Homestead Report 34: January 9, 2019

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 / jablyth / 5 Comments

Kindest greetings, friends, neighbors, family, and followers!

I thought I’d call in the new year by reviewing my photos from the second half of last year and setting a few goals for 2019. Doing so just helped me remember that the world is very colorful compared to what I am currently accustomed to seeing. It is funny how that surprises me every winter.

The late summer and fall is a time of great abundance. The garden seemed to burst at the seams.

butternut harvest
eggplant
cilantro, basil, and lettuce among the butternut
fennel, peppers, kale, broccoli
grape tomatoes in the hoophouse
raspberries
looking down
many varieties
Variety
chanterelles and garlic for dinner

I spent a lot of time this late summer preserving food. Now we have a full freezer, a full pantry, a full list, and a full belly. I’m not a fan of the green tomato salsa, but the tomato-peach salsa is amazing, the regular tomato is pretty good, and so is the tomatillo. We have enough tomato sauce and salsa to make it to next July or August when there will hopefully be tomatoes again. We have too many jars of sweet-hot pickled peppers (my five Hungarian Hot Wax pepper plants outdid themselves, unlike the neighboring bell peppers). We’re in good shape for pickles, jams, applesauce, peaches, and grape juice. Low on dilly beans, since the rabbits ate practically all the bean plants to the ground while we were in Canada.

peach salsa
pantry shelves
pickles, sauce, and salsa
preservation list on the fridge

In wildlife news, we had the great misfortune of a weasel finding our chicken coop just before the holidays. To make matters worse, it was while we were travelling, so our next-door neighbors had to deal with most of the carnage. However, we have the great good fortune of having of many fantastic neighbors, so we called on another to rescue our remaining hens by taking the girls down the mountain to their coop. Upon our return, we discovered a little weasel nest in a hidden corner of our coop, with lots of scat and a round weasel-sized impression on top of a mouse nest. Needless to say, we have shored up all the holes in the coop (adding rocks and concrete at ground level and hardware cloth around the eaves). An attempt to trap the beast has so far yielded two red-backed voles and an eastern cottontail, which we released. The hens are home and safe, but we have not yet dared to let them into their run. Instead, we’ve been taking them on escorted walks to scratch in the gardens.

hardware cloth protection
weasel scat
weasel toilet (left) and bed (right)
July, Red hen with a rabbit, perhaps the same one that I caught this morning
Chickens on an outing

Way before being preoccupied with weasels, we enjoyed a robin nesting on our porch in June. Turkeys walked through the yard in August. A squirrel played in the chicken run in September.

Robin mama
Robin babies
Turkey family
A squirrel tastes an avocado peel
Buffy chases the squirrel

A friendly porcupine hangs out in the yard regularly, mumbling under Charley’s window and munching branches. It seems to enjoy hemlock and elm especially. I’ve been trying to decide if our place needs a name for several years now, especially when I go to the farmer’s market. I’m beginning to think that the porcupine deserves to be featured. Perhaps “Contented Porcupine Farm” or “Mumbling Porcupine Farm”. Maybe one of you has a better idea. Do share.

Aside from wildlife visitors, we have had some human house guests, including my parents, my sister, my friend Patricia, and a whole lovely boisterous houseful of families making music and eating just before the new year. Plus, Charley and I took our annual birthday trip to the cranberry bogs. And as always, the weather was glorious.

Charley’s birthday
cranberries
Patricia and Peppy in Erving
Lauren on the Crag

And now for the goals:

Garden goals: cover, protect, support. I’m no fan of border walls, but in the garden, good fences do make good neighbors. I like admiring the wildlife without being angry that the rabbits destroyed my bean crop. Solid fences and row covers will be my friends this year. And I really need to give those grapes a trellis.

Life goals: Value my time by setting boundaries in volunteerism. Notice the abundance. Verbalize the gratitude. Expand the joy.

Homestead Report 25: June 14, 2017

June 15, 2017 / jablyth / 3 Comments

Veggies are all planted, the flowers are looking lovely, we had two 90 degree days in a row, and we just ate the first strawberries of the year–we’re starting to get a taste of summer!

red yarrow, chives, iris

Strawberries are pure bliss. At this point, we’ve spread the plants around our yard to the point that we can hardly remember all the places to look–but that is sort of the goal, because if we have that many, it doesn’t matter if the birds or voles or slugs destroy some berries. And it feels like a treasure hunt. We have two varieties: Seascape everbearing (which have already started to ripen, and last year went well into October, and are delicious, but don’t self-propagate well) and Honeoye Junebearing (which are also ripening now, but only go for a few weeks, and make TONS of daughters for us to spread around).

hiding strawberries

strawberries in the lawn

strawberries as a perennial border

strawberries in the garden

Aside from strawberries, the honeyberries are ripening. This is our first time eating them. Honeyberry is an edible blue-fruited honeysuckle, with a flavor somewhere between cherries and blueberries. I think they aren’t fully ripe yet, though the one I tried was tasty even so.

Just about everything is planted in the vegetable garden, which is a good thing, because I had minor hand surgery last week and can’t play in soil until I’m all healed up. The tomatoes are looking vigorous and a few have started to flower. The beans (soy, green, black, lima, kidney, pole) are all sprouting. The last few days have been HOT–in the 90s. Today was very pleasant though, after a storm front came through last night.

tomato plants in the lower garden

edamame, green beans, and black beans in the upper garden

The flowers by the driveway have really started in earnest. Lots of irises, bachelor’s buttons, lupines, chives, red yarrow, garden heliotrope/ valerian, Canada anemone, campanula–a purple clustered bellflower, garden loosestrife, and more.

white campion

red yarrow, chives, iris

evening light

Campanula, bellflower

Iris

Garden Loosestrife

bachelor’s buttons

canada anemone

And all those flowers are making the bugs happy. The valerian was abuzz all afternoon, mostly with little cuckoo bees (in the Nomada ruficornis species group) with two yellow spots, and drone flies (Eristalis tenax) that look a lot like bees if you aren’t paying close attention. Charley says the drone fly larvae are rat-tailed maggots and live in sewage. The adults seem nice enough, though.

wasp on valerian

Bee mimic fly on valerian

Crab spider on Rogersia

Last week the phoebe babies were practically bursting out of their nest atop a light fixture in the woodshed. They fledged on Friday, June 9th.

The bluebirds fledged a while ago, but can still be seen occasionally harassing their parents for food. Tree swallows, likewise, fly over in formation, the young ones chasing their parents, begging, though they seem fully capable of foraging on their own.

The ticks and black flies seem less abundant this week, though mosquitoes are picking up. The young chickens are happy to eat cabbage white caterpillars as well as ticks and cutworms tossed to them. They are supposed to be preparing that area for corn seedlings to be planted, but they seem to be letting the mustard go to seed.

temporary chicken shanty

Pullets doing their thing

Chickens in motion!

I just can’t resist the beauty of lupines. In the story Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney, the lupine lady is instructed as a young girl to do something to make the world a little more beautiful. That certainly doesn’t always mean planting flowers, but these ones sure do their part.

Homestead Report 24: June 4, 2017

June 5, 2017 / jablyth / 3 Comments

With this country pulling out of the Paris Accord, I feel extra drawn to wiggle my toes down into the soil and work a little harder at the things I can control to combat climate change. Mostly, that looks like growing as much of our food as I can (thereby relying less on harmful big-agro farming practices and transcontinental shipping), but also includes eating less meat, planting trees, talking to kids about nature, avoiding driving whenever possible, conserving power and producing solar power, working with the town to hopefully purchase renewable energy for town buildings (and eventually residences too), and advocating for (and against) various things with our state representatives. If we all work at different angles–conserving land, transitioning to renewable energy, building bike paths, growing food, we perhaps have a chance at averting some of the worst consequences of climate change; and failing that, we’ll at least have built a better community.

We have been tremendously busy these last few weeks planting, planting, planting. I’ve even been selling some stuff at our little farmers market (seedlings, some greens, rhubarb, and eggs). Leaf miners are again so abundant that it is hard to take a walk without finding something new.

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casebearer moth on birch

One of the most exciting things to do is watch fruit develop. We are eagerly anticipating eating peaches, blueberries, strawberries, apples, serviceberries, and sweet cherries.

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Blackberries, goumi (like an autumn olive, but not invasive, at least in MA), mulberries, and black cherries are blooming, but don’t have fruit set yet.

blackberries

gumi

black cherry

Blooming wildflowers include wild geranium, golden alexanders (in the parsley family), rue anemone, phlox, wood hyacinth, blue-eyed grass (actually a tiny iris), azalea, columbine, and white campion (actually a non-native).

azalea

geranium flower detail

wild geranium

golden alexanders

rue anemone

blue-eyed grass (a tiny iris!)

columbine

white campion (non-native)

In the mostly nonnative perennial category, iris, lupine, comfrey, bachelor’s buttons, and violas are blooming. On June 2, I noticed the first hummingbird of the year visiting the comfrey flowers. It also visited pea and kale flowers inside the hoophouse! Luckily, it seemed to have no problem finding the exit.

iris

lupine

comfrey

We’ve eaten the last of the asparagus (choosing to let our plants have a rest and feed their roots) and I ate the first of the peas.

We’re always looking at bugs, especially leaf miners, around here. You can find Charley proclaiming the glory of them on his blog, bugtracks–and I admit that I appreciate most of them too–but there is one, a fly that communally mines spinach and chard, that I could do without.

anthomyid fly on spinach

fly larvae in mine

If we stay on top of eating the spinach, we end up just eating the eggs (no problem, just a little extra protein), but if we let it go a few days, the turn the leaves to mush, good for chicken food but not much else. I think I am starting to understand why people use row covers…

We moved our young chickens from the upper garden, where they prepared a few beds for me by scratching up all the weeds, into the lower garden. They are enjoying the mustard, as well as hopping out of their fence and scratching up my onion patch.

pullets in upper garden

new home in lower garden

Goldfinches have been descending on our yard in big flocks to devour dandelion seeds. A few times, we’ve seen a gorgeous male indigo bunting joining in the feast. Speaking of bright, beautiful birds, we’ve been hearing scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and Baltimore orioles regularly.

indigo bunting with goldfinch

indigo bunting

goldfinch

A chickadee is feeding young in one of our nest boxes. The bluebirds and tree swallows seem to have fledged, although we never did see the young birds. Phoebes, catbirds, flickers, chipping sparrows, robins, and common yellowthroats also seem to be nesting nearby.

I hope you’ll join me in thanking some trees for turning carbon dioxide into oxygen this week. I’m pretty sure plants listen.

Weekly Homestead Report 8: October 3, 2016

October 4, 2016 / jablyth / 3 Comments

Dreary skies have made it difficult to appreciate the vibrant colors of the leaves, but they’re real nice. Today the sky finally cleared for a few hours, and then a huge dark cloud blew over and dumped a bunch of rain on us in the late afternoon.

The tomato vines are starting to look a bit brown, but we’re still overrun by tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos. We just made some eggplant Parmesan to keep things under control. My food preservation efforts are starting to feel a lot less fun. For inspiration, I called up Jeannie Seabrook, a good friend who owns the Glass Rooster Cannery. She gave me a bunch of new recipes, so hopefully the next round will be more interesting.

We’re trying to grow every edible plant we can think of, including some that prefer conditions other than those we can offer. Cranberries fall into this category, since they thrive in bogs. This year one of our two cranberry plants fruited, and the berries are nearly ripe!

One of our hens laid a rubbery egg without a proper shell. We ate it anyway.

The monarch caterpillars continue to grow. One was missing yesterday (Sunday) and today I couldn’t find any of them. I suspect they went looking for a suitable place to pupate.

The asters are so striking that I couldn’t help but include them here, though I’ve already written about both smooth and New England asters.

smooth aster

New England aster

Weekly Homestead Report 2: Aug 22, 2016

August 23, 2016 / jablyth / 1 Comment

First, a note to my email subscribers: the formatting will be much better, and the photographs larger, if you click on the link and read the blog online rather than in your email program. I think I’ve set it up so your email will be a summary with a button that will link you to the blog, but since I’m new at this, I’m not sure. Now, on to the week’s news!

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This is a week of beautiful caterpillars.

Over the last three years, we have converted a sterile lawn into habitat-rich orchard, vegetable garden, and meadow. The meadow has grown simply by not mowing regularly, and selectively mowing around desirable plants to promote them and suppress the prolific non-native invaders. The meadow and flower beds now include several large stands of common milkweed, lots of goldenrod and asters, a sea of Queen Anne’s lace, and some native shrubs—like spicebush.

Last week I posted a picture of a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar. This week, you can enjoy a younger instar. It has cleverly disguised itself as a bird dropping with eyes. All instars have pretty convincing false eyespots. The caterpillar’s actual head is tiny and tucked down, making it difficult to see its true eyes, and I suppose the guise works to persuade potential predators that it is actually a snake or something much fiercer than a caterpillar.

1st-3rd instars look like bird droppings

4th-5th instars look like this

Queen Anne’s lace is in the parsley/carrot family, so native insects associated with this family are happy to eat this non-native plant. Just yesterday, we spotted a black swallowtail caterpillar. Last year, we found a few eating our cultivated carrots, and transferred them over to the Queen Anne’s lace. This one had found the Queen Anne’s lace on its own.

Sometimes, very bland moths are very beautiful as caterpillars. Brown hooded owlet moth caterpillars certainly fall into this category. The caterpillars eat goldenrod and asters, so they’re happy in our yard!

In the past, we have noticed milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs, but this week, for the first time ever, we spotted a monarch caterpillar! As is broadly known, monarchs are in decline for a number of reasons, including increased pesticide use and decreased habitat (farmers eliminating “weedy” hedgerows to maximize crop area). We have only one record of an adult monarch in our yard, on September 29, 2015. Obviously there must have been one in our yard a couple weeks ago, too, in order to lay the egg! We also spotted a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar and fall webworm eating milkweed.

Fall webworm

milkweed bug

monarch caterpillar

Aside from caterpillars, we’ve been enjoying some great wildflowers. By the chicken house, the native sunflowers that we yanked up from the gravelly shoulder of the road near Charley’s parents’ house are blooming. It was a patch he’d been admiring for most of his life, and when we noticed that they’d spread into the path of the highway department’s mower, we decided to transplant a few of the most at-risk. In the two years since then, they’ve spread wonderfully. Yesterday I photographed bumblebees, hover flies, a crab spider, and even a dance fly hanging out on them. Hover flies are bee mimics, reminding me of sweat bees, and while they do sometimes hang around sweaty people, even lapping moisture off of us with their sponge-like tongue, they are truly flies. They are in the family Syrphidae; many syrphid larvae eat aphids, and therefore are important biocontrols for farmers and gardeners.

crab spider

bumblebee

dance fly

chicken house with sunflowers

hover fly

In the woods, hog-peanut, common boneset, and white wood aster have started blooming. White wood aster is one of the most abundant woodland plants in New England, and its sweet white flowers brighten up the woods in late summer. At least on our land, they are the first of the asters to bloom (although we spotted the first calico aster bloom today, just a few days after the white wood aster).

white wood aster

hog peanut

common boneset

In the garden, we’re picking an abundance of corn, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, summer squash, and eggplant. I’ve been canning. In the photos below, the really tall plant behind Charley is broom corn.

We’re finishing the last of the black currants and gooseberries, and are still enjoying ever-bearing strawberries. The ground cherries (or husk cherries) are just starting to ripen, and they are delicious! Ground cherries are native nightshades (the family that contains tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant). The fruits, like those of tomatillos, are “wrapped” in a papery husk (a modified calyx). The fruit falls off the plant and finishes ripening on the ground; the husk turns brownish and crinkly when the fruit is ripe. Unwrapped, the fruits look like golden tomatoes, but taste sweeter and less acidic (Charley says, “like creamsicles”). Last year we dried some, creating unusually delicious raisins. So far this year, none have made it beyond the garden fence.

In other news, we acquired two additional hens on Wednesday. These girls showed signs of scaly leg mite, and even though their previous owner said they’d been treated, we decided to give them another leg-drenching and a 24-hour quarantine before introducing them to the rest of the flock. They’re still a bit shy with us and the other chickens, but I’m confident that they’ll fit in soon.