Back to farm life

 Labor Day. The blackbirds and robins are gone. The hummingbirds are feasting greedily at the feeder, bulking up for migration. I saw several brown-headed cowbird fledglings by the feeder recently.

Fledgling cowbirds (with a mourning dove on the left)

How did that happen? Cowbirds are brood parasites. The female lays eggs in the nests of other species, usually just one per nest. With chicks scattered from here to Kingdom Come, how did these fledglings find companions of their own species?

It had been very humid lately. The meteorologists often speak of “fully saturated” air. It was cool and cloudy yesterday, which was a blessing. When it gets above 80°F, it feels much more miserable than you think just by looking at the thermometer. The early mornings are in the low 60s, and boy, do we get the dew! We have to wear Wellies until late morning. The hens don’t like it much either and hang out on a branch in an apple tree.

I hate that wet grass on my bare feet, don't you?

The pullets are nearly as big as the hens now. They should be laying in a few weeks. I love those cute little pullet eggs.

A Wyandott pullet, right, is almost as big as the Dominique and Wyandott hens, left.

I should say most of the pullets will be laying. It turns out that Dorianne is transitioning to a rooster. As you can see in this picture with his sister Americauna, he’s bigger, has a more prominent comb, and is getting the distinctive long, droopy rooster tail feathers. Sexy!

Dorian, left, with Goldie, both Americauna, but different sexes

I know that sexing chicks is more of an art than a science, but we had no roosters for years, and now we’ve gotten two in a row. Just when I’m trying to reduce our flock. It’s not so bad getting one rooster out of six pullets, but one out of four seems to hurt more. So far, Dorian is behaving himself. He does not crow or pester the girls. Some people keep roosters because they protect the flock. I don’t like to keep them because they can attack humans, and hens often lose feathers and get scratched raw from being mounted. It’s not pretty. If he gets to be a problem, we will either find a home for him or eat him. I’ll be sad because he is a beautiful bird.

We leave milkweed plants wherever they pop up in an effort to support the monarch population. We look and look for leaves that have been eaten by caterpillars. We have more perfect milkweed leaves than you can shake a stick at. Often whole summers go by with we don’t see a single caterpillar. We’ve been luckier this year. I’ve seen a caterpillar and a freshly-emerged adult out in the field. Terry found two caterpillars by his shop and decided to raise them. They were close to metamorphosis when he put them in the jars. In a few days, a chrysalis had formed. I knew the chrysalis had a line of shiny gold spots, but I did not know that there were also gold spots on the bottom.

Monarch chyrsalis with gold spots

Our friend Nancy raises lots of monarchs. She told us once the adult starts to emerge, it goes fast. On August 26, the chrysalis was transparent when we got up in the morning.

Wing shows through the transparent chrysalis, 7:30 a.m. 

At 12:50, the chrysalis got bumpy on the top.

The shape starts to change

At 1:40, a leg stuck out.

It's a leg! (and a head)

One minute later, most of the body was out.

Just about out

Three minutes later, the chrysalis was empty.

Free at last!

At that point, the wings were all crumpled and the body was round, filled with the fluid the insect would pump into its wings.

Swollen abdomen ready to pump fluid into the wings

By 1:53, the wings were inflated, so 13 minutes from the first crack in the chrysalis.

Wings fully expanded

Terry put it outside for the wings to harden. Here it is at 2:20. Shortly afterwards, it was gone. We hope that it flew away and was not eaten by a bird.

Getting ready for flight

Two days ago, the second one emerged early in the morning. Have a nice trip to Mexico, you two!

Emergence of our second monarch on Saturday

The fruits are coming in. I’ve made the first six quarts of grape juice. The jars filled with purple juice have a quiet beauty in the afternoon sun.

Grape juice

Raspberries are gearing up and should produce well until the frost. Kate came over for waffles and raspberries with real whipped cream a few weeks ago when the harvest was just starting.

Waffles with raspberries

I’m staying plenty busy with the tomatoes as well. I found a full-on rotter yesterday which launched me into a frenzy of blanching, peeling, and de-seeding. I canned this morning. What I learned from this experience is that rotten tomatoes can smell exactly like cat pee. I was initially mystified, as we have no cat. The store room/tomato ripening area smells better now.