The Latest from The Valley

Well amidst all this snow piling up I was feeling a bit like there were piles of untold stories about what's happening in our world here in Sogn Valley. Our kids are growing up quickly and changing like crazy. Leah is even blogging now, so atleast one of us keeps a little update. Check out her blog Sogn Valley Mom.




We had a wonderful Christmas and really got to be home quite a bit. More than ever in my life, that is the place that I most want to be. It was nice to have time off from school and a relatively slow photography schedule outside of work on the computer.

Emerson is walking everywhere now and just basically follows her brother around and does whatever he does. Her personality is really starting to shine now and she is mumbling all her own language all the time. She clearly knows what she is talking about, but we just smile and talk along with her.

Cameron is working on his potty training and is loving to play on his new train table (which Emerson climbs all over) and is looking forward to his using his new "glub" (baseball glove) this spring. He talks about playing catch with his best buddy Kevin Slowey next time he comes over. He loves to watch the deer, turkeys, pheasants and "Jumpy" the squirrel out the window. We've all had some fun times out in the snow this past month as we have gotten a ton of it. Even mixed a couple snow days in there!

We've just been blessed to be able to be in this place together and the best of life's times are just hanging out together.

Not Often Enough...

Did Avery's 3 month photos this afternoon and then Cameron asked if he could climb up and get his photo taken. Can't believe that he asked, but I wish I did this more often. He's a little character and made lots of funny faces and poses, but these were a couple of the best good ones.

Food Plot - Planting 1

I have had the opportunity to get out the past couple evenings and get some seed in the ground on the food plot. What a good feeling to use your hands and hopefully see this growing process happen over the coming months. Cameron and I first went out in Maring's big John Deere tractor with the digger and worked the ground up a little more. We went home and got the four wheeler with the cultipacker and headed back out to roll the ground some. After doing that, I planted about 1/2 acre of Antler King's Red Zone. This was in the northwest corner of the field. Cultipacked again on top of it and rode home.

Yesterday, Cameron and I went out and planted 14 test plots with a variety of Antler King and Whitetail Institute products. This was again about a total of 1/2 acre. We'll see what come of those different seeds and what I might do different next year from the results.

The best part of the planting came at 9:15 last night when I went back out to cultipack that plot and then planted another 1/2 acre of Whitetail Institute's Double Cross. It was just getting dark and it was so quiet out there. It really made me think ahead to this fall and hopefully a lot of quiet evenings will be had sitting on the edge of the plot watching deer.

Food Plot - Lime

In order to raise the pH level a bit on the soil, I had Al Hernke come by today with his lime truck. The pH is about 5.7 currently and ideally it would be around 7 which is perfectly neutral. Al spread about 10 ton on about 3.5 acres for me today.

It was really neat how the grass had started to grow back a bit now after our burn. Still very desolate, but it will grow quickly now with the good rains we've had.

My plan is to disc the field good a couple times in the coming days and then dig it to smooth out the soil a bit before planting. I would like to have some seed in the ground by next weekend.

Food Plot Creation 1

Got started with the initial field work on the food plot this weekend. I spent part of the day Friday prepping the 11 acres of CRP/switchgrass to be burned. I went in with a brushhog behind the tractor and mowed down two rows of grass and Phil came behind me with the chisel plow to create a firewall for the burn. The chisel

plowing is also a good start on getting some of the initial ground turned over for planting.

Then on Saturday AM we went over and burned. It was a quite a sight to see the power of fire and how quickly it gets its work done. We started on the downwind corner to create a back fire. This slowly burned into the wind and created a barrier for the upwind fire to burn and die into. Once the upwind fire was started the 11 acres was down in minutes. When the two fires met each other it was quite a powerful updraft. I'm sure they fed off each other in some fashion.

As quickly as it was started the show was over. I also realized that this was the easiest way to shed hunt! Flattened black earth that only minutes prior was 5-6 feet tall! It was amazing that under the torched grass there was already green shoots starting to pop up. Amazing how the spring does this to the earth. This left a nice patch to be disced, dug, rolled, planted and rolled again. Should be some fun.