Cleaned out the sprayer in hopes of trying out the Pasture Gard on the oak sprouts.

Took the brush-hog, tractor, and 3-point hay spear to the welders in the morning.  Evia followed with the kids in the Kubota RTV.  It did fine for awhile, but overheated on the way back.  We paused about a mile from the house for abit, let it cool down, then proceeded.  When we made it back I sent an e-mail to the place we bought it from asking what their recommendation would be.

Dealt a bit with potential renters for our one open house and then talked with my boss for about an hour getting a proposal started.  (Yeah, vacation time is almost over.  Work is intruding… tis ok… its good to have work!)

We had a brief rain shower – lasted about 2 minutes, but at least the dots connected.  Started hand watering the trees.  Things are really dry.  How dry?  Every tree I watered with the hose running full created a puddle between 6 and 8 inches in diameter.  The water soaked in before the puddle could get any bigger… and that was after at least 2 minutes of watering per tree (call it 12-15 gallons of water).  I hit all the ones we had planted this year and anything with fruit on it.  Then worked my way down to the oak and paw-paw trees down by the bees.  When down, it was 4:30pm and Evia was still hard at it watering the berries. 

Decided the afternoon was still young and mixed up that Pasture Gard.  Frank and I headed out on the cooled down Kubota, after making sure the radiator and overflow were full, to see how far 25 gallons of this mix would go (kind of measured by field size, kind of measured by how long it would take the Kubota to overheat).  Found a lot more oak sprouts than I expected – basically got all of them in an 8 acre field (well, not likely, but got all that I spotted!) and a couple of patches in the field we had mown a few weeks before.  Actually, that should make for a decent test since the first field had sprouts up to a couple years old, the other field sprouts were new growth from just a few weeks ago.  Hopefully it will work on both but we shall see. 

The Kubota warmed up to its normal 75% on the heat gauge (about a 1/4″ below the red zone) in about 15 minutes.  After that it slowly got hotter, until right around 1 hour it touched the red zone.  We had run out of spray and were heading home.  Within 5 minutes, when I pulled it into the storage shed, it was boiling over again.  I sent an update e-mail to the dealer.  I figure either the thermostat needs replacing or the radiator needs a flush, but will see what they have to say.  I suppose the radiator could need a more forceful cleaning too – which I’ll try next time I’m up there.

We ended up leaving a bit after 7pm and made it home around 10:30pm.  Paid the bills, checked e-mail, worked on a rental house application, and am now making this post.

Oh, remember the blog post with the photo of the blue eggs?  Guess what hatched!  That is today’s photo!