What Bugs Me?

Fact: There are a lot of bugs that call Farm Dover home. Most I consider beneficial bugs and am happy to host them. There are a few bugs that I wish didn't like living here so much, but I (mostly) don't wish them harm; yet would be happy if they didn't show up in the first place. (I'm talking to you: houseflies, stink bugs and Japanese beetles).

One of things that bugs me is little visitors who are terrified by any bug they encounter. A ladybug can send them screaming. A spider can completely undo them. A praying mantis freaks them out. Only the butterflies escape their bad-bug radars.

For years, I have taken photos of interesting bugs discovered in my wanderings around our gardens, meadows and paths. I place the photos in a folder on my computer desktop, appropriately called Bugs of Farm Dover, but didn't have any particular thought about how I might share them. Until now...

I'm determined to help our young visitors get to know the bugs of Farm Dover, and hopefully to make friends with them, or at least not fear them. Granddaughter Hazel is my guinea pig.

For her 1st birthday, I made her a board book using some of my bug photos.

We read it together often and talk about all the good things bugs do, from pollinating fruit trees to eating not-so-good bugs. (I'm careful not to call them bad bugs.) When we are not together, she reads it on her own, studying each photo with laser focus.

Hazel has happily played with a roly-poly bug and a lady bug. I can't wait for this summer to see her toddle after some butterflies and attempt to catch a firefly, to dig for an earthworm, follow a daddy long-legs or pet a caterpillar.

I've already scouted out a bug project for us. Hanging from a sweet gum tree along our driveway are seven cocoons, that look remarkably like leaves still hanging on to the bottom branches. I discovered them just last week.

Inside each one is a polyphemus caterpillar that will one day this spring emerge as a beautiful silk moth, spread its wings to dry and then fly away to live for a few more days, just long enough to mate and lay eggs for the next generation.

In Hazel's book, I have a photo of a polyphemus caterpillar and of a luna silk moth (same family as the polyphemus moth). Just ask her; she can find the page with the right picture.

I need to figure out a way for Hazel and me to see these gigantic moths emerge. Maybe I'll get a butterfly cage and attach one of the cocoons inside it, placing it on the porch so we can see it from the kitchen window; or maybe I'll set up our field camera and try to catch the moths freeing themselves from their silk casings. In any event, I'm excited. Hope Hazel will be too!

Creepy, Crawly

Ed and I had egg salad for lunch, made with farm fresh eggs from Vivian's chickens who free range just down Dover Road. Once the boiled eggs were chopped and the mayonnaise added, I thought it needed a bit of dill, so I headed out to the garden to cut some.

I wasn't the only one who wanted some dill for lunch. About a dozen green-and-black-stripped caterpillars were munching away on my dill. I had plenty to share, so I just snipped around them, leaving them to enjoy their salad.

Once back inside, I consulted my Field Guide to Butterflies and quickly figured out that they were swallowtail caterpillars, which made sense because I've been seeing lots of beautiful Eastern Swallowtail butterflies fluttering through our fields.

I've also been seeing more Monarch butterflies – still not many, but definitely more than last summer. As you may recall, we planted milkweed in our fields in hopes of attracting them. Sure enough, last month while out walking with my friend Patrice, we found some Monarch caterpillars feasting away on a milkweed plant that grows on the edge of one of our trails.

And in other caterpillar news:

Yesterday while Ed and I were moving the barn wood table to the end of the garden, we disturbed an odd looking creature that turns out to be White Marked Tusscock Moth Caterpillar. Good thing we didn't pick it up; its short, bristly pincushion hairs are poisonous – and can cause an irritating rash. We left him to crawl away.

We've been seeing lots of woolly bear caterpillars. According to folklore, if the caterpillar has more black area than orange, then the winter is going to be long, snowy and cold. Better get some wood piled high; the ones we have seen have been almost completely black!

photo from http://www.woollyworm.com/

Caution: Honey Bees at Work

Maggie came out to Farm Dover last weekend to check on her bees. All three hives are doing well this summer as the bees have stayed healthy and have plenty of flowers to collect nectar and pollen from. She thinks we will be able to harvest another load of honey in the next month or so and still leave plenty in the hive to tide the bees over the winter. I couldn't wait another month; I begged her pull one frame from one of her three hives so we could harvest the honey. She obliged.

From the one frame we were able to fill four 8 oz. jars of the new honey. Look how different it is in color from the honey we gathered in the late spring! (The new honey is on the left). Little did I realize that the color and sweetness of the honey is determined by the type of flower(s) the bees obtain nectar from.

In the spring, just about the only thing in bloom around here are our black locust trees. Honey from locust trees is referred to as Acacia and is a light and clear. It has a mild, delicate floral taste. It tends to not crystallize, staying in a liquid state for a long period of time due to its high concentration of fructose. It has a low sucrose content, making it the best choice for diabetics. Acacia honey is known to help cleanse the liver, regulate the intestine and reduce inflammation of the respiratory system. How's that for a hard-working food source!

The honey that we harvested this past weekend is considered a wildflower honey as it was made from the nectar of flowers that have been blooming in our fields all summer: Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, ironweed, cone flower and coreopsis. It definitely has a stronger flavor than the Acacia honey.

I'm guessing that the honey we harvest in September will be much darker and stronger. I planted about 1/4 of my big garden in buckwheat which the bees are loving. I planted it last month and within a couple of days, tiny green plants poked up. Within a week they were 8" tall and beginning to flower. Now they are about a foot tall and sport tiny white blooms.

 In the morning, as I head to the garden, I can hear the bees buzzing happily in the buckwheat.

Buckwheat honey is dark, full-bodied and rich in iron. It is chock full of antioxidant compounds. It is often used to produce mead, which may have to be my next project...

Of course, our fall honey won't be 100% buckwheat as our fields will continue to bloom with a mix of wildflowers, especially golden rod for the next month or so.

Here's a quick explanation of how honey is made by the bees: The older worker bees (all female) are free range, flying all over Farm Dover (and neighboring farms), gathering nectar before heading back to their hive. Each bee will visit hundreds of flowers, drinking the nectar and storing it her honey stomach. The bee then heads back to the hive and regurgitates the nectar for a hive bee who then ingests the sugary offering and further breaks down the sugar before regurgitating it into a cell of the honeycomb. Then all the hive bees beat their wings like crazy to evaporate the water content. Once they are happy with the honey's consistency, the hive bees cap the beeswax cell, sealing the honey into the honeycomb for later consumption (or to share with their landlords!).

A single worker bee produces only 1/2th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. But working together, thousands of worker bees can produce over 200 pounds of honey within a year. Each of our three hives have between 60,000 and 80,000 bees. We will make sure to leave enough honey for the bees, and if it warms up in the early spring before the locust trees bloom, we'll set out bee tea (sugar water) for them to drink for nourishment. After all, we want our bees to be happy – and productive.

Royalty flutters by

When we planted our fields in native grasses and wildflowers, we included in the mix a large scoop of common milkweed seed. Milkweed: it’s that plant with the fluffy seeds that escape from pods and float through the air this time of year. As a child, I confused it with a dandelion seed head and would always try to catch it and make a wish. I thought it was magical.

Turns out, it is magical. It’s the only plant that Monarchs eat when they are in the caterpillar stage and the only one on which they lay their eggs. Unfortunately, it’s been rapidly disappearing from meadows, rural fence rows, and sides of roadways, thanks to Roundup® and urban sprawl. Studies estimate that the plant decreased 21 percent in the U.S. between 1995 and 2013.  

And because it is disappearing, so are Monarch butterflies. Remember chasing monarchs as a child? Remember, how they were everywhere? In my memory, they were the most common of all the butterflies. But, despite our best efforts to plant the food they love, we’ve only seen a few on our farm this year. Every time I see one, I whip out my camera to capture it, but it always manages to fly off before I can press the camera icon, find my subject, and snap. It’s a gone girl. 

I’ve also taken to inspecting the leaves of milkweed, hoping to find some tiny eggs or a host of caterpillars munching happily through the green leaves. Haven’t had much luck there either. Seems the milkweed contains a poison that the caterpillars have adapted to – but it stays in their bodies, making them poisonous to any predators.

My awareness of the plight of these beautiful creatures was heightened upon reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, whose plot hinges on an invasion of monarch butterflies in a small Tennessee Appalachian town.

It wasn’t until we visited the 270-acre Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at Boothbay that I got a close up look at what I’ve been seeking all summer. There, among the beautiful flowers and plethora of milkweed, were hundreds of monarch butterflies, as well as plenty of yellow-and-black-stripped caterpillars, eating hungrily on the milkweed leaves.

And best of all, I got to see the lime green chrysalis, decorated with metallic gold dots, that hung from the wood siding of the various structures around the gardens.

I couldn’t take enough photos, Ed finally walking ahead of me back to our parked car as I called out: “Wait! Just one more. Just one more.”

So, to be perfectly transparent: Yes, I took all of these photos, but all were taken at the Botanical Gardens on our recent trip. None were captured at Farm Dover.

But even now, in mid-October, we occasionally see a lone monarch or two fluttering around the goldenrod and daisies in our fields. I wonder how much longer they will stick around before striking out on their up-to-3000-mile migration to Mexico. I hope the ones that make it, spread the word that there is plenty of milkweed at Farm Dover and invite their friends and family to come back to Kentucky next summer.

What fun it would be to have that most royal of all butterflies fluttering by!