Summer arrived seemingly all at once this week, after a cool, rainy spring. This week’s heat kickstarted growth in the garden and fields, and now everything’s waist high and humming with life.
The little ones spent most the week catching snakes, turtles, fish and frogs by the pond. They even put a whole day into harvesting cat tail roots hoping to make cattail flour for a cake once things cool off. Anything to stay wet, and by extension, cool in this heat.
Baby geese are hatching, fish are biting and strawberries ripening. Here’s what’s happening in our neck of the woods this week:
This little guy is noisy, but he’s still got a lot of work to do to make it out of that egg!
Our geese hatched out a clutch last week, and these are the eggs they left behind. Three mama geese were sharing one giant nest, but as soon as a few goslings hatched, they ditched the rest to care for their new babies. That’s pretty normal, if an egg doesn’t hatch within about 48 hours of the first one, it gets abandoned. (Experienced geese will try to turn the eggs and sync the hatch, but these girls clearly didn’t coordinate!). Once the mamas walked off, my daughter candled the leftovers. We usually find a couple still alive among the duds, and if you pop them under a heat lamp, you can sometimes give the late bloomers a second chance. This year? She found nine good ones! A few have already hatched in our makeshift brooder, and my little girl is over the moon playing mama goose.
Baby geese aren’t the only new arrivals in the yard this time of year! This little guy is doing his part by keeping the rodent population in check. Around here, we’re lucky not to have any venomous snakes or dangerous reptiles. Everything that slithers is harmless, laid-back, and honestly kind of friendly. (No offense, Florida—you’ve got sunshine year-round, but I’ll take our snowstorms and sweet snakes over your gators, pythons & hurricanes any day!)
Another friend in enjoying the warm rain this time of year. He’s keeping the pond healthy and the fish populations in check.
My daughter harvesting cattail roots from the pond, hoping we’ll make cattail flour cake. You need quite a few to make a starchy flour from the roots, but she’s devoted to the cause. Tell all your friends, the cattail bed is one of the coolest places to be in this heat!
First fish of the summer!
When the weather forecast says “95 but feels like 115” it’s time to take a short trip down the road to the actual swimming hole. Even at high noon though, there’s not much of a crowd. We’ve got lots of water in this state, and just not that many people. Just about right for my tastes =)
We grow LOTS of strawberries here on our homestead, but my kids still pick them off as fast as they ripen. They almost never make it through the kitchen door, so I take a trip down to the PYO for berries for preserves each year. These beauties are going into jam, jelly and pie filling…plus a few new recipes I’m testing our for y’all this year.
Heirloom strawberries macerating in sugar to make a batch of traditional strawberry preserves. The fruit firm up from the sugar, and let out all their juice without adding any liquid. Even after cooking, those berries will stay whole and the juice will thicken into a luscious syrup. Can you believe they let out all that juice!?!?! Recipe will be posted soon!
What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about at in the first days of summer? Leave me a note in the comments!
And, of course, baby goose pictures coming as soon as the little guys fluff up a bit =)
Great stuff Ashley, thanks for the insights into summer, it is winter here but we hardly get below 5C, so we just complain about the cold as we are not use to it in subtropical Queensland!
Love your posts.
Great stuff Ashley, thanks for the insights into summer, it is winter here but we hardly get below 5C, so we just complain about the cold as we are not use to it in subtropical Queensland!