Fall is supposed to be right on our doorstop and despite the freakish 100 degree October days, I feel like I can still smell the crisp smell of fall through the heat. We usually see one flock of geese overhead as we pick the morning harvest so the seasons must be changing, even if we can’t feel it yet. I’m having cravings for turnips, greens, and winter squash. We are picking the winter squash today and we’ll let it cure for a week, and then we should have it for you by next week!
Birds on the farm are a wonderous joy to me – we’ve seen some coyotes and Gus chased a very fat rat last week (who I think has been the main beneficiary of all the melons on the farm), but birds are the dominant form of wildlife we see. The songbirds lift my spirits when they sing all morning, but I have no idea what kind of birds they are. Not knowing the names of birds makes me miss our neighbor Becca, who I think knew every bird in California, and took me birding not long before she died.
One day on the farm, I saw this crazy looking bird flying over my truck – bright blue, with a Mohawk and a big belly, which I swear looked something like a small Congo peacock. We’ve heard peacocks on the neighbor’s farm, so maybe they have Congo peacocks as pets too!
However, my favorite birds on the farm are the pheasants. The other day at dusk, I startled a pheasant and then waited to hear it’s familiar call. In a freak accident, it flew right into a white section of a wind turbine that was parked on the highway exit (pheasants fly up to 60 mph when startled). It was a pretty good thud and when I walked over, there was a mighty dead pheasant. I was so sad – this was my friend on the farm! I couldn’t decide whether to bury it or not, but in the end my friend Yumi plucked it and made a delicious dumpling soup. We’re going to take the 20 different kinds of feathers and make some pheasant memorial art too. Hopefully there was a whole family of pheasants and we will see them again at the Cloverleaf. –Emma