St Croix River Road Ramblings

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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Oh Deer

A buck wandered the orchard Monday eating green windfall apples from the big wind storm of the night.  By afternoon, most of the apples were gone as a buck and doe cleaned them up.  

The rain total for the Sunday night and Monday afternoon rains ended up at 2.1 inches, enough to keep everything growing for most of the rest of July.  Even the soy beans on the sand fields seem to be coming along fine.

Today we run the water from the new well system for an hour or two to clean the chlorine and rust out and then we should be into fresh well water again after a week of spotty water supply as the old well was abandoned and a new one driven.  The new one is the same depth and should give us excellent tasting water again like the old one of at least 100 years use. 

Well Drilling   a video on how the well drilling rig drilled and hammered the new well 99 feet deep for $5400

Eating apples   a video on this deer cleaning the windfall apples in the orchard.  The deer have already eaten the apples in the trees as high as they can reach and browsed the apple branches as high as they can reach too.  

We would be OK with just eating windfall apples on the ground, but climbing up in the tree to get more is not acceptable!

The raised foot is part of chasing away deer flies that pester deer all summer.  In the video you can see some of the tail flick, ear flick, hide quiver, and other fly removal behavior.  Maybe the thick hair helps some of the time.