Thursday, June 18, 2009


Abundance
Each year at the farm we have an abundance of something. Some times its just plain weeds. One year it was an abundance of frogs and toads, one year it was gardener snakes and this year seems to be the year for feathered friends.

The FARM is alive with birds and feathers of all kinds. There are ducks nesting in the rhubarb and in the labyrinth, doves nesting in the lilacs, brown thrashers nesting under the Adirondak chairs in the front yard, yellow warblers nesting in the maple tree, barn swallows on the back of the shed and catbirds in the bushes on the north of the main block. We are blessed with their song and thier color every day and happy to have them. I can't say they feel the same way about us. Mrs. Duck has had to renest after we inadvertantly mowed down the tall grass around her first home and the brown thrashers get extremely excited every time we let our large Bernese Mountain Dog out of the house. Little do they know that Mae just wants to peak at the babies and would be the first to defend them should a predator come close. The catbird landed on Barry's hat the other day just to let him know he was a little too close and Ida the cocker spaniel has had her behind pecked on more than one occassion. But for the most part, we're all good neighbors and it's really fun.

For those of you planning a trip to the FARM, let me tell you how things look right now - awfully weedy and pretty small. The spring has been a wet and cold one keeping us from weeding as we would like and keeping the seedlings small. Now that we are having some heat we're hoping everything will catch up - including the hoes - and things will look much better in about two weeks. We're still hoping for our first harvest around July 14th so by then we should be looking good and have lots of herbs and flowers to show visitors. Your best bet if you're planning a trip is to come mid-July or after but of course, we have LOTS of interesting things to do even if you come before then.

Our geocache has already been found by 6 people this year. That's great! It's fun to watch these high tech scavenger hunters scour the property as they GPS thier way to the treasure. Welcome to all who look foward to our cache and thanks to everyone who has found it thus far.

We hope to see you all this summer - come on out and say hello - pull a weed or two! And of course have a safe and happy summer!