Working before the Cold Snap

Inge and I headed out to Die Weide with two goals in mind - grill up a steak on the fire pit, and brush bust a path to the tiny natural pond on one of the three creeks that enter the property. Since the forecast is for a seriously long cold snap to arrive tomorrow, we figured to get our work in today as it might be awhile before we get back out there.
First, the food.
Arriving at 11 a.m. we set out to gather firewood. One of the several dead mesquites (apparently poisoned some time in the past) provided a bounty of firewood, which we lit up on the first go around.  The pictures tell the rest of the story, except the eating and enjoying.

Steaks Sizzle Over Fire Pit

Flippin' Steaks

Fire Pit Repast

 After we enjoyed our lunch, we sat around the fire, enjoying the warmth of the embers as there was a bit of a cool breeze.

Pond Trail Blazing Work
It only took a few minutes of relaxing before we were antsy to get to work. Every time I've found the pond, it's been by stumbling upon it. I came across it two weeks ago, and even though we've not had rain since October,  I found it with a few puddles with lots of tiny frogs. I knew the general area for today's job, but it's well buried in the woods and brambles. So we set out to find the pond and blaze a nice path from it out to the front pasture. We started out at the salt block and headed west into the woods, hacking brambles with our hedge shears. Eventually, we worked our way in to find the creek and then the pond. We were very surprised to find the pond had a very good amount of water in it, though not full. There was more than an inch of rain a week ago and that's all it took to turn a few stagnant puddles back into a pond. The creek takes several bends there and the orientation of the pond points in a way that throws me off directionally from how we arrive there. But today I scoped it out, got my bearings, and we began blazing a wide path - good enough for a small cart or vehicle to pass through so we can bring material to augment the pond's natural dam.

Trail Camera
Inge got me a Primos Truth Cam 60 trail camera for Christmas which we also brought with us today. I set it up to overlook a path that runs by the pond. The camera was set up the morning of New Year's Eve, and picked up afternoon New Year's day. During that brief time it took 85 pictures and I was really excited to see what we took. As soon as we got home I loaded it on Inge's computer where we found 79 pictures of waving grasses that set off the motion detector, and six pictures of this doe:

It's going to be a week or more before we get back to the pond so I can't wait to see what we take. To limit the waving grass pictures, I decreased the sensitivity of the motion detector.