Farm Land!

I am proud to say the Birchell land is now officially FARM LAND! Jake, my parents, Jake's parents, Pete, and all our siblings have helped us do a huge land make over. Our land started out with old fences everywhere, thousands of russian olive trees, huge ditches, big cotton woods, dead wood piles, tumble weeds, and only flood irriagation. Back in March when Jake was explaining everything that had to be done to my parents he kept saying "It is going to be more work than anyone can imagine... but if we finish it will be all worth it." So after three months of never ending work I think we would all agree it was a lot more than we thought it would be, and it is also very rewarding to have it finished.We started the project by borrowing a back hoe from one of Jake's friends. With the back hoe Jake, Kevin, and Donny began digging up the russian olive tree's. (Jake also used the back hoe to completely remove the old house and big trees by my house.) We then rolled up all the old fence, Woody and Barry cut the cotton woods, we all loaded the fire wood piles up, Jake got to do his favorite thing and burn about forty large piles, and we put the wheel lines together. Del came home for Easter and wanted to help us. Unfortunately the only day he could there was an awful rain storm. It was freezing and Jake, my Mom, and I wanted to quit so bad but of course Del and my Dad kept insisting we finish. After the sprinklers were all put together we started leveling out the ground and breaking everything up to get ready for the planting. Jake borrowed a seed drill and spent three days working on getting it running. When it finally was working we were able to  plant alfalfa and oats and then we turned on the water! It was a great feeling to see the sprinklers work and an even better feeling the day we woke up and could see hay growing in our fields. Thanks to everyone for all the help... and Jake I am so proud of you for getting it done! I haven't taken any pictures of the alfalfa and oats growing yet, but I will try and remember to tomorrow! (I am still need to the blogging thing, but this would have been a good post to learn how to do a slideshow.)