Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Photos by Ken Ilgunas
There is such a variety and abundance of wildlife around the abbey that there’s always some kind of wildlife drama going on. Recently Ken was sitting in the rocking chair on the side porch. A bird flew right past him, hit the window, and fluttered into the yard. It was alert, but stunned. We left it alone until it came to its senses. Eventually it flew to the rocking chair, perched a few minutes collecting its wits, and flew off.
Can anyone identify this bird?
It wasn’t all that long ago that the cabbage plants were seedlings under the grow light, less than an inch high. Today we harvested the first cabbage. It’ll be served tonight at supper, when we’ll be joined by one of Ken’s former professors who is coming over from Durham.
On Monday we froze four gallons of strawberries, fresh-picked (though we didn’t pick them this time) at Mabe’s Berry Farm near Walnut Cove.
Ken with his favorite chicken, Patience.
When you’re starting a new landscape, and when you’ve got lots of area to fill, it makes sense to have some wildflower patches. Last year I flung a bunch of coreopsis seed in some rough areas where I was not mowing. The coreopsis didn’t bloom in its first year, but this year it’s making a good show.
I had three rough areas, two of them fairly large, where the soil was poor and the ground had never been leveled enough to start grass. Early this spring, with Ken’s help, we tilled those areas, threw on organic fertilizer and compost, and planted wildflower seeds — very densely. Those areas now have lush stands of wildflowers more than a foot tall, but they’re not yet blooming. They’re going to make dramatic stands of wildflowers. I’ll have photos of that later in the summer when the blooming is going strong.
Wildflower seeds can be in bulk, but the pound, from places like OutsidePride.com. I’ve found their seeds to be of very good quality.
We’ve been eating broccoli from the garden for days now. This cabbage will soon be ready to go to the kitchen.
The chickens — Patience, Chastity and Ruth — seem to have developed a new behavior. This morning the three of them gathered along the fence at the bottom of the garden, at the point nearest the house, and sang. They were looking toward the house while they sang, and it went on for quite some time. I feel sure it was a form of communication, aimed at Ken and me, and I think it meant, “Please brings us some mash and some treats, right now.”
If one hen sings alone, my first assumption would be that she just laid an egg. If two hens sing together, I’d assume they’re having a conversation. If three hens sing together, it is amazingly operatic, and quite beautiful, actually. Listening to their aria this morning I was very aware that the hens have long been part of the family.
Which brings me to something I’ve been procrastinating on writing about, because I don’t enjoy telling sad stories. The two baby chickens are gone, taken by predators a week ago. They had been living downstairs in the henhouse, with the big chickens upstairs. A predator worried its way through the joint in the wire where the upper wire fabric connects with the wire fencing underneath the chickenhouse. The amount of strength and dexterity required to have gotten through the wire was impressive, though the hole was not large. But somehow something fairly small, and very strong, got in. I suppose it could have been a raccoon, though some have asked whether there might be weasels in the area. I don’t know.
It’s small comfort to try to be philosophical and just say that that’s the way of nature, that everybody wants a chicken dinner. I feel a certain amount of shame, because I was responsible for protecting those chickens. I’m also daunted by the difficulty of upgrading the defenses and trying again with more baby chickens. But it must be done. The three hens are so productive, and so sweet to have around, that I can’t imagine not having chickens. I wish that all farm animals could be as content and as well cared for as Patience, Chastity and Ruth.
Meanwhile, now that spring is busting out all over — especially with the excellent rains and good growing weather we’ve had this month — I am stunned at the explosion of life around the abbey. Everything is lush and green. The roses, the honeysuckle, and some of the wildflowers are blooming. I believe there are five times more birds this year than there were last year. They’re attracted by the ever denser, natural-looking habitat. I’ve seen baby rabbits, baby groundhogs, baby squirrels, and baby voles. There are birds’ nests all over the place. Yesterday Ken and I saw young bluebirds practicing their flying, being watched over by their parents. A mocking bird’s nest in one of the arbor vitae trees contains three eggs. Three times we’ve seen the terrapin that lives in the rabbit patch and have had to carry it out of the yard. I’ve seen skinks fornicating, and several times Lily has caught skinks in the house. She never hurts the skinks, even when she carries them in her mouth. She only wants to use them as toys. When we take the skinks outside, we’ve started carrying them some distance from the house, hoping to reduce the population of “porch lizards,” which has gotten a bit out of hand. The voles also are out of hand (and out of the day lily patch and into the garden) and have been clambering up the pea vines and eating peas. I’ve ordered vole traps (live traps). I’ll probably have to take the captured voles at least a couple of miles away to keep them from coming back. A mocking bird has been stealing strawberries. The doves flock to the chickens’ feeder. The bird bath is increasingly popular. Ken and I may be monks, but the critters around here are not. They are incredibly fecund, gregarious, and happy. During May this place is like a Myrtle Beach for wild animals.
But some animals do eat other animals. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. Or, as Edna St. Millay said, talking about death, “I know. But I do not approve.”
A run of cool weather has slowed down everything in the garden but the early crops — the cabbage family, peas, spinach and celery. We’ve been eating peas for a week, and we harvested the first broccoli three days ago. We’ll probably eat all the spinach in the next week.
Celery is a slow grower, but it’s doing remarkably well. It’s said to be hard to grow. I planted it as an experiment. I’m pretty sure it’s going to produce real celery, much greener than the usually pale celery in the grocery stores around here.
I don’t know what species they are. I just call them porch lizards, because for some reason there are gazillions of them on my deck and porches. This morning I caught two of them in flagrante delicto, making yet more porch lizards for me to catch someday in flagrante delicto, and so on, ad infinitum.
Update: A reader, Randy from Matthews, North Carolina, writes with an identification on the porch lizards: “Your porch lizards are called Five Lined Skinks (Eumeces fasciatus). Sometimes their tails are brilliant, metallic blue.”
Indeed, yes, sometimes their tails are an astonishing metallic blue.
It’s been a week since the last garden report. We’ve had rain and excellent growing weather. This is as good as it gets for the April garden.
Baby peaches
Snow peas
Spinach
A tiny broccoli head
A rosebud on the garden fence
Carolina jasmine. My sister gave it to me last summer. It lives on the garden fence, and it’s just getting started.
The first snow pea blossom
Zinnias, bought in a flat at a nursery
Baby spinach
Cabbage
Experimental celery that we started from seed. It’s growing slowly, but it’s holding on.
Ken finished a project yesterday that had been needed for a long time. He made a garden path from the side porch to the garden gate, using stones from a local quarry and granite sand as the base.
Ken kept an eye on the baby chickens while he worked.
Not that they had any interest in running away.
The hens, always nosy, want to know what this highway is that’s appeared at their back door.
Can you espy the baby chicken?
Ken spreads soybean meal.
Originally, my plan for Acorn Abbey was to have an all-organic garden but to use chemical fertilizers for the lawn. I have changed my mind. All organic is the way to go.
Reading more books about organic gardening, and Googling for more information on earthworms, is what convinced me to go all organic. Previously my reasoning was that there wasn’t much downside to using chemical fertilizers on the grass as long as I didn’t use any herbicides or pesticides. But more reading has convinced me that it’s all about earthworms. Chemical fertilizers are just plain bad for the biology of the soil. Regular use of chemical fertilizers causes organic matter in the soil to be burned up. This starves the earthworms. Actually it’s a double whammy for the earthworms, because not only is their food source burned away, the chemicals also are toxic to the worms.
I learned that the benefits provided by earthworms go far beyond their ability to digest organic matter in the soil and convert the organic matter to forms more suitable for plants to use. Earthworms also dig burrows (largely vertical, and much deeper than I can till) in the soil. These burrows “till” the soil and provide channels that improve the ability of soil to deeply absorb rainwater. Plant roots also tend to follow the burrows downward, so plants can root more deeply in soil that has been tilled by earthworms.
That seals the deal for me — deep tilling and better absorption of rainwater. Earthworms help soil catch more water, channel the water deeper, and improve plants’ access to water, not to mention plants’ drought resistance.
Soybean meal is said to be the equivalent of a 7-2-1 fertilizer. That’s more nitrogen than the 5-4-3 fertilizer based on chicken manure that I’ve been using in the garden. The 7-2-1 fertilizer alone is probably fine for the grass. For the garden I’ll probably start concocting my own organic fertilizer with soybean meal, lime, and an organic phosphate source.
Soybean meal is also easy to get. I have to drive 60 miles each way to get commercial organic fertilizers in 50 pounds bags. But the local mill in Walnut Cove always has soybean meal. The price is about the same as the 5-4-3 organic fertilizer.
I think this is particularly important in my orchard, where the earthworms will help get nutrients to the roots of the fruit trees.
Today Ken spread 500 pounds of soybean meal everywhere — grass, orchard, garden and wildflower patches. From this day forward, Acorn Abbey is all organic.
