Summertime Flora and Fauna

Summer is hot.  We generally seem to function a bit better when it's cooler, but the extra light and vitamin D and definitely good for us and balance out the dark days of winter and its long grey and rainy edges.  The garden and the fresh produce it provides are another highlight of our year.  Usually this is complemented by fresh fruit from our trees but the bees didn't come this spring, hopefully just because it was so cool when the trees bloomed.  They definitely came during the heat, although the variety of bees was also a bit different than in previous years.  We usually have a great mix of honey bees, giant bumble bees, little bumble bees, mason bees, and some other varieties too.  This year we had fewer honey bees and giant bumblers than in the past, and a lot of a small bee that we hadn't seen in such quantities other years.  We do hope to set up our own hives one day, mostly to make sure they have adequate housing here at a healthy, bee-friendly farm and to encourage them to stick around here, but if it did work out it would be pretty amazing if they shared some honey with us.  Our chickens were very productive egg layers this year, and the flock continues to have some turnover... sad when favorite chickens are lost and happy to meet the new peeps and see the strong young chickens rise in the ranks.  And the highlight of this summer, without a doubt, was getting to share our life at the farm with our new puppy and watch her grow into her life as our farm dog.

Nothing says early summer like here at Corner Crest Natural Farm like this chicken butt while she enjoys blue skies and green grass:

Cockadoodle!

Big blooms and blue sky:

Peeps!

This was a different variety of lizard than we usually see:

Another fallen tree in the woods, this one took a while to find its way to the ground:

This deer regularly meandered through the area near the woodshed.

She has had babies here the last couple years and seems pretty used to us.

Craig with a pretty big snake:

Aphid task force:

I seem far better at taking photos of individual birds than I am at getting photos of the birdfeeder when it is busy.  Sometimes the whole thing would be surrounded by gold finches or other visitors:

We had never seen rhinoceros beetles here before!

This raccoon family took residence in the giant cedar in the woods behind our house.  Usually they were tucked in during the day and would come by at night (we had about 7 on our back deck one night), but apparently these two were out past their bedtimes.

You can see mama peeking out from the crook of the tree...  you can't hear it from the photo, but she was also yelling at them to get inside.  Eventually they did.

Beautiful swallowtail:

Summertime is shearing time.  Here is Al looking gigantic right before his haircut.

During the shearing:

The alpacas lose about half their volume when sheared and are always very excited and feisty afterwards, especially enjoying rolling around in the grass and rubbing up against bushes.

This is one of my better hummingbird photos as it feeds in our garden.  We specifically plant perennials that are favorites of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

The garden filling out in lush green.

Early harvests were usually lettuce, cucumbers, strawberries, and some squashes.

This dragonfly sat on the tip of this branch for quite a while, and returned to it repeatedly over ten minutes or so before moving along.

I was so excited to grow artichokes for the first time this year!

We had a great strawberry crop.

This was our best year ever for lettuce.  We chose better varieties, they seemed to like the cooler start, and we started harvesting earlier.  We will follow a similar plan next year. 

They were big and beautiful and delicious.

Mama Hen is, and always has been, our best hen mama.  I think she has hatched chicks every year she has been here with us.  She isn't as fast as the younger hens so she wasn't getting quite enough food when she had to compete in the regular coop, so we moved her into senior housing with Main Rooster (our original main rooster, who is now too old to compete with the other roosters).  She wanted to mate and have peeps and he wasn't really up for the job, so we swapped out her unfertilized eggs after she was on them for a very (too) long time, and gave her two peeps from another flock.  She was thrilled, took them as her own, and they are all doing great together.

The garden is huge and green and beautiful and bountiful.

It was also my first time growing onions, another repeat we'll add to our mix.

The eclipse was amazing.  In retrospect, I wish we would have driven the hour or so to see totality, but 99% was still awesome.

Only a sliver of sun.

The shadows and chill and low light were amazing, but my favorite part was that the bees put themselves to sleep.  We watched near an area of enormous bee activity, and they all settled down on their flowers to sleep.  Their buzzing hum stilled.  Even the roosters quieted.  And at the most dark, the evening swallows came out to fly.  I have a video of the sleeping bees here:

https://youtu.be/ru4zN3jqMFc

And here are more crescent shadows.

We always have some nice resident frogs in our garden.

I think the mantises came later this year, but towards the end of the summer there were lots of them.

A sky full of ash and a watermelon sun as the gorge burned and heroes saved what could be saved.

Big harvests mean lots of cucumbers mean pickle making!

Pickles!

Picking beans.

We had some huge tomatoes this year!

We had lots and lots of smaller tomatoes too and made at least 2 gallons of tomato sauce.

Ember and Main Rooster (in senior housing) having their daily greetings.  Main Rooster tries to display and impress Ember.  It turns out she's very easily impressed.

The fruit trees did not produce this year but the grapes were abundant and very sweet and juicy.

So many grapes!

I made raisins and for the first time ever I made grape jelly!  It was so good.

We grew a LOT of peppers this year.  I'm not sure what kind of plant this was, but it produced tons of very spicy yellow peppers.

All sliced up, ready for pickling.  Yes, I made lots of pickled peppers.

It was my first time growing brussel sprouts too! This photo doesn't show how huge the plant is.  It was really quite impressive and we love brussel sprouts.  This little ladybug was helping us out, and they weren't as bad as broccoli in terms of pests, so it's a repeat despite them being somewhat aphid prone.

Hi bunny!

Ember and the alpacas have a pretty great relationship now.  

Big snake!

A garden basket.

Picking time.  We didn't grow enough potatoes this year.  Those few in the basket were pretty much all of them.  Next year we will plant more, and maybe even try growing sweet potatoes too.

Apparently the weather was perfect for blackberries.  The berries were better this year than ever before in our ten years here.

The stalk of brussel sprouts.  You can't really see the leaves in the photo, but each one is about the size of my face.

One of our biggest harvests this year.  A beautiful rainbow of goodness.

And as summer nears its end, the fog comes in.  The sunsets are still quite to the north, but they'll be moving south soon and fall will bring its shorter days and cool rains.