Nature Finds: Gopher Tortoises

 

 We've been heading out to do the chores earlier than usual, to avoid the summer thunderstorms that always pop up out of nowhere every afternoon.  And so we've been seeing some of our neighbors that we don't usually run into in the evenings.  This was a teeny tiny 2-inch long baby gopher tortoise.  Once it got over being photographed (they are very shy), it crawled away shockingly fast.

Only a few minutes later I saw the big gopher tortoise (mama maybe?) who lives in the burrow that the dumb dog dug out.  I said hello, but she hissed at me and ran down her burrow.  I got to see her climb in and turn a corner.  It seems as if the dog couldn't dig around the corner, so she was perfectly safe.

Although she wasn't terribly friendly, I love seeing these old, wise creatures out at the farm.  We don't often see them, but their burrows are easy to see and they leave little clipped paths in front.  They have very long lives - this one could be as old as I am.

Copper and Cattle

I've had this amazing moment in farming recently where something really clicked.  When we got Matilda, she was obviously a very pampered cow.  The man who owned her was very kind, but she had stayed in the same small paddock her whole life, and was fed a GMO soybean and corn ration.  It was hard to wean her off of it, but she really liked the grass on our farm.  In fact, the issues she'd had with mastitis completely resolved just by being on our farm.

When we bought her, her face was a dark gray color, and she had a few spots of dark on her shoulders and hips.  That winter, she got a common virus that dairy cows get and lost a lot of condition very quickly because she didn't eat for several days.  We were very worried about her, and she never seemed to bounce back from that illness.  When the grass came in, she gained some of the weight back, but she always looked scraggly and unhealthy.  I gave her all sorts of special high-energy foods and ferments for her rumen, a special wormer, and they always had free choice kelp, mineral-rich rock salt, and the "horse, goat, and cattle" lick from Countryside Organics.  I couldn't understand why she was doing so poorly.

After we stopped buying from Countryside Organics because they were so horrible to us, we had to find an alternative to their mineral lick.  I'm a big fan of Pat Coleby's books, and I had always thought the C. O lick was the same thing, but just before we stopped ordering from them, I learned it had far less copper than her recommendations. 

Honestly, I was afraid of making the lick myself because none of the feed stores here carry the copper sulfate, and also the shocking blueness of it kind of freaked me out.  It's a trace mineral, and all the trace minerals are extremely toxic in excess, but of course are fatal to not have enough.  On the rare occasions when I would try to look up how to obtain it on goat and cow forums, I would always see people saying things like,

"I know someone who feeds her goats copper sulfate and listens to Pat Coleby, and her animals always dying.  I feed my animals GMO 12% sweet feed and TMR pellets, worm them with chemicals, use antibiotics for the least little thing, and they're always perfectly healthy."

It made me doubt what I had chosen for our farm, our animals, and our family.  Then, my friend Brittney totally inspired me when she had a goat get suddenly ill from parasites.  I thought for sure it would die, but she gave it vitamin C and the Coleby lick with dolomite, kelp, sulfur and copper sulfate and when I saw it again, the goat looked amazingly healthy.  I realized that surely it couldn't be so toxic with the dolomite.  After all, Matilda looked like she was going to die any day anyway.  It inspired me, and when I learned she had easily gotten the copper sulfate on Amazon, I ordered some and made up the Coleby lick myself.

Another assumption I had that was wrong was that Matilda would eat what she needed free-choice.  I could see by her rangy, pale coat and parasite issues that she desperately needed copper, but she would always turn her nose up at the lick.  So last fall I began mixing it into her rolled barley while I was milking her.  That completely turned her health around.

Changes began to be visible a few weeks later.   I wish I had documented it.  All along her back was completely white the width of my hand on either side of her spine.  The white patches became slowly smaller and smaller as they were filled in with brown hairs.  A stripe developed in patches, and slowly joined together.  This spring, the white patch was only as wide as one of my fingers, and has completely disappeared at this point.  The stripe along her back even has black hairs beginning to come in.  I can't believe how much black she has on her.  She looks like a completely different cow!  Not only that, but her parasite issues are gone, her coat is silky and smooth and even has a glossy shine to it.

This realization feels like such a key to farming here in Florida where parasites are a real problem, our soils are very acidic, and minerals are scarce.

I think that modern animal feeding practices hide the need for copper by feeding high protein, which also stresses the kidneys.  The reason that copper improves the coat is because it is necessary for creating the proteins that make the coat look healthy.  Incidentally, parasites are indicated by a rough-looking coat.  Pat Coleby is emphatic in her books that enough copper makes the animal immune to parasites.  It's a "chicken or the egg" situation.

Blue Springs

Rose's preschool had an end-of-year outing to Blue Springs on Friday.
I hardly spoke to my older children, they were so busy playing with friends and swimming in the beautiful, unbelievably blue water.  We found the Morning Meadow pavilion easily, despite the fact that no one was actually there at the time, because we spotted the fair trade baskets, organic corn chips and a Maya wrap.

I like the way Blue Springs has shade over the water - very good for my extremely fair, not-really-for-Florida complexion.  There are several springs there.  For the first time we floated down the second spring run that joins the first.  I found a beautiful piece of flint on the bottom.  There were apple snail eggs on the cypress trees and beautiful flowers blooming on the edges of the very clear water.  There is even a long, Dr. Seuss-like boardwalk down to the Santa Fe river.  They have replaced sections of it, but some of them are only held up by cables to keep the whole thing from keeling over into the spring run.  But other than Rum Island, it is my favorite springs

Unfortunately it is privately owned and very expensive to get in.  There is also a certain expiration time, the same as at Rum Island.  It was very nice when we first arrived, but after 2pm it becomes the "Redneck Riviera" and you end up seeing and hearing things you really wish you hadn't, like people cursing at and threatening their children, babies/small children being fed oddly colored, very unwholesome foods, or extremely loud scream rock played at top volume out of an SUV by creepy, over-tanned old drunk men with tattoos.  Not to mention the group of shriveled, enormous, bathing suit-clad women chain-smoking in the only shady spot.
I know it sounds terribly judgmental, but if you've been there, you'll know what I mean.

The culture shock made a big impression on Ethan and Mirin, who went back and forth on the way home, jokingly talking with an appalling accent and saying ridiculous things similar to what we overheard, such as, "Patton, you get yer little butt over here before I got to beat it!"  Or "You beat 'em with yer cigarette hand?  I always beat 'em with mah beer hand!"  And the classic last words, "Hold mah beer and watch this!"

Mostly we ignored the scream rock and had a lot of fun. 

A bow from mulberry wood

Mirin worked for hours and days carving and planing down a piece of mulberry wood to make a bow.  He has a regular from-the-store bow that he gets out occasionally, but he really wants a wooden bow.  He's made a whole lot over the past few years

He put a lot of work and effort into it, but when he was stringing it, it broke!
A disappointment, but a strong lesson on selecting proper wood types for certain projects.  Mulberry didn't dry to be very springy or strong.

In the Kitchen: Dill Pickles

While I've made other ferments, this is the first time I've attempted dill pickles.  Usually I get too many cucumbers and just make relish by dicing and salting them with a little onion.  I am growing a kind of pickling cucumber called Parade.  Supposedly they all get ripe at once, which solves the common problem of me gathering cucumbers to pickle over several days, and having the older ones go bad before I get enough to make a satisfactory batch.  So far they have not ripened all at once, but enough at a time to make a good batch.

 

I am very proud of these pickles! I grew the cucumbers and the dill, and even the hot pepper that went into them.  I didn't grow the mustard seeds or the garlic clove...maybe next year.  I hope they turn out tasty and crunchy.  I put some oak leaves in, because the tannins are supposed to help keep the crunch.

So far the brine has gotten cloudy and the mustard seeds are floating, so fermentation is under way.

The recipe (roughly) is:

Whole pickling cucumbers
mustard seeds
garlic clove, peeled
1 dry cayenne pepper
grape or oak leaves
several sprigs of fresh dill
clean, unchlorinated water
2 tablespoons fine sea salt per quart of water

Add mustard seeds, dill, leaves, garlic, pepper and salt to a jar (quart or half gallon).  Pack in cucumbers as well as possible, pour water to the top, leaving a little air space, but completely covering the cucumbers.  Cap the jar (not too tightly) and leave at room temperature for.....?  I can't quite say yet.  I'm going to check up on them in about 3-4 days, though.

Note:  When I checked on them this morning, the top pickle had gotten too much air contact, so I will be adding a slice of raw onion to the top of future batches.  Not only does it add a nice flavor, but it keeps the pickles in the brine while they are fermenting.  The onion sits partly in the air during fermentation and gets kind of yucky, so I compost it once the pickles are done.  It really helps weigh everything down in the brine.

Summer Garden in June

A lot has been happening in this garden of ours!  (I take no credit for Ethan's wonky owl "scarecrow," just so you know).  Man, it's a big garden.  I can't even photograph it.  What was I thinking?

 The first casualties have begun to appear:

Most of my beans and a few squash and cucumbers have some yucky virus.  It won't kill them, but will make them produce less.  See the crinkly leaves? Apparently it is spread by white flies, which are new to Florida as of like 2006 or so.  I kept the beans, but pulled out the cucumbers and squash that were affected.

 

I also had to destroy most of the tomatillos, due to suspected fungal infection.  I still have a couple of plants.  I shed a few tears over the salsas that will never be.  It is mystifying, because this is the first year I've grown any solanaceous plants in this particular spot.  We do have the wild nightshades, so maybe that's where it comes from.  I practice a pretty long rotation in my garden.

Not only that, but a squash vine borer must have escaped my watchful eye and killed one of my pumpkins.

The rare, heirloom corn was doing great, until Tom Sawyer's gang got in and nibbled down a quarter of it.  Jerks!!

It has solidified our decision to put them in the freezer next weekend (I am talking about the boy baby goats here, to avoid confusion).  We had wanted to wait until the fall, but it has become clear that there is no way we will be able to wean them, because they can squeeze through every fence we have.  They are still cute - it will be hard.

The garden now has a baby-goat-proof-Fort-Knox-like structure on the front of it, which makes it very hard for us to get in, too.  Only until next weekend.

First harvests are beginning to appear.  Kale, basil, the first cucumbers and squash blossoms made it into the kitchen.  So nice to have fresh cucumber salad again!  I can't even bring myself to buy cucumbers at the store.  They are always squashy and limp.  Also, I'm realizing just how much basil I've planted.  I think pesto should be making an appearance at least once a week.

We are digging the potatoes (not the loveliest this year - I think ants were eating them), and officially giving the winter garden back to the wild for the time being.

The orchard has really been helping out.  We got 3-4 lbs of blueberries the other day, a bunch of white peaches and the first yellow squash (cooked it up with the potatoes).

On Tuesday I got a rare chance to go out to a movie by myself while Ethan did the chores.  It was a special screening of Open Sesame: the Story of Seeds, put on by the folks at Forage Farm.  Many of the people featured in the movie I was familiar with either through their writing, seed catalogs, or other people writing about them, and it was cool to see them in the movie.  There were also moments when I realized what an heirloom vegetable nerd I am.  They would show a random handful of seeds, and I'd be like, "That's Jacob's Cattle Beans!" or "That was Christmas Pole Lima!"

It was great to see so many other locals interested in seed saving.  I was also excited to learn that Forage Farm is establishing a seed library to try to cultivate seeds that are adapted to our area.  I've seen in my garden the difference between seeds that were grown in a different climate versus the seeds that have been grown here for many generations.

Berry Season

 The blueberries and blackberries are in full swing.  It's a good year and the bushes are loaded.  We are busy picking for eating fresh, and also for the freezer.  The chores have slowed WAY down as everyone can't help but stop for the luscious, ripe berry near the path.

 That was Clothilde eating an "Akba," iguana-style.  The big kids in particular have been over-indulging.  It's the season when we get to eat as many fresh berries as we possibly can - even to the point of stomach distress.  Soon they are gone and over for the whole year, other than what we can stash in the freezer.  I don't do jam, because I don't like all the sugar, and we just don't eat jam very often.  But I do have some other things in mind -  like fermented blackberry soda, fresh berry smoothies, ice cream?  Bavarian cream? Pie....cobbler, trifle, grain-free pancakes.

Berry stains all around!

Nature Finds: Spiders

The spiders are appearing more and more now that the weather is warming.  I think this is a Golden Orb Weaver.  I've read research that was done at Archibald Biological Station in South Florida that suggests the fancy white designs in spider webs are to keep damage from birds and larger animals to a minimum.

 This was a wolf spider carrying an egg case Ethan found while checking the fence lines and moving the cows.  

The cup-and-saucer webs are stunning when all hung with dew.  This one liked the coral honeysuckle on the garden fence to build a web, but they are also seen along the grass on the ground.

The banana spiders are also getting started.  Ethan was hoping to photograph it regularly so we could watch it grow.  They get enormous.  It's amazing to see how large and high they spin their webs, often stretched between two tall trees.  We often try to figure out how they manage it without wings.




This was a Black Widow that was living in the dug-out gopher tortoise burrow on the way to the pastures.  It was laying eggs in the most interesting way.  It had made an egg case and was stabbing it's ovapositer into the egg case again and again, laying eggs inside.

Second Recital

There were some long-awaited preparations going on Sunday afternoon as we got Rose ready for her second ballet recital.

We are not used to make-up!  Especially not stage make-up.  But it turned out pretty good thanks to my amazing mother-in-law, Griselda.

Clothilde even "sat" through most of the show (we did everyone a favor and removed her at intermission).  It helped that she had six laps to crawl between.

The show was Beauty and the Beast.  Some of the older dancers were amazingly talented.  Our favorite part, of course, was when our little dancer was on.
 Afterwards, it was a special treat to find her best friend from school was part of the show, too!

(Her bouquet was a homegrown one from the garden!  Cilantro flowers, yarrow, daisy fleabane, flowering basil, and roses.  It smelled good enough to eat, and in fact Rose was eating bits of it on the way home.)

Piglets are growing up

The piglets are quickly growing up.  They have abandoned their nest and roam around after Star now.

They stay together in a little herd and play together or try to root like big pigs.

Fruit from the Earth

 The peaches have been amazing this year!  We had even more than I'd thought on the trees.  Mirin had a "momotaro" peach he called it that he's been watching ripen for weeks that he finally got to eat the other day.  The squirrels in town have destroyed almost every peach on our trees by the house, but at the farm a big old owl comes and sits by the orchard every evening to hunt, and there's a pair of mating hawks we see often.  The farm squirrels keep very close to the forest.

 

Every day we each pick a peach to eat fresh, but we also brought some home with the early rabbiteye blueberries with cream and grain-free coconut pound cake.  A fresh peach right off the tree is so delicious.  Also extra fuzzy.  I guess all the handling of the store peaches wears some of the fuzz off.  For so many years we've watched these trees grow, and it seemed like we would never get fruit from them.

The chanterelle mushrooms are out since it rained.  Here is one of our omelettes - mushrooms, horsemint and fresh eggs.

We got some good rain, and the corn seedlings are sprouting!  It is so hopeful to see them growing at last.  They were in the freezer for so long I was afraid they wouldn't grow at all.

Someone asked me what the eggs of Squash Vine Borer moths look like.  Here's a picture of one.  They look like tiny brown spots on the stems.  They seem to really like laying eggs on the tender little leaves and buds, but I have also found a lot just above the ground on the main stem.  I pick them off into soapy water, just in case just scratching them off isn't enough to keep them from hatching.

Yarn Along

Joining in with Ginny today!

I finished Clothilde's Phoebe sweater last week, and am now making a start on one for Rose.  She requested the same color - Quince & Co's Winesap.  It reminds me of Little Red Ridinghood with this pattern.  I've finished the decorative border on the bottom and am struggling through the monotonous body stocking stitch.  I guess I share Elizabeth Zimmerman's dislike of purling (it's harder on my hands with the thicker yarn), and I found myself trying to knit backwards to avoid it the other day!

I would have liked to post pictures of Clothilde in the Phoebe sweater, but she wouldn't let me put it on her at all.  I can't really blame her, as it's been in the 90's during the day, and it's really too hot to be knitting!  We have such a short winter, though, that if I want to knit for next winter it must be done now.

Nature Finds: Sun and Moon

 Over the weekend, Ethan went out to do the chores early in the morning so we could go to the Folk Festival.  The evening time out there is beautiful because of the sunsets and fireflies, but in the early mornings are all silvery with dew.

When he arrived one day he noticed something interesting in the garden.

 The blooming sunflowers were facing east where the sun was rising.  They follow the movement of sun all day long across the sky.

The evening primroses were still open (they close soon after the sun rises and the day becomes hot).  They were all facing west where the nearly full moon was sinking below the tree line.  You can see in the background how the sunflower is facing the opposite way.

Do the evening primroses follow the moon?

Recovering

We are all so tired from the Folk Festival.  This year the "Florida Remembered" area that we participate in was not in the usual nice, central spot under an oak tree by the Folk Life stage.  Instead there was a guy with chainsaw carvings.  They put us WAY far away beyond the dumpsters and portapotties.  I'm afraid it was a little like being seated "below the salt."



There was a good deal of uphill walking to do to get to anything else.  Of course there were the usual golf cart shuttles for the non-athletic and decrepit, but Clothilde was absolutely terrified of them.  We thought she would love riding on them, so we tried to catch a ride up to the Old Marble stage on Friday.  It turned out to be the golf cart ride from hell as Clothilde screamed hysterically the whole way and everyone stared.

Otherwise, it was wonderful, but that's why we are extra, extra tired this year from lugging the toddler all over the place.  I think we might only go for one day next year if Clothilde is still scared of golf carts. 

All the children were so busy running and playing all day they almost forgot to eat or drink unless they were reminded.  We made some new friends and Mirin helped build the chickee with Willie.  There is a special way that the fronds are twisted onto the poles.  It got a real test, because on Sunday afternoon it rained torrentially and Mirin said it was still dry under the chickee.

It was extremely hot, but every afternoon we went and cooled off in the Suwanee River.

So we're resting up today.  There's still some work that needs done in the garden, and of course the regular chores.  But the happy feeling from new friends, beautiful music and fun still lingers.  Oh, and the chigger bites do, too.