Wild Life

Now that the bunnies are pretty effectively excluded from the kitchen gardens, and their numbers greatly reduced from a year ago, they are cute again. The collapse of the rabbit population last fall through winter coincided with the residence of a gang of coyotes. Late in the winter only a few large rabbits remained in evidence on the whole 40 acres, and the coyotes were heard and their tracks seen less and less. A month after the dogs left we began to see little rabbits and now there are some third-generation individuals.

Just this morning, though, I found scat on the lane from something large that was full of fur... It was also full of coarse grass and looked like an attempt to purge. To hear tell, old rabbits mostly die from parasites.

But when they gather four or five at a time in the lane on the dam and take dust baths (fleas?), or graze on grass seed at the verge of the lawn and waterfront, or chase each other around one or another of the large trees, they're pretty cute.

Good old Squeaky Tree, one of the bull bur oaks. The undergrowth in the woods, the unmanaged everywheres on the farm, are overgrown, rank and impenetrable. Most of the game trails that autumn's die down revealed are lost again. Even keeping to the extreme center of the groomed trails is no guarantee against finding a tick later.

It's a bass! Caught and photographed and released by Donna.

It's a rare day this spring and so far into summer that clouds of gnats are not a serious nuisance. A stiff breeze helps keep them from lighting, and Absorbine, Jr., but it's often so bad that they still get into the eyes and ears and nose and mouth and hair. Our expectation — ok, hope, really — is that drier weather less favorable to the gnats will predominate as summer progresses and we have more favorable outdoor work and recreation conditions.

It's in the Air

The growing season winds down as the equinox approaches; the gardens look tired and we're making the last of the summer harvests. August brought our little farm more than seven inches of rain, and these first days of September a little more. But still there has been almost no runoff. The pond water level continues to drop with daily evaporation and many of the rivers hereabouts are mostly sandbars. By these measures the drought persists, but the grass is verdant and lush and we're behind in the mowing.

The little tractor carries a mowing deck between the front and rear tires, and the weld on a connection has failed. We acquired a welding machine at an auction a few weeks ago, but the classes Alan and I took are now long ago and we have not attempted the repair. Tomorrow, however, a friend who much more recently worked as a commercial welder will come out to give us a lesson and connect the broken parts.

Autumn is not yet here but there are hints of it in the air, now cooler and drier with trace scents of mould and wet soil. The tree leaves rustle more crisply and the insect orchestra drones a different movement of its seasonal symphony. The milkweed pods are bursting open to cast their downy seeds upon the breeze. Almost all the rabbits have vanished, as have the red-winged blackbirds and goldfinches and bluejays. The cardinals had gone but have now reappeared, and the robins are flocking together.

In the woods, the grasses and forbs are senescing and it is much easier to leave the groomed trails and to see longer distances beneath the canopy. Now revealed is a rather amazing network of game trails, many of them suitable as walking paths, and I'm getting to know even more of this diverse property. I thought this ancient shagbark hickory was looking especially stately a couple days ago.

I've been revisiting the giant puffball mushrooms and they are growing to astonishing sizes, some now 18-24 inches in diameter. The one that I harvested had a beautiful texture when sliced, like tofu or mozzarella cheese, and fried up very nicely, but none of us cared for the rather strong, sharp flavor – it is an acquired taste, I suppose.

We harvested the popcorn and though the yield was not great, it certainly looks good! It will dry on the cob indoors and we'll test several kernels every few days until it's popping well, then shell the ears for storage.

The peppers are still coming on profusely, ripening nicely, and developing some good heat. The yellow individual is the only habanero to show any color than green so far. I hope there will be enough degree-days in the season remaining to finish them.

Another sign of approaching autumn is the occurrence of brilliant pure blue skies, here being sailed by a turkey vulture.

From our east fence, across the neighbor's soybean field, an aspect of infinity:

Almost every time I come this way, the duck is laying on the ground, and I replace it on its pedestal. I would like to install a motion-detecting camera to find out what's going on.

Alan built this beautiful meditation bench at one of the highest-elevation points on the property.

This morning as I paused at the bench I watched this coyote in the neighbor's alfalfa as it hunted some small item of game, pounced successfully, and made a meal.

Wild turkeys roost in the woods, high up in the old growth, and it produces quite a startle when from silence they suddenly fly off directly overhead, making all sorts of noise and leaving feathers behind. It seems some violation of natural law that such large things are up that high at all, let alone supporting themselves on wings.

Donna has become a worm rancher, raising red wrigglers in a plastic tub in the basement, where they convert newspaper and coffee grounds and kitchen scraps to castings that are an excellent soil amendment. The worms multiply rapidly, and she periodically divides the population for release into the compost pile and gardens.

The worms are also good fish food. Here are Bubbles, a smallmouth bass, and Delilah the sunfish, which Donna caught in the pond and now live in the aquarium. They are voracious eaters and are growing rapidly, encouraging my plans to raise fish in cages in the pond next year.

Independent Days

Yesterday two fawns came up to the house to graze just a few feet from where Donna was sitting. Here they are between the barn and the dam. Adult deer had been stumbling through the gardens and I'd find fresh tracks on almost a daily basis. Their grazing is evidenced by a tearing away of the foliage, in contrast to the clean, knife-like cuts left by the rabbits. We'd been leaving the northwest field to grow up however it might, but after I found many spots in the interior where deer had been sleeping, I mowed it to deprive them of cover and move them away from the gardens. That was a couple weeks ago, and it seems to have worked.

As Sylvia suggested, we wrapped the main gardens in 24" poultry netting and this finally seems to have excluded the rabbits, though they continue to ravage the roses and other flowers around the house. The fences we erected earlier are of welded wire and at first they seemed to do the trick. But the manufacturer, who apparently never actually tested the product, increased the spacing between the wires from bottom to top from about one and a half to four inches. Within a week of installation the rabbits learned they could just stand on their hind legs and pass through the larger openings. So now we have a second fence over the first fence – live and learn...

There appear to be four different sizes of rabbit now. Their gestation period is only thirty days, so three new generations since April. This bunny was grazing near the concord grapes vines, which are heavily laden with fruit, at twilight yesterday.

Yesterday's beautiful sunset, painted in Maxfield Parrish hues.

We probably should have looked under the leaves earlier because now we're confronted with bushels of cucumbers from the seven hills, each with three or four vines. We're having a little pickling contest. Donna's are in the large half-gallon jars on the right, mine in the quart jars adjacent, and Alan is working on his batch. None of us has made pickles or done any canning before. A common ingredient in the recipes is calcium hydroxide, the same lime that one sprinkles down the hole after using an outhouse. We're pickling green beans, too.

Between the transplants and the volunteers there are going to be lots of tomatoes and I want to build a dehydrator before they ripen.

The cicadas have been singing for a couple weeks now, and there are fireflies every night. The coyotes have been close lately, as close as the far side of the pond, and I'm now hearing owls in the vicinity. At one point today there were three great blue herons on the pond, and a pair of plover have made a home here.

The algae in the pond remains an aesthetic concern but all other evidence seems to indicate the pond is healthy. We spoke with the neighbor upstream who is growing only hay crops and who said he has not fertilized those fields in years, so nutrient loading doesn't seem to be an issue – Donna's aquarium test strips confirm this. We'd like to displace the algae with such plants as grasses, arrowleaf, and pad lily, but for now all it takes is a little breeze from the right direction to clear the algae to the side and leave the beach area clean and inviting. It's pretty fun being able to take a break from outside work and just walk into the pond for a splash and a paddle.

The heat and lack of rain are a concern. Corn and soybean prices have been spiking in recent days on forecasts of drought throughout this growing season.

I've been reading about raising fish in cages and I think I can use the sunfish and catfish in the pond for stock – a natural hatchery. That may wait until next spring; building the cages will be a good winter project.

More Hands, Lighter Work

On Friday morning we finished the first picnic table and built the second from start to finish.

Frank & Debbie arrived later in the day, over from Chicagoland for the weekend, which in addition to the socializing provided extra hands and legs for some tasks and projects. The dock deck (as distinct from the grill deck and the Mystery Building deck) got an upgrade with several extra 55-gallon plastic barrels-worth of floatation. By standing everyone else against the far rail, along with eight 5-gallon buckets of water, Alan & I could lever up the near side enough to slip the barrels underneath. We installed a second anchor and built a gangplank and voila! a new favorite place to hang out. The barrels came from an electrician who'd done some work out here recently, who knows a guy at the Heinz plant in Muscatine; they originally contained liquid smoke and barbeque sauce.

Gary also visited, bringing from Center Junction a 3-point hitch mounted auger with two sizes of blade that we'll use for upcoming construction. Serious equipment: it required the big tractor and a logging chain to lift off the flatbed truck. "'I know a guy'," Gary said, referring to our barrel source, "is one of the most valuable assets a farmer can have." We're lucky we knew a guy with a 3-point hitch mounted auger.

Aerial photos of the farm from the 1930s show a cattle pasture with just a few large oaks, with no hint of the dense, richly-diverse woods here today. One legacy of that period, though, is a network of tractor trails that we've been rediscovering as we get to know the property. For recreation and basic access, we want to open up some of these old trails, and this is a job for the bush hog (a scary-powerful chopper mower) and chainsaw.

Caution – you may need ear protection to listen.

We took a bunch of buckets of pond water to a farm supply store in town where a fishery was distributing stock, and brought home a hundred each of 6-inch channel catfish and fingerling large mouth bass.

Kingfishers diving fully into the water. Swallows on the wing dipping sips of water between snacks of insects. Successive large plops into the pond from along the shore as prey escape the stalking ermine. Ruby throated hummingbirds at the coral bells. Orioles and goldfinches and bluebirds. A not yet seen but definitely heard and nearby pack of coyotes. Wind in the big cottonwood. The biophony and geophony of the soundscape.

I began prepping the hops bed for rhizomes that should be delivered this week from Oregon. We're using the corn crib for trellis.

We can stop buying lettuce for the time being. Lots of stuff in the vegetable garden has emerged now and is getting going. I mulched the melon, squash, and cucumber mounds, the blueberries, the little fruit trees.

Lots of balls to keep in the air.

(Thank you to American Nacre special correspondent Debbie Bartsch for photos and videos.)

The Pond

The top of the pond. The level appears to be down about three feet from historical levels and there are some issues with water quality to address over time, possibly by establishing willows and cattail and other wetland species in this area, and wind-powered aerators. There are several large catfish on the bottom, and thousands of little sunfish, and later this spring it will be stocked with bass and more catfish.