Summer Reads with an Irish Flavor!

Maybe you’re too busy in your garden to do much reading these days!

If you’re like me, your list of summer garden chores is only getting longer. For me and my husband John, trying to keep the neighborhood bear out of our yard is turning into a full time job!

But if you do have some spare moments to lose yourself in a warmhearted novel about enduring love, with lots of touching family dynamics, you might take a look at my newly created Village of Ballydara Box Set…

Four Irish novels! 

You’ll find, not one, but four novels: Irish love stories set in the cozy little village of Ballydara, County Galway—and if you want to give one or more novels a try for free, you can request the set in ebook at your local library!

If you’re interested in a short Irish read, look no further than “Foster,” a lovely novella by Claire Keegan. I couldn’t put the book down, and as soon as I finished the story, I started back on Page One and read it all over again! I’ve got a short review of the story in my June newsletter, available now! 

What’s in your To Be Read pile this summer? 

Bear vs Strawberries & International Fairy Day

Bear just outside our fence

International Fairy Day, June 24, was exactly the day I expected to be in the peak of strawberry season.

Last summer, all our strawberry beds were on their last legs…but there was one vigorous plant that was shooting out runners like crazy. Hoping to create home-grown berry crowns, I set the runners into pots—and ended up with a couple of dozen!

Last fall, I transplanted the crowns, and ended up with four new strawberry beds, filled with robust plants. And as this month rolled around, I anticipated a veritable berry feast.

Then along came the scourge of our summer: a bear.

This young black bear has snuck through our fences numerous times, hitting all four berry beds. The first time, it tore into the earliest-fruiting bed that I had netted early, ate all the ripe ones, whomping one plant right out of the ground, and mangling the fencing around the bed.

It hit the other three beds, swiping at barely-pink strawberries. While John and I double-fenced and re-netted the one seriously invaded bed, the other, larger beds would be far more difficult to protect.

Well, I could see the writing on the wall.

With a heavy heart, I cut all the berry clusters from the plants in those three beds. The bear has trampled all over our garden, so I didn’t want to risk further damage--and I was sure it would attack my strawberries again.

A couple of days ago, the bear tried to get back into that now double-reinforced bed—but didn’t get any berries. Instead, it mangled the outer fence, and gotten the netting seriously awry.

Viewing the limited damage, I breathed a sigh of relief. Which only lasted until I heard a distressed, “Cheep, cheep.”

“There’s a bird in the net,” John said, low.

I looked on the other side of the bed and there was a female towhee, entwined in the net. Towhees are cheeky birds, and have often gone where other, wiser birds have feared to tread: they’ll try to get into even heavily-netted berry beds.

This bird had managed to worm its way through the disarrayed netting, and actually ate two of the biggest, reddest berries. As soon as we came over, it had tried to escape, and gotten tangled up in the nets.

John is our bird rescuer around here, and he gently lifted up the bird in the net, and tried to extricate it, as its cheep, cheeps intensified.

I ran to get the garden scissors, and though it took him about ten minutes, he was able to cut the little bird out. He set it carefully on the ground, then this plucky little girl crawled over to a protected spot among some stones, tucked herself up in a little roll, and just sat there. Barely breathing by the looks of it.

The next day, John and I found the bird a little ways from its hidey-hole, dead. I imagine it died from a combination of a broken wing, and shock.

 With this casualty of a little innocent bird, this young bear has been even more destructive than simply wreaking havoc in the garden.

Our nearest neighbors are having their share of problems from the bear too—earlier this week, it destroyed their bird feeder. Like, killed the feeder. We four are having a confab this weekend to see if we can figure out a solution.

The marionberries will be ready soon, and then the blueberries—without more preventative measures, I shudder to think of what the bear could do to all our fruit and infrastructure! 

On a happier note: Happy International Fairy Day! The day is loosely connected to the June 23 tradition of St. John’s Eve, the celebration of midsummer, celebrated in many Scandinavian countries and Ireland too.

Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I’m big on fairies—especially Irish fairies—and International Fairy Day always lightens my heart. If you have a whimsical side too, and haven’t completely discounted the idea that there may be more mysteries in nature than we will ever understand, maybe you’ll be celebrating fairies tomorrow too!

The fairies in our house!

A quick note: I’ve been posting weekly here at the Little Farm in the Foothills blog the last couple of years, with only a few misses—and one of them was last week. This bear has increased out workload in so many ways, and this summer, John and I have to re-do as well as rebuild a number of sections of our fencing all over the property.

We've already started redoing our north orchard fencing--a portion of destroyed fence that another, bigger bear did getting to our apple trees last year.

And trying to keep up with the rest of our garden is going to be a challenge! I’m still planning to post here each week, generally Thursday or Friday, if I can. But if I'm not able to post weekly, I'll aim to share my Little Farm news every other week. 

There’s lots more about our bear invasion in my June newsletter—it’s free, and you don't have to subscribe to read it! I’ll be sharing this continuing bear saga in the next monthly newsletter, out July 10.

Maybe tomorrow, on International Fairy Day, I can fit in communing with our Little Farm fairies for a little positive energy. Which I think I'll need, to keep dealing with our bear invader! 

’Coon Confusion: Raccoon…or Something Bigger?

You’d think after 17 years in the Foothills, I would have the quirks of the local wildlife all figured out.

But no—I still get flummoxed by critters around here, and a lot more often than I’d like!

One month ago, in “Garden Explosion,” I wrote about our recent raccoon incursion. I mean, I was sure it had to be a raccoon. This animal had climbed our blueberry patch fence, and torn apart a small, decomposing stump between 2 large berry shrubs to get at the ants living inside. 

While this critter had bent the fence a bit, both blueberry plants were completely unharmed. Not a branch was bent, not a leaf fell to the ground, and nary a twig was tweaked. 

At the time, what I didn’t take into account was a big stripe of bark torn off a nearby apple trees.

Anyway, the other day, when my husband John and I found this animal in my spinach patch, the raccoon theory flew out the window:

Black bear in our yard!

Bears are the critters who love ants. And bears commonly tear bark off fruit trees to get at the sap! 

It had to be this small black bear that wrecked the stump, and damaged the apple tree a couple of weeks ago. I was sure of it, when I saw how this critter had also stomped all over my strawberry bed, and how well it knew its way around the yard!

There’s a lot more to this bear story, and you’ll find it in my June newsletter! It’s free to read and open to all, so I hope you’ll take a look.

In any event, this is not the first time I’ve mistaken wildlife, and I’m sure it won’t be the last!

Rhubarb Comeback

When it comes to food gardening, whether you’re a newbie or have been doing it forever, I like to call rhubarb the perfect crop!

It’s super easy to grow: Spread a little compost around the crown once or twice a year, keep it reasonably well watered and weeded, and you’re rewarded with loads of rosy-pink stalks. 

Rhubarb will continue to grow being potted up for a while, and also tolerates transplanting fairly well.

Although voles will eat the roots, it doesn’t have much in the way of other pests. Plus raising your own rhubarb saves you money! At our local co-op, organic rhubarb is $4.99/lb. Ouch!

It’s easy to process too, and can be used in both sweet and savory recipes. So as a staple food crop, you really can’t go wrong with rhubarb…

Only you actually can.

I’ve gone wrong the last few years with my four crowns. With lots of outside family commitments, I fell down on the job with weeding. A few seasons with weed overwhelm, and the crowns’ production declined significantly. 

I figured my rhubarb, now over 15 years old, was at the end of its life span. I would clearly need to buy brand new crowns from the nursery and start over.

Last summer, one looked especially bad, pretty much near death’s door. So I said a regretful “Sayonara” and tore out all the roots, which I talked about in my previous “Garden Explosion” post. I even mulched the whole area with some scraps of lumber, to kill the surrounding weeds. 

I made sure that crown would be a goner.

However…despite the advanced age of my three remaining crowns of rhubarb, last fall I finally took on the horsetail and buttercup invasion around them, and spread some compost to cover the drip line. And what do you know…

This spring’s crop is the best I’ve had in years! 

Processing rhubarb—all you need is a sharp knife!

From my three producing crowns, I picked 52 stalks. Cut into cubes courtesy of my husband John, the processed crop produced four and a half quarts. 

The little crown that could—the fourth rhubarb crown I tore out and is now coming along nicely—won’t produce any kind of crop this year and very likely not next year either. But I’m going to treat it right this summer!

Rhubarb rising from the dead and now chugging along

I’m heading out to the garden shortly, to give this baby restarted crown lots of compost. After I weed the three other harvested ones, they’ll get some top-dressing as well. 

So when life gets crazy and you’ve had to neglect your perennial food crops—with a little TLC, you may find they can bounce back!