Farm News 09-04-05
Sunday morning, after chores, 68°
Flower Seed
Paula has been collecting flower seed. Each year she plants rows of Zinnias, Marigolds, and Cosmos in the garden to attract butterflies and to provide seed for the next year. When the birds start eating the seed she collects the seed heads in paper sacks and stores the sacks in the house. The flowers breed true, for the most part, so we know about what we will get from them. Flowers and butterflies in the garden make it more pleasant to go out there and pull weeds.
The butterflies are doing quite well this year. Currently there are lots of Fritillaries, Buckeyes, Angle Wings, and Monarchs. For some reason there were very few Hackberry butterflies this year. It is amazing how much the populations can vary from year to year of all species. Most years you can't go outside without being mobbed by Hackberry butterflies wanting to roost on your arms, head, and neck.
Butterflies like Zinnias, especially if the Zinnias are well watered. Because we also grow Bronze Fennel we have lots of Anise Swallowtails, big, beautiful black and yellow butterflies. The adult Anise Swallowtail likes to sip the nectar of a Zinnia but the caterpillars eat Fennel. (Like the caterpillars, my niece's twin two year old daughters also like to eat the licorice-like Fennel leaves.) Attracting butterflies is a two part exercise, you need flowers for the adults and leaves for the caterpillars.
Sometimes, when the weather has been dry, I will water the Zinnias and, a few hours later, see as many as ten Great Spangled Fritillaries fluttering from flower to flower. That is enough to make an old geezers heart sing. Fritillary caterpillars live primarily on violets, easy enough, because Pansies and little Johnny-Jump-Ups are both violets. My favorite violet is the Bowles Black Viola, a nice little black violet that blooms in the spring and usually reseeds itself. Here, it is necessary to start a new batch every three or four years.
Books
I just read a scary statistic: 59% of the adults in the United States do not own a book, not even a cookbook. No wonder people accept such nonsense as Intelligent Design. I always figure that people who believe in Intelligent Design have never seen a baby born. That is the messiest, most unintelligent event I have ever witnessed, although the end product can be wonderful.
How can one live without a dictionary? Or, a guide to the stars? Or, The Sibley Guide to Birds of North America, or Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines in Kansas, or The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies?
The important question is, “What can we, as concerned citizens, do to increase literacy in America?” I try to do my part by kissing the nearest librarian every day. Of course, being married to her makes that fairly easy.
Trusty Kills His First Possum
Tuesday morning, while protecting me during my morning walk, Trusty found a possum in a hollow tree stump. When looking down into the hole about all that could be seen was a lot of sharp teeth. I poked a stick down there and the possum snapped at it. That was enough opportunity for Trusty, who dived in, grabbed the possum, and pulled it out. What a fine brave dog.
Oh, Mercy – part 3 by Susan Maricle
Quickly, Mike grabbed a small plastic bucket and gathered up what keets he could find. He counted nine. The fox was continuing to decimate our poultry population. Mike brought the bucket into the house, and by that time I arrived home with Wyatt. As Mike filled me in on what had happened, we heard still more keets, sounding like frog peepers deep in the woods.
Mercy continued to collect babies. She circled around a dirt embankment, trudged upward through the tall grass, and led the keets one at a time down the embankment. With all the birds we've had to nurse this summer, I'd become proficient at preparing emergency housing. I grabbed a cooler and put in a layer of bedding, a feeder, and a waterer. The keets from inside the house went into the cooler. So did the keets that Mercy was collecting. There were fifteen in all.
Finally, there was only one keet cheeping out in the grass. Both Mike and I tried to grab it but it seemed to vanish into thin air. We decided to get the cooler from inside the house and bring it back outside, hoping the sound of the keet's brothers and sisters would lure it in.
But there was a problem. While we looked for the last keet, the babies in the cooler would be sitting targets for the fox. So Mike laid a screen on top of the cooler. He laid a small flatbed trailer on one half of the screen, providing security and also allowing ventilation. Then he stacked three spare tires on top of the trailer. (If you wait long enough, there will be a use for that junk you have lying around in the yard.)
"Will that keep the fox out?" I asked skeptically.
"Oh yeah," Mike assured me. "That fox would need a Ph.D. to figure out how to get in."
"He does have a Ph.D.," I said dryly. "A Poultry Heisting Degree."
By this time, Mike had to leave for a mowing job. If the keet came out, he instructed me, try to chase it up the embankment--it would be easier to catch. Three times I tried, three times it eluded me, three times Mercy herded it back, stopping only once for a quick bite of corn. (I imagine she was getting worn out.) The best I could do was keep the fox away....
The final installment of Susan's story will run next week.
Microdot
This has been a lousy year for poultry. Not even the bantams have been producing; usually by this time they have brought forth thirty to forty chicks. Saturday morning a hen that has been missing the past month reappeared with one chick, already named Microdot. Mother and baby seem to be doing fine.
Speaking of naming, the young turkeys need names. The all black one is definitely a tom and probably the only tom in the group of four. That leaves the hens, two blues and a white with faint blue and beige markings, to be named, also. 'Uncle' is too obvious for the tom, although 'Tom' has been suggested. He loves watermelon, by the way, so there is no apparent reason to be politically correct about his name.
Hurricane Pam
Readers might find it enlightening to look at the results of a Google search on hurricane pam.
E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
Flower Seed
Paula has been collecting flower seed. Each year she plants rows of Zinnias, Marigolds, and Cosmos in the garden to attract butterflies and to provide seed for the next year. When the birds start eating the seed she collects the seed heads in paper sacks and stores the sacks in the house. The flowers breed true, for the most part, so we know about what we will get from them. Flowers and butterflies in the garden make it more pleasant to go out there and pull weeds.
The butterflies are doing quite well this year. Currently there are lots of Fritillaries, Buckeyes, Angle Wings, and Monarchs. For some reason there were very few Hackberry butterflies this year. It is amazing how much the populations can vary from year to year of all species. Most years you can't go outside without being mobbed by Hackberry butterflies wanting to roost on your arms, head, and neck.
Butterflies like Zinnias, especially if the Zinnias are well watered. Because we also grow Bronze Fennel we have lots of Anise Swallowtails, big, beautiful black and yellow butterflies. The adult Anise Swallowtail likes to sip the nectar of a Zinnia but the caterpillars eat Fennel. (Like the caterpillars, my niece's twin two year old daughters also like to eat the licorice-like Fennel leaves.) Attracting butterflies is a two part exercise, you need flowers for the adults and leaves for the caterpillars.
Sometimes, when the weather has been dry, I will water the Zinnias and, a few hours later, see as many as ten Great Spangled Fritillaries fluttering from flower to flower. That is enough to make an old geezers heart sing. Fritillary caterpillars live primarily on violets, easy enough, because Pansies and little Johnny-Jump-Ups are both violets. My favorite violet is the Bowles Black Viola, a nice little black violet that blooms in the spring and usually reseeds itself. Here, it is necessary to start a new batch every three or four years.
Books
I just read a scary statistic: 59% of the adults in the United States do not own a book, not even a cookbook. No wonder people accept such nonsense as Intelligent Design. I always figure that people who believe in Intelligent Design have never seen a baby born. That is the messiest, most unintelligent event I have ever witnessed, although the end product can be wonderful.
How can one live without a dictionary? Or, a guide to the stars? Or, The Sibley Guide to Birds of North America, or Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines in Kansas, or The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies?
The important question is, “What can we, as concerned citizens, do to increase literacy in America?” I try to do my part by kissing the nearest librarian every day. Of course, being married to her makes that fairly easy.
Trusty Kills His First Possum
Tuesday morning, while protecting me during my morning walk, Trusty found a possum in a hollow tree stump. When looking down into the hole about all that could be seen was a lot of sharp teeth. I poked a stick down there and the possum snapped at it. That was enough opportunity for Trusty, who dived in, grabbed the possum, and pulled it out. What a fine brave dog.
Oh, Mercy – part 3 by Susan Maricle
Quickly, Mike grabbed a small plastic bucket and gathered up what keets he could find. He counted nine. The fox was continuing to decimate our poultry population. Mike brought the bucket into the house, and by that time I arrived home with Wyatt. As Mike filled me in on what had happened, we heard still more keets, sounding like frog peepers deep in the woods.
Mercy continued to collect babies. She circled around a dirt embankment, trudged upward through the tall grass, and led the keets one at a time down the embankment. With all the birds we've had to nurse this summer, I'd become proficient at preparing emergency housing. I grabbed a cooler and put in a layer of bedding, a feeder, and a waterer. The keets from inside the house went into the cooler. So did the keets that Mercy was collecting. There were fifteen in all.
Finally, there was only one keet cheeping out in the grass. Both Mike and I tried to grab it but it seemed to vanish into thin air. We decided to get the cooler from inside the house and bring it back outside, hoping the sound of the keet's brothers and sisters would lure it in.
But there was a problem. While we looked for the last keet, the babies in the cooler would be sitting targets for the fox. So Mike laid a screen on top of the cooler. He laid a small flatbed trailer on one half of the screen, providing security and also allowing ventilation. Then he stacked three spare tires on top of the trailer. (If you wait long enough, there will be a use for that junk you have lying around in the yard.)
"Will that keep the fox out?" I asked skeptically.
"Oh yeah," Mike assured me. "That fox would need a Ph.D. to figure out how to get in."
"He does have a Ph.D.," I said dryly. "A Poultry Heisting Degree."
By this time, Mike had to leave for a mowing job. If the keet came out, he instructed me, try to chase it up the embankment--it would be easier to catch. Three times I tried, three times it eluded me, three times Mercy herded it back, stopping only once for a quick bite of corn. (I imagine she was getting worn out.) The best I could do was keep the fox away....
The final installment of Susan's story will run next week.
Microdot
This has been a lousy year for poultry. Not even the bantams have been producing; usually by this time they have brought forth thirty to forty chicks. Saturday morning a hen that has been missing the past month reappeared with one chick, already named Microdot. Mother and baby seem to be doing fine.
Speaking of naming, the young turkeys need names. The all black one is definitely a tom and probably the only tom in the group of four. That leaves the hens, two blues and a white with faint blue and beige markings, to be named, also. 'Uncle' is too obvious for the tom, although 'Tom' has been suggested. He loves watermelon, by the way, so there is no apparent reason to be politically correct about his name.
Hurricane Pam
Readers might find it enlightening to look at the results of a Google search on hurricane pam.
E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
posted by The Geezer at 7:24 AM
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