What have you done to prep this week?

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

Went to a yard sale down the street and bought two bow saws. More importantly learned some intel. My rural ag area is being bought up by developers at a mad pace, the yard sale guy just sold for a crazy high price, along with his neighbors. 800 houses are already going up at the end of my little back road where it meets the main road, now all this even closer.
I think I need to start some serious thinking about where to move.
Central Florida is really starting to suck.

Not to be nosey but I am....what area is this, we still have family there in Orlando area. This is one of the main reasons I left and hate Florida. All of the places I fished, hunted, surfed you name it, GONE! Sink holes, you wonder why? I don't, I've done enough cave diving and understand the aquifer of Florida. They've destroyed the water system causing a vacuum/voids which creates these sink holes. Man if you could have experienced it when I was a younger lad.

OK valuable intell and needs to get out to the people, I would love to know more so I could pass it along please.
Thank you.

[Alas Babylon]

I'm south east of Orlando. Specifically Narcoossee, which is half way between the Lake Nona area and Saint Cloud. The rapid development is being driven by the Medical City that's being developed just up the road. My area is not unique unfortunately, the south and east sides of Orlando are all going nuts development wise. I'm off hwy 15, which used to be a two lane road, now its 6 lanes. I am thinking of northwest fl after I retire in 5 years or so.

[bacpacker]

It's been a busy month. Last three weekend I have been cutting dead trees and cleaning up that mess. still got 4 more trees to take out and a bunch of brush that needs cutting down. I'm getting ready to replace my grape arbor and wanted the dead standing trees down before i installed it. I will be having a hell of a bonfire soon.
The area where the trees are coming down is going to get planted with more fruit producing plants/trees this fall. I have this summer to decide wht all that will be.
I got the stuff to make my arbor with today and will start building it soon. Gonna use a T-brace style and put hog panels on top of that for the grapes to spread out on. I will end up with 12 plants, 6 concords, 6 muscadines in about 64' of row. That will produce all we will need.
I got my chicken crap that has been composting for a year spread out for this years corn crop. Still need to clean the coop soon. We are also planting cabbage, spinach, califlour, and brocholi tomorrow evening.

[ak474u]

Decided to try something new with our raised beds... Keyhole gardening. We've got a 6x6x12" high cedar raised bed at the center of the garden. I put an 18" wide by 24" high circular compost cage at the center and filled with material from my compost tumbler, we then put shredded newspaper at the bottom, grass clippings, and filled the entire bed with really good dirt. This is gonna be a high density planting, the articles I've read say as many as 70 plants can fit in this bed basically creating a jungle canopy over the soil, and the larger plants shading smaller ones. The compost at the center continues to decay and be added to, and while kept wet, the compost tea leaches into the soil. I'm not sure I'm gonna go as high as 70 plants, only because I see an issue with caging the tomatoes, and peppers when they start producing large fruit, so we may do 20-25 various plants and then see where it goes from there. Also bought 30 plants for less than a dollar each, but can't put them in yet because I'm afraid its gonna freeze. My strawberries are damaged from the last freeze, so hopefully they'll recover, I did everything I could with the burlap covers. The PVC vertical gardening is gonna take some getting used to with it's fragility. The builder is taking out my back fence this week because its crusty, and the new home behind me comes with a new fence, so yay me! I get a new fence! AND... My fence is on MY property, approximately a foot from a 3' stone wall, and the new fence will be set on top of that wall, which means I get and 9 foot rear fence, and another foot of back yard. I'm having the builder leave the old posts in place, so now I've got a 70' bean row with preset supports. I measured and planned out my water barrel pad this weekend as well. I'll start leveling that spot next weekend, and build up the cinder block base for the barrels. I've got to give the gutter guy a good idea of where the downspouts need to go, and I'm trying to do multiple projects at once without having to get a night and weekend job.

[2die4]

Picked up a few boxes of .223 cheap. Nice to see it back on the shelves.

[Stormfeather]

got 50 pounds of potatos... now to cut them up and start dehyrdrating. . . this is going to be a long week.

[mitunnelrat]

Helped build and then staged six 4'x8' garden boxes to be put in place once the snow melts off.

Ordered a set of Lee auto prime shell holders for my reloading kit and also completed my first live rounds last Friday. No range report yet.

Bought an '05 Ford Ranger XLT with 4wd and super cab for my new daily driver and BOV.

And, of course, school continues. Bio #2 and English next semester, I think.

[bacpacker]

Stormy you might look into getting a Mandolin slicer. Much faster and easier than a knife. Plus you can adjust the thickness and all slices are uniform which makes drying much easier.

Also I put off planting this week. We are going to have temps in the mid twenties later this week. No need to kill my plants.

[ak474u]

Stormy you might look into getting a Mandolin slicer. Much faster and easier than a knife. Plus you can adjust the thickness and all slices are uniform which makes drying much easier.

Also I put off planting this week. We are going to have temps in the mid twenties later this week. No need to kill my plants.

Yup, 88* today, 30 something tomorrow. Stupid global warming.

[bacpacker]

We hit 73 today. Possibly snow flurries tomorrow night. Where is ALGORE?