Goldfinch Farm CSA
Goldfinch Farm Blog
| Beth's Farm Rambles and Rants Check here for regular updates on farm happenings. I don't have it set up that you can make public comments on the page (don't know how), but you can email me at screechowl@paonline.com. 31 July 2009 My father says that he thinks the cardinals in Skunk Hollow (the little bowl in the side of Mt. Pisgah Ridge where the farm is located) have a slightly different dialect than the cardinals in Ephrata, where he lives. Tonight I heard it. Most cardinals I have heard have a call that sounds like a somewhat insistent "Pretty, pretty, pretty!" The cardinal calls here are more like the York drawl that the human neighbors tend to have, "Pur-itty, Pur-itty, Pur-itty!" Amazing. If you ever get a chance to try a Paul Robeson black tomato, do it! These are wonderful, sultry sweet and slightly smoky tomatoes. Absolutely marvelous. We're growing an heirloom variety from my own family tree this year, the Mr. Slabaugh, a beautiful pink like a Brandywine. They're also extremely yummy. 24 June 2009 This blog has gone the way of my typical journal. I abandoned it rather quickly. My apologies to anyone who has been checking regularly. We'll see if I can keep it updated this season. Trying to be part of the work and life of the farm while parenting has become increasingly challenging for me. I feel like I have been able to continue contributing my energies mostly in the area of the paperwork: doing receipts and deposits, keeping track of the mailing list, writing the newsletter, doing the weekly lists of shareholders. Then of course, I do hold down the fort here on pick-up days. And i help with set-up and washing veggies on harvest days, too. With grandparents here on harvest days, it is easier for me to feel free to head up at least to the basil patch to pick. Soon the tomatoes will be in, and I think I may venture up there to help with the harvest--that's my favorite thing to do. I know of at least two women who are the primary farmers on their farms and who have been parenting babies and toddlers at the same time. I don't know how they do it. Even while I type now, Joss is starting to grumble a bit, and I feel like I ought to go pick him up. We just got back from visiting Steve Prescott at Prescott's Patch. They have a truly lovely place there, a gorgeous flower garden, and lush-looking berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries). It's always nice to take a little time to talk to other farmers. If we don't get too weighed down by keeping up with the work this summer, it would be fun to trade work days with the Prescotts or other local farmers like Dave Dietz--take a crew there for a work shift one week, and have their crew come here for a work day another week. The community of having conversation with other farmers out in the fields is really refreshing. *** The wrens in the balcony birdhouse are likely to fledge soon. We can hear the babies chittering whenever the adults fly in. Ellis poked his head out the balcony door last evening. When I walked by, he turned to me and said, "I'm singing Hushabye to the baby wrens." As I walked on, he went back to it in his nearly tuneful warble: "Hushabye, don't you cry. Go to sleepy, little babies." Just a few minutes ago, I saw a bluebird trying to land on the wisteria by the bird house. The fierce little wren parents quickly drove the invader away. There's a new koi in the pond. Our neighbors, the Myerses, overlook the pond, and their son gave Clinton a white koi for Father's Day. I'll have to take Ellis over there this afternoon to see if we can spot it. Clinton says he'd like to get the big bass out of there. I would too. Maybe we can catch it and invite them over for a fish dinner. 3 December 2007 Oy. It's been tough to keep this site updated this past season. I got worse ans worse at it instead of better. My apologies to folks who actually look here. And in the past month we've had the most amazing new critter sighting I could have expected: a Patagonian Cavy. The neighbor on the other side of the ridge is apparently a pet shop owner and raises some interesting exotic four-legged folks over there. One of his cavies got loose and has been hanging out around the holler for the past five months or so. I'm not too worried about its ability to fend for itself throughout the winter--he does come from Patagonia, after all--but I am a little worried about hunters. I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving, when another neighbor and his dogs were out hunting up on the other ridge. He looks a bit like a hare (he's a cousin, I think), and a bit like a small antelope (no relation). The first time Jon saw him, he called him a Jackelope. I first thought he was a capybara, but he's much daintier, less piggy. I love to watch him bounce over the fields. He bounces exactly like an antelope, and his back end is black with a white horizontal line--it's sort of like following a perky Betty Boop. 23 July 2007 We had a lightning-induced electrical surge in early June, which destroyed the computer, printer, garage door opener and stove. While we were able to get the computer replaced and running rather quickly (thanks to the wonderful computer guys at Pham Computers), it took me a lot longer to reload the software for updating the web site. Finally, we're back in business. The growing season has been marvelous this year. We're already well into the summer crops: pounds and pounds of wondrous tomatoes, hefty zukes and cukes, the largest eggplant we've ever grown, and lots of sweet peppers. This year's carrots are the longest and sweetest since we moved to this farm. And Jon tells me I need to get out and pick the first okra within the next few days. 21 May 2007 Screech Owl news: two days ago as Ellis and I were walking, I saw the screech owl fly from the hole in her tree to another nearby tree. All the feathered folk of the neighborhood suddenly arrived and harrassed her verbally and physically (with close fly-bys) for quite a while. She saw me watching her from below, and we looked at each other for several minutes. But the BIG news is that yesterday as we were going by the tree, someone was looking out, but it wasn't the russet face I'm used to. As we got closer we realized it was a young one! We've seen the little grey face twice now. May it and any siblings it has fledge in safety! 17 May 2007 The shares are sold out. I can't believe it--it's earlier and earlier every year. It makes me sad that we have to start saying no to people, but it's extremely exciting to know that people are really interested in eating locally and organically. This is my hope for the future. I think I'm going to try to make some mozzarella cheese. I have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and it's inspiring. I have read that one can substitute concentrated nettle tea for the rennet. It's worth a try. The nettle is out there cooking down right now--it smells green and earthy like only nettle can. Here's the most amazing news! Today I saw a screech owl on the farm. A little rusty morph. She looked like she was sitting on eggs or warming hatchlings, perhaps. I'm so excited! I have heard them here, of course, but to actually see the nest is just amazing. 3 May 2007 The orioles are back! I thought I heard one several days ago, but it was wishful thinking--I was hearing a robin, which sounds only very vaguely like an oriole. When I heard the orioles in the sycamore trees yesterday morning, I was SURE they were back, and sure enough, I caught sight of two flitting through the upper branches, sun on their orange feathers. I found a pile of grey down and yellow feathers on the Woods Trail earlier this week--yellow-shafted flicker. We don't think the smaller hawks could have taken down a flicker. Makes me wonder whether that really was a peregrine I saw the other day, and maybe it's hunting in the area. I would love to have local peregrine. All the peas are in the ground now, and the onions. The tomatoes keep growing. We're eating the first asparagus--it's delicious. We may still be getting asparagus from Simple Gifts this year; it doesn't look like we'll have enough to give out in shares from here. Either way, the shares will have asparagus. We had an asparagus quiche (recipe from Simply in Season) for supper last night with eggs from Suzy Achtermann's free hens and rosemary from the plant I brought indoors last fall. Delicious! I bought a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's newest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about her family's year of eating only local food. It looks like a great book. I'll write a review of it for the newsletter or somewhere on the web site when I'm finished with it. 28 April 2007 (Today is Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Day: On 28 April 2005, we woke up to news on the radio that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, thought for years to be extinct, had been sighted in Arkansas.) It won't be long now! I started cleaning out the market room this morning with Ellis on my back, dreaming about what it will look like in another six weeks or so when the freshly-washed greens are stacked in the bins, waiting for people to come take their first shares of the season. Broccoli and cauliflower are out in the fields, as well as the peas and early onions, and yesterday we transplanted rows of tomatoes and the swiss chard. The little tomato plants look so innocent and hopeful in their tidy rows. In a couple weeks they will be leaning over and whispering secrets to each other, and by mid-June, trellising will be the only way to tame them. Some of the little plants already have tiny hard little green tomatoes on them! The greenhouse is emptying a bit because so many crops are going outside now. The little cherry and pear trees that we planted last April (2006) have broken out into leaf, and even the young ones which we planted just this spring are sending out hopeful little buds and tiny leaves. The goldfinches are a joyful bright yellow, and the nape of the red-bellied woodpecker is the perfect color of red-orange. Yesterday we saw a bird flying over the north fields which I don't think I can put on the farm list because we didn't get a clear identification on it, but its wings were shaped like a falcon's, and it was a good bit larger than a kestrel. I have seen peregrine falcons down by the river, so it would make sense that this was a peregrine, but in the sun I couldn't see its face to tell whether it had the peregrine's hood. (See the farm Bird List on the right.) Ellis is now about two weeks shy of a year old. Mostly he's a happy-go-lucky fellow, but the whole teething thing is sort of getting him down. This week he has gone from taking three or four tentative steps at a time, to walking through a couple rooms, grinning like a bandit. (Is that the right saying? Or is it banshee? Or maybe it's neither, and my sleep-deprived, muddled brain made it up.) He's very proud of himself. |
| Birds and Critters of Goldfinch Farm One of the important reasons to farm organically is to protect the lives and habitats of local wildlife. A wide variety of birds is a sign of a healthy farm. The bluebirds and swallows and kingbirds put in their fair share of work, too, gobbling up the potato beetles and other pest bugs that trouble an organic farmer. We are bird watchers, and enjoy keeping track of the many species of birds we see here on Goldfinch Farm. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see our current list. The birds are a great help in our struggles to keep certain insects from eating the veggies; other insects also help: lady bugs and praying mantis among them. We finally saw a fox in March 2007, zipping through the snow over the bluff, across the road and through the creek, its bushy tail streaming out behind it. The year before, Beth and a friend spotted a coyote in the bosque across the road! One spring we saw a snapping turtle by the pond. Groundhogs, rabbits, deer, and raccoons are also common on the farm. These folks also like fresh vegetables, so we're finding ways to deter them from invading the fields. This spring we caught an opossum in the live trap. She didn't seem like a highly destructive critter, like the groundhogs, so we let her go. The most amazing critter we've spotted here is the Patagonian Cavy, an escapee from a nearby farm. See 3 December 2007 entry at left. These birds appear in order of when we first saw or heard them on the farm. A few birds, like the screech owl and the ring-necked pheasant, we have identified by sound rather than by sight. 1. Cardinal 2. Black-Capped Chickadee 3. Junco 4. Blue Jay 5. Tufted Titmouse 6. Chipping Sparrow 7. Song Sparrow 8. Fish Crow 9. Red-Tailed Hawk 10. Turkey Vulture 11. Mockingbird 12. White-Throated Sparrow 13. Yellow-Shafted Flicker 14. American Crow 15. Screech Owl 16. Mourning Dove 17. White Crowned Sparrow 18. Goldfinch (of course!) 19. Robin 20. Downy Woodpecker 21. Canada Goose 22. Bluebird 23. Snow Geese 24. Red-Bellied Woodpecker 25. Brown Creeper 26. Hairy Woodpecker 27. Pewee 28. Mallard 29. Great Horned Owl 30. Wood Duck (pair on pond) 31. Starlings (flock of a thousand) 32. House Finch 33. Ring-Necked Pheasant (heard) 34. Carolina Wren 35. Tundra Swan 36. House Wren 37. Indigo Bunting 38. Wood Thrush 39. Baltimore Oriole 40. Kingbird 41. Ruby-Throated Hummingbird 42. Great Blue Heron 43. Nighthawk 44. Kestrel 45. Rose-Breasted Grosbeak 46. Bobwhite 47. Coopers Hawk 48. Yellow-Rumped Warbler 49. Purple Finch 50. Bald Eagle |
