According to the label on the heater it will cost $408.00 per year to run it. If i run it for 1/3 of the total hours it should save about $272.00 per year. The timer will pay for itself in a little over two months.
A few weeks after we moved in I talked with the foreman of the tree farm that is our neighboring property to the south, and asked him make up a few rows for a garden. Well I ended up with four rows about 48 inches wide and 144 feet long. Waaaay more than what I needed. Especially since I didn't have a tiller or any way to work the area. I went from no garden to one that covers over 2800 square feet. WAAAY more than what I needed. I've since purchased a 4 tine potato type fork and a friend gave me a Mantis gas tiller, LOL, but if you break up the row with the fork the tiny tiller works pretty good. How do you eat an elephant......

20 feet at a time

I've planted about 20 feet on three of the rows so far.

The same evening that the rows were made it rained 2 1/2 inches. If you ever need it to rain just invite me over to start a garden or a building project.
Having said that in the last month or so I've managed to plant a 4 foot by 4 foot block of sweet corn that's as many as 64 stalks of corn, I really need to hoe this area badly.

A 20 foot block of red potatoes,

 3 eggplants

I've learned that any more than 3 eggplants for my family of 3 leads to neighbors who close the door when they see you coming with more eggplant.

5 bell peppers 

Really the grass just looks bad, yea I know break out the hoe.

5 Gypsy peppers sort of like a yellow wax pepper,

15 hills of pole snap beans, you can never have too many green beans, these  are Kentucky Blue one of my favorites

7 okra, should be more than enough, I got to hoe these yesterday

3 hills of small pie type pumpkins, 5 hills of black diamond water melon, and a

15 foot row of sunflowers. 

I also have two bell peppers, 2 tomatoes one each Arkansas traveler and one Mortgage lifter and 2 bunches of green onions in the aquaponics set up.

The onions do very well in this setup the tomatoes and peppers are an experiment. I've grown mustard greens and cabbage in this as well. It was amazing that in the winter two years ago that the whole grow bed and about 4 inches on top of the water froze solid with no noticeable affect to the plants. We've only managed to use a small portion of the garden so far. In fact while I was mowing the day before yesterday I cut the grass on top of the rows so it wouldn't look so bad.
We will probably eat some of the corn but save the best for seed. I also hope to save seeds from everything else except the pepper plants. The peppers are not open pollinated types.

Naming the farm

Well it seems like everyone who has a blog about their small farm or homestead has a neat name for it. This is how I came to name ours Mulberry Farm. We moved into the new place on January 15, 2015. Well it's new to us. The house has been here for at least 40 years that I can tell and maybe more than that. It once belonged to a fellow that was a distant cousin to my grand mother on dads side of the family. I didn't know this when we first looked at the property. But that's not why I decided to call it Mulberry Farm.
Just this past Monday while I was cutting the grass and making circles around a large decaying tree in the back yard I noticed little green, red, and black fruit hanging from one of the twig like branches about eye level. I stopped the mower and looked up into the living branches of the tree and was astounded to see loads of mulberries in various stages of ripening. This is the same tree that I wanted to cut down just a few months ago due to the sad shape of its branches. When the ornamental pear trees bloomed and this one didn't I figured it was dead. Little did I know that it was just waiting for some warmer weather to show its true colors. This tree is about 30 inches in diameter where comes out of the ground it's one of the biggest mulberry trees that I've ever seen.
Sure glad I didn't cut it down. Now if I could just find a way of invigorating it.