Although Hurricane Elsa was not much of a hurricane once it reached us, we got a lot of rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain! Three weeks before the official storm, we were also pelted daily with rain, rain, rain. Every day was dark and cloudy, and the sun only occasionally shone silvery white…
Category: Nature Finds
A Halloween Story
Something really awful happened yesterday. Our cats are great ratters, and one of them (I presume) had dragged a fairly large but scrawny rat out of the barn and left it on the patio.(Not the same rat in the picture). Because of the stored animal feed, we have a constant supply of rats and squirrels…
Sumac Lemonade
Early yesterday morning I heard the cold winds of a front rustling the branches of the naked cherry trees and making acorns rattle down on the roof from the oaks that grow all around and over us. I lay awake for a while, listening to the strange thumps and rumbling of paws outside. From far…
CHANTERELLES: A French Recipe For Wild-harvested Mushrooms
The goats have been escaping. They are penned in with electric netting in an area of about five woodland acres, loaded with new, brushy growth and grape vines. It should be goat heaven, but they can’t stand to stay in for more than a few hours. I am going in, walking the fences to…
A Gopher Tortoise Nest (A Guest Post by Ethan)
We have gopher tortoise neighbors at the farm. I say neighbors, because we do co-exist with them on that level! Gopher tortoises are some of my favorite animals, and I love observing them out grazing, or the fastidious house-keeping they do to their burrows after a big rain. They can live to be over…
Wild Plum Harvest
This is the time when the wild plums are dripping from the branches. They are tart, glowing and fragrant. Some trees bear large fruits, some small. Some are red and some are yellow. It is interesting to taste each tree’s offering, getting a different mix of sweet, tart, and bitter plum flavor with each one. …
Eating Weeds
Anyone who has known me from childhood will remember that gathering and eating weeds has always been something I’ve done. I would run all over our apartment complex, finding edible plants to make picnics and feasts for my friends and family – and I still do! This time of year some of my favorite edible…
The Tadpoles
We are expecting goat babies to be born any day now, but in the meantime, there have been thousands of unanticipated babies that appeared last week. Last Friday we had friends out to the farm. The weather was so sticky and hot, we filled up a huge galvanized water trough for the kids to splash…
Wolves
This weekend we got some much-needed work done of re-locating Ethan’s junk pile (for the third, and hopefully, last time). We came across these interesting creatures. The top one is a Rosy Wolf Snail – a predatory snail that eats other snails. It was the largest snail I’ve seen in Florida – although nothing special…
The Snapping Turtle
On Saturday we went to the BugFest put on by the UF Entomology department. They had cockroach races, an arthropod petting zoo, beautiful specimens displayed, all kinds of food made with bugs to taste. We had a good time, but the best thing was the huge snapping turtle we found in the parking…
Planting Potatoes And Sharing Beans
This morning my great uncle called. Years ago he had passed along a bag of long beans that he had grown. He originally got the seeds from my great-grandfather, and has been growing them ever since. He was calling because his basement was repainted last fall, and in the muddle of re-painting, his collection of…
Signs and Portents
This is gruesome…but an interesting story. Ethan had dropped me and the girls off at the gate on the way in to the farm, because they like to walk along and look at Star’s piglets. They were lingering, loitering, moving very slowly, and I had a lot I wanted to get done, so I ran…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 