This was the week of the Craft Group visit to the farm. It was really fun – we had 12 people for dinner and overnight. We walked, and talked, and cooked Indian food, and had a great time. Everyone got to hear coyotes howling, and to see Jupiter and three of its moons through the spotting scope.

Here’s the Indian Feast

On one of the walks we explored Sumac prairie. We checked out the animal den, and saw coyote tracks in the sand inside. The entrance is huge – about 14 inches wide, and 17 inches tall. I’m pretty sure its a coyote den.

On the way back from one walk we saw a Muskrat in the gulley by the beginning of the cabin road – walking along in the water.

It was very quiet after everyone left!

Mike and I burned the brush pile in The Narrows Prairie. It took a while to start – the wood was still wet and some of the logs were pretty big. But it finally took off and by the end had burned away almost completely.

I found a neat spot just on our fence line to the north of the Narrows – it’s a steep north-facing cliff. There’s water dripping out of it, and ferns and moss clinging to the rocks. I’ll go back later in the year and see if there are any interesting plants growing on it.

While I watched the fire, Mike started mowing the east side of The Bowl. It’s a great improvement – most of the brush was Gray Dogwood, and it covered all the remnant prairie areas. Now most of that is open again – it will be fun to see what comes back now that it has some sunlight.

Here’s a photo where you can see both before and after in the same shot – the left side is mowed, the right side is still unmowed.

Here’s the center of the mowed area

Finally we got some rain – the rain gauge said three quarters of an inch. The rain and the heat brought out the flowers and the leaves. The day we left it was almost 80 degrees and it looked and felt like summer.

One night I walked down the driveway at about 9:00 and sat and listened to the night sounds. I could hear woodcocks, and wood frogs and some spring peepers. I never realized before that we had spring peepers – they’re a new species for the inventory list. And I think I heard toads calling from the frog pond. It’s early for them, but maybe the heat has made them start early.

I did a little cutting of the sumac on the steep slope of the Knife Edge. It’s much too steep for the powertrac so it will all have to be done by hand. I discovered that it’s too hard to drag the cut trees up to the top, so I’ll just throw them down and later I’ll drag them down into the cabin road and Mike can mow over them to turn them into chips. This photo shows how steep the slope is, the cut area in front, and the uncut area in the background.

I finally identified the stripy sparrows that nest on the upper fields – they are Vesper Sparrows. And I heard one singing. There are lots of them – I see them all along the edges of those fields.

A pair of Phoebes is building a nest on the top of one of the porch windows, right next to the front door. They fly away whenever we go through the door – I hope we don’t disturb their nesting project too much once there are eggs to incubate.

I saw the first Green Darner of the season – hawking insects in 3 Finger Valley.