Down on the Farm (UPDATE)

Well it has been a few weeks since  I got the Farm planted , so thought I would show the progress.
 As you can See everything has grown considerably well.

Here the tomatoes are really doing well, and I have added a Roma tomato for tomato sauce. I am very happy with the inverted tomato cages wired to the bamboo , With the cages the way they are designed to be used, I have always had the problem of  them falling over once the plants got to big for them.This way I can keep tying the to the bamboo for as high as I need too.

Here you can just see the small tomatoes coming on .This is the Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.

This is a close up of the 100s

The Herb Garden really is doing well in the self watering containers. I am very impressed with these and will order several more of these. One thing for next year the Cilantro has already bolted. Not sure what to do to prevent that. It just got hot here earlier than usually. Might jut cut it and replant it several time this year.

The Asian Pepper  has started setting fruit.

This in one of the Thai Peppers in the herb garden, You can see it has started to set fruit.

My Jalapeños are producing peppers as well as the Banana peppers in the next picture.

You can see in this pic that the onions are up and doing well. These are clumping so will be used as green onions.

The Cantaloupe are coming along , growing them on the frame to keep fruit up off the ground. Will cradle fruit in nylons to help support them from the frame.

Here the Cucumbers are doing well. Have two types, a slicing cuke  and some pickling cukes. Replaced the straight eights slicing one that didn't make it with pickling seeds. They didn't fair well got cut off when they came up so replaced them with plants and they have done well.

The Yellow squash and the Zucchini are both doing well they seem to like the shaded side of the farm.

As you can see the cutting garden has really taken off there will be blooms soon

 The Coriopsis or Moss Rose likes it planter , it is starting to fill out hoping it will trail over the sides an down the stump.

Rosemary is standing tall and looking good. Love the smell of that plant.

Well there is the Farm old yeller lab guarding it and all .

Well thats it for now will keep this updated as the seasons progress.

No Luck on the Fly

I didn't have Any luck with the flies on the river. But I was having trolling motor issues which made Fly fishing very difficult . So Started throwing a rubber worm and as you can see I had a taker. LOL ....Sad thing is this is the first Bass I have caught on the river, and the first fish every on a rubber worm. It was just bigger than the worm. After that when set to cat some gills for cut bait for when we go cat fishing tomorrow night. We caught several then had to leave ...I had to meet my Daughter and her boy friend. They are buying my moms truck , so that was that for fishing.

 We at the FAAN have a friend Gert Duvenage , we call him Steve...lol  that has been with us for the school year, but is returning to South Africa soon. So we came up with and Idea that we all tie up a few flies for him and present them to him in a fly box at our next meeting. He will be giving a presentation on Carp fishing in South Africa, Should be interesting.
 So today I spent some time at the vice and tied up a few to add to the box.  Went with Carp flies as he is very passionate about the the Poor Man's Bone Fish. So these are what I came up with:

 Here is a fresh water calm.

 Here are a couple of small crayfish.

 This is a Stone fly

 The next two are just some nymphy buggy looking flies

And lastly a Carp Delight.













Most of these flies I have found on various websites like RoughFish.com,  and I put my own twist on them so hope Steve likes them and enjoys fishing with them when he gets back home.

Tying up some foam Flies

Saturday the 21st the FAAN(Fayetteville Area Anglers Network) set up our booth at the Chalk Banks Raft and Kayak/Canoe races. They were held at the Lumber River State Park in Wagram NC. We had a good time, we did some fly casting demonstrations and fly tying demos also. I was assigned the task of tying foam flies, mostly for sun fish, as that is what most of our fly fishing in this part of NC . So here are the flies that I tied, sorry no pictures of the event forgot the camera in the truck.

Here is a sparkle frog , Tied with craft foam with adhesive backing, from Wally World. Inner body is a sparkle chenille from Hobby Lobby. Back legs are paired hen hackles dye green ,and the front legs are silicone skirts for jigs and spinner baits, and the eyes are doll eyes available in any craft store.

 These flies that I tied , go to show the this art does not have to be a very expensive hobby. These flies are proven fish catching bugs.So when you start to get down about the cost of hackles, which I agree is getting outrageous, remember why we tie flies. To catch fish, and the fish are not as picky as some would lead us to believe, if it looks faintly like food , or a threat they will eat it.
Of course this is just my Not So Humble Opinion, and does reflect the views of this Blog. LOL

 These next couple of fly are a wiggler / diving fly. I am sure most of us remember the banana like hard plastic lures in old tackle boxes...Same principle.

These are just some more frogs , not my design and I think they are aptly name Kermit. I added the red inner foam and chenille just to add some color.

This I did come up with . One of the wild life workers had a booth set up where he had scooped up a bunch of aquatic life from the river and had it on display. What caught my attention was the length of the legs on almost everything . From the dragon fly nymphs tothe the damsel fly nymphs, they were all very long in proportion to the body. We do the same thing here at our local lake and get the same bugs but they all have short legs, it was just weird to me. So I tied this with the long legs and hope to try it out tomorrow on the cape Fear river.

This little guy is sort of a stone fly/ damsel fly nymph  What ever our blue gill think it is they nail it on the top water.

These guys are my wasps. The pattern I found some where on line from a fellow over in Europe, I don't remember his name but he said it worked like a charm, and he was right.

 Here are some of my Yellow butt Bees. They get nailed pretty hard too. I think because they are bulky and the gills see it as a huge meal.

 A couple of Flying Ants for when they start to swarm. Not too long now in this part of NC if they haven't already.

 This is one of the hoppers I like to use with one or two nymphs on droppers below it. It dose get hit quite a bit also.

Well there they are going to put them to the test tomorrow , heading out on the Cape Fear in the morning. Looks like a good day so should be fun . I won't forget the camera this time so I hope to post up the results of these new flies.