
I did the unthinkable last winter --- I ripped out all of my strawberries. The issue was chipmunks. Our berry enclosure is bird proof, but no matter how hard we worked we couldn't plug every little hole that chipmunks burrowed through. As soon as berries showed the first sign of white, the chipmunks snuck in and tore off every single fruit, strewing them across the garden path and taunting me. With no harvest on the horizon after four growing seasons, I gave up.
Then Mark shook his head and refused to throw in the towel. "I can make a chipmunk-proof raised bed," he told me. "Some hardware cloth on the bottom and a hinged, screened lid should do the trick."
You can see the result at the top of this post. I hope it works as well as his caterpillar tunnels have!
In other news, sad then glad:
Both Strider and Huckleberry left us over the last year. They were both old, beloved cats and their memories are unlikely to fade soon. We deeply miss them.
On a more pleasant note, a new book-recommendation website asked me to write up a post about the best books for beyond organic gardeners. If you've been following our blog since the beginning, there's nothing new here. But those of you who haven't read every single book I ever recommended might enjoy skimming off this recommended cream.
I hope your gardens are growing and your homesteads are happy. Enjoy the spring!
Mark's been promising to add a window to my office ever since we moved to Ohio. But I didn't take him up on it because I couldn't quite visualize what I wanted. Then, in November, a burst of inspiration consumed me. Of course! I wanted a window seat!
Since I'm not a clothes horse, my closet was half empty. That made it easy to move those clothes elsewhere and reinvision my closet as a cozy little nook overlooking the forest. Once I dreamed it up, Mark made it happen.
First step was cutting a hole in the wall. Since the weather was nippy, Mark did this in two stages. Initially, he took out all of the inner layers, leaving the metal in place. This required lots of different kinds of saws.
Then he framed up the window, lifting the window in and out a few times until he had it just right. Now it was time to cut away the metal on the outside of the trailer with an angle grinder. A bit of touchup and a lot of caulk had me sealed back in.
The window seat itself was framed up out of leftover lumber. I used this two-part cushion to give myself some padding. Throw on some trim inside and the project was done in record time.
Since then, it's been hard to tear myself away from the window seat. I sit there with a book or a notebook, relaxing or researching while watching the birds. Half the time, I end up with the window open, hanging halfway out with my camera so I can snap wildlife shots.
Which is a long way of saying --- while I've barely been posting here, you can see lots of nature photos if you follow me on my new instagram page. Hope to see you over there!

July and August are always the months when I look at our garden and
despair. Not for the usual reason --- weeds. But because perfection was
not achieved.
This year, we're trying out drip
irrigation, set on a timer to water for three hours twice a week.
When I got the first monthly water bill, it had skyrocketed up $55.
Yikes! Was the haul worth the sticker shock?
On the one hand...very much! All of that water has our asparagus
sending up enough spears that we're harvesting a meal weekly, figuring
we might as well pick the spears since the canopy is already completely
full of happy, older fronds. At organic, summer prices, that pays for
about half of our water bill right there.

And the cucumbers! I always succession plant in case bugs and disease
get the early crops, which means we've been rolling in cukes. We eat
about six a day and I've still been having to gift grocery bagsful to
the neighbors.
Oh, and did I mention lettuce? Mark's gotten into the habit of making
us salad for lunch every day, which can be tough in the summer. But
drip is keeping leaf lettuce soft and delicious as long as I plant a
new bed each month.
So what's the problem?

The walnut trees. We have a couple of largish black walnuts about
fifteen feet from one corner of the garden and they never caused
problems in the past. But I suspect irrigating strips of garden beds
tempted walnut roots to concentrate their attention on my growing area.
As you likely know, walnut roots produce toxic juglone. When many
garden plants come in contact, they go kaput.
To cut a long story short, the first to wilt were the tomatoes. Then
the summer squash --- we only got one zucchini! The pepper plants look
okay, but they're barely producing. Even the green beans appear to have
been hit.
And the walnuts are sandwiched right between the garden fence, the
electric pole, and the road. I suspect we're going to have to hire a
pro to cut them down. Expensive!

Hopefully that will be a one-time fix. The other issue, not so much.
The photo above shows my carrot bed. Notice how the only sizeable
plants are right along the drip line? I started some more carrots
inside (the tiny plants closer to the bucket) to fill in the gaps.
Lesson learned --- drip irrigation isn't sufficient to get fall crops
up and running during our parched summers up on the ridge.

Okay, enough about drip. How about Mark's caterpillar
tunnels?
On the one hand, they are awesome! Look at those brussels sprouts ---
thriving under their covers!
On the other hand...wedding tulle is so very, very tender. I swear, our
caterpillar tunnels sprout holes even when they haven't been touched.
I've been mending these gaps at least once a month, but even that
wasn't enough to keep caterpillar worms out of one tunnel. On the other
hand, the
real fabric intended for this use is $300 and up per roll, so maybe
I'll learn to enjoy mending.

In other news, while I've had lots of unexpected garden failures this
year, I've also had one unexpected success. I've never managed to ripen
melons previously, which was mostly due to viral diseases caused by
bugs. But research turned up the tidbit that melons are very sensitive
to cool soil, so I held my horses and planted a disease-resistant
cantaloupe (Divergent) outside on June 4 (after starting the seeds
inside a month before).
How's it doing? The vines are taking over the garden! There are lots of
big fruit hiding under those leaves, the skin crackling and starting to
yellow!
Which brings me to the garden lesson I never seem to learn --- for
every unexpected loss, there's an unexpected win. Now if I can just
figure out when cantaloupes are ripe...

I'm happiest when I have something complex and natural to keep my brain
occupied. This year I found the perfect hobby --- fireflies! A citizen
science project asks you to spend thirty seconds once a week
counting the firefly flashes in your backyard. I gave it a try...and
was instantly hooked.
Did you know that there are hundreds of species in the U.S., possibly
dozens within a single backyard? One species, though, is pretty simple
to figure out. The male Big Dipper (Photinus
pyralis) usually comes out right at sunset and flies for half an
hour or so. He's got long, yellow flashes that are either J-shaped or
(as in my yard) simply rise upward. Count about 5 seconds of darkness
in between at 76 F and you've got one firefly species to check off your
life list!
(Why do I say "he"? Because the female is hidden in the grass,
surveying the field and choosing a mate. Yes, firefly flashes are all
about sex.)

Then, of course, identification gets more complicated. The other common
type of fireflies --- Photuris
species --- is often predatory, preferring to hunt flashing fireflies
of other species rather than seeking mates of their own kind. So Photuris will mimic the flash
patterns of other fireflies as well as (sometimes) making specific
flash patterns of their own.
There are also a lot of Photuris species
out there. I've plotted out a 550 square foot section of our septic
field for summer studies and I usually manage to watch about the first
half hour of the Photuris
show twice a week. Over the course of the last month, I've found at
least five different Photuris
flash patterns before my eyelids get heavy. Are they all different
species? Who knows!
The flash photo above, by the way, shows a typical Photuris habit --- when caught (in
a petri dish in this case), they scurry around flashing as fast as they
can. Did you notice the flashes here are green rather than yellow, like
the Big Dipper's? That's a diagnostic difference between the two
genera, along with the long legs of the Photuris and the stripes you often
see on their wing covers.

If you want to delve deeper into fireflies, I can recommend some books
and gear. Fireflies, Glow-worms, and
Lightning Bugs
is a beautifully illustrated and easy to read field guide...to a few of
the most common species.
Definitely start there, then once you outgrow easy you might want to
download the free, intense, and highly technical A
naturalist’s long walk among shadows: of North American Photuris –
patterns, outlines, silhouettes… This book will help you realize
that scientists don't know enough yet to ID a lot of the Photurises. Still, it's fun to try!
Trying involves catching and photographing fireflies after you've
gotten a handle on their flash patterns. (Here's
a free download to some of the most common patterns.) For catching,
I found this net to be cheap and
effective (especially when combined with masked, socially distancing
neighbor kids). Glass petri dishes
made it much easier to photograph fast-moving Photurises, and it's now a breeze
to measure insects in those photos since I drew a 1 cm grid on the
bottom of the petri dish with a sharpie.
Other than that, the only hard part is staying up late (can't help you
there --- I'm terrible at it). Oh, and accepting that firefly season is
fleeting with species winking out with each week of summer. What better
way to squeeze every bit of joy out of the year, though, than to watch
fireflies during these short, hot nights?
I have a new book out...and it's a total pandemic experiment. Gap Year
is available in print only and is on the pricey side for 32 pages
(full-color will do that), but it should also be very easy to request
at your local library through their regular channels.
The book is a travelogue, mostly in pictures, from the time I spent
backpacking and drawing plants right after college. I figure there's a
50% chance no one except my mother will be interested, so feel free to
skip this one if it's not your cup of tea. On the other hand, if you
like it, writing a review and spreading the word will ensure there's a
sequel.
Speaking of reviews, here's one to give you an idea of what you'll find
inside:
“This will be one of the easiest 5-star ratings I’ve ever given. The
journal style of the book presents the reader with a unique glimpse
into the author’s year-long journey around Europe. Beautiful drawings
and snippets from her letters home draw the reader into her adventure.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next volume. This book would make
a beautiful gift to anyone who loves travel or nature.” — Turtle Dove
Available on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble. Thanks in advance for giving it a try!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.