Flux and Flowers

It’s been a great harvest season here at Mucky Boots Farm!

I’m grateful for the regular (but not too heavy) rains, plenty of sunshine, and abundant berries.

As we wrapped up harvest, I reflected on some of the discoveries and musings of the summer. Here are a few, whimsical and practical, I’d like to share with you.

1. The plants are always in flux. By plants I don’t mean the elderberries, although they are also always changing, but the the everyday vegetal palette. We expect the celebrated change of the seasons, spring violets and columbine giving way to the summer yarrows and milkweeds. But this year I noticed how certain plants can dominate one year, then disappear for several years before returning, sometimes in a location I hadn’t seen them before. For me, this was the year for partridge pea. This native annual has a bright yellow flower. I’d seen a few plants every summer for the past few years, but this year large swaths of them appeared. Is this emergence connected to some disturbance or weather pattern? Someone out there probably knows, but not me. I just enjoyed the show.
   
   
2. The insects are always in flux. Where did all the praying mantises come from? Each summer I typically see a few, usually the impressively large variety which, based on size, I took to be Tenodera sinensis, a species brought from Asia in the early 1900s. This year we had smaller mantids, and they were specifically on the elderberry plants. While harvesting we often had to “help” them off of the berry clusters or out of the harvest basket. I’m not sure if these were the native Carolina mantis or the European mantis but I was happy to see them around since they have a reputation for consuming pest insects.
   
   
3. More flowers! Several years ago we seeded a portion of lawn with a wildflower mix. That planting is finally coming into its own this summer. We’re enjoying the echinacea, monarda, tall coreopsis, and blazing star.
   
   
4. People power! Flower power is great but people power can be good too. Sometimes I have to be reminded of that. Time out to attend the Elderberry Growers Conference and OEFFA’s tour at Boulder Berry Farms paid dividends as we learned from and connected with others.
   
   
5. Merlin bird app. I suppose everyone but me already knew about the Merlin bird app. In truth I’d heard of it before but had never really tried it. This summer I did and had a lot of fun recording ambient sound and watching the app identify what birds were calling or singing. The app will let you replay the recording so you can isolate the sounds of different birds and if I put some time into it I think it could help me improve my ability to identify birds by their singing. It’s great when technology can help us learn rather than just supplying an answer that may (or may not) be correct. The app is a free download provided by Cornell University (thanks Cornell!).

Summer already feels behind me as we turn our attention to the commercial kitchen, producing elderberry syrup and prepping for our fall festival markets.

If you’re local, look for us at the Lebanon Apple Fest, Athens’ Paw Paw Festival, the Adams County Wheat Ridge Olde Thyme Herb Festival and more. All the details are available on our Events page.