Category: Latest From High Reaches

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Latest From High Reaches

Looking At Lichens

Wildflower season will begin in a couple of months. I have a new camera to practice with to get ready. So I am out looking at lichens.

What Is a Lichen?

These are a textbook example of symbiosis, mutualism, a partnership between two organisms. Both of the participants benefit.

In the case of lichens, a fungus and an alga are the participants. The fungus provides the structure and nutrients. The alga provides food as it can do photosynthesis. A fungus can’t.

Orange lichen on a honey locust trunk
Most lichens in my area of the Ozarks are gray green in color. But they come in many colors. Orange is bright. It seems to only grow on tree trunks.

Where Are Lichens?

Around my home, lichens are lots of places. They grow on the trees. Some ground and rock areas are covered. Even my clothesline and truck have lichens growing on them.

These plantlike growths come in a variety of shapes and colors. Some look like flat leaves and are called folious. Others are spiky. The many branches of some make it look lacy.

Most lichens I see are a grayish green. There are places where they appear black. The ones on a black walnut near my barn are orange.

Up on a hill I found the soldier lichen. All lichens make a kind of pod that opens to release spores into the air to form new lichens elsewhere. Soldier lichens have bright red pods and got their name as the color was like that of British soldiers.

Wooly lichens spotted while looking for lichens
Lichens are not parasitic. They hold onto a surface and grow there. These wooly ones seem to prefer warmer weather when they can spread all over branches. Only a few were braving winter cold.

Why Bother With Lichens?

If you’ve ever admired Spanish moss, you’ve admired a lichen. Such lichens grow where the air is moist like in the South.

Up on the tundra, reindeer and caribou graze on lichens as grass has trouble growing in such a cold place. Cold, even freezing, doesn’t seem to bother lichens much as long as they have water, nutrients and sunlight.

Looking at lichens often means seeing folious lichen
Folious lichen looks a bit like smashed gray green leaves on rocks and tree trunks. These are often in a circular pattern. They put up cups that produce the spores to drift away on the wind to begin new colonies.

Lichens aren’t Wildflowers

My Dent County Flora is about plants. Lichens aren’t plants. But they are interesting.

And looking at lichens, taking some pictures of them, let’s me get in some good camera practice. Plus they are interesting. Any excuse is a good one to go out walking in the woods.

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Goats Are Expensive Pets

My Nubian dairy goats are supposed to produce milk. Instead my goats are expensive pets.

This isn’t entirely their fault. If a goat doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t produce milk. And I didn’t get some of them bred on time.

My herd has started and ended my days for fifty years as of next June. These last thirteen goats are the last of my herd. As they age, many retire and my goats become expensive pets still ordering my days, but producing nothing more than work.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela proves goats are expensive pets
My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela did milk through last winter. As soon as she was bred, she went dry. She still expects her hay and grain on time. The only comfort is that she will produce kids to help defray some of the expenses once the kids are three months old and sold. And, maybe, she will milk all of next winter.

Schedule Adjustments

One of the advantages of Nubian dairy goats is their flexibility. When I worked swing shift, they happily showed up for meals at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. When I was teaching, they adjusted to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

With many of the does dry, their schedule is moving to 9 a.m. and a half hour before dark. I’m older and don’t really want to stand out in the cold and dark feeding goats. Besides, they are older too and go to bed when it gets dark.

Times Have Changed

When I first had goats, few veterinarians had any experience with them. I ended up learning to do most easy veterinary work myself. Things like deworming, pulling kids, giving shots when needed and knowing when they were needed.

Feed didn’t cost that much. A hundred pounds of oats was seven dollars. Honest!

Now a veterinarian has to check over and prescribe antibiotics. None of the local ones come out to the place so the goat, all hundred plus p[ounds of goat, must be lifted up waist high into my truck and taken to town. Physically that does not happen for me any more.

Feed has moved to fifteen dollars for fifty pounds. This doesn’t count the extras like sunflower seeds. Since I go through a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds a week, my goats are expensive pets.

Nubian doe High Reaches Opal
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal is learning all the routines including the joys of being an expensive pet.

Future Plans

My goats will stay. One by one they will retire and die. I will not replace them and so will no longer milk in a few years. However, the work will continue as long as they do. My goats are expensive pets for possibly another ten years.

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Frustrating Chickens

There is a fair sized flock of chickens in my hen house. They are there to eat pests and lay eggs. This year they are frustrating chickens.

Eggs almost ceased to appear last summer. From what I’ve read and heard, this was a common problem for many. There are probably lots of reasons.

Too Many Roosters

Someone dumped off some roosters down the road last summer. They moved into my flock and proceeded to beat up both my two resident roosters and my hens.

Frustrating chickens, all talk and no eggs
Purrsey rooster was dumped off and joined the flock. He is a proud bird and thinks he should rule the roost. Unfortunately the hens don’t appreciate all the uproar between the roosters. I’m hoping this will settle down more next year as the roosters get older. His name is because he sounds like a cat’s purr when he calls hens over.

All but one left. The damage was already done. My hens were traumatized which is not good for egg production.

Black Snakes

There are several big, and I do mean big, black snakes that live under my barn floor all summer. Eggs are a favorite delicacy.

However, the snakes also eat some of the thousands of mice, any rats that attempt to move in and discourage the copperheads. So I put up with losing a few eggs.

The problem last summer was a younger black snake, a mere five footer (The big ones are seven feet and six feet.). This one was determined to get to those eggs, even sliding under the hens in the nests to wait for the egg to arrive.

The hens were not happy. They moved out to the hay trough, the tall grass, anyplace but the nests.

Heat

Like much of the country, the Ozarks had a heat wave go by. The chickens hid in the barn, under the trees, next to the barn, anyplace there was shade. They still panted as chickens can’t sweat. One older hen went hoarse.

Egg production ceased.

Older Hens

My flock is mixed ages. I tend to add six to eight pullets each year. The others stay until they die of old age.

Older hens lay larger eggs, but fewer of them. They tend to stop laying after molting in the fall and not start again until the end of January.

Mr. Smarty, another rooster for my frustrating chickens
Mr. Smarty is a very proud rooster. He thinks he should be in charge and is most upset that I am. He is a Columbian Wyandotte.

Light Problems

For years I’ve used lights to lengthen the days for my hens to encourage them to lay longer in the fall. The new LED lights don’t seem to have the right colors of light, so this doesn’t seem to work very well any more.

All of this adds up to frustrating chickens and a shortage of eggs in my kitchen.

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Goats Love Pumpkins

Pumpkins are great food for people and goats. They are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Luckily goats love pumpkins.

Previous Years

I don’t remember when I found out goats love pumpkins. It started me asking people around town for their pumpkins left sitting out after Halloween and Thanksgiving.

These were cut up and fed to the goats. The pieces were about two inches square and a quarter inch thick. It was like feeding coins into a slot machine as the pieces disappeared so fast.

Any pumpkins too soft to cut into pieces were broken up out in the pasture. The goats ate the parts they wanted. Some of the seeds came up the next spring and even made a few pumpkins.

old garden resists new garden beginning
My sugar pie pumpkins seem to have the shortest keeping time in the pantry. These are the first ones to feed the goats. There are enough to keep them almost to the end of the month.

This Year

Another goat owner is now collecting many of the pumpkins around town for her goats. I’m glad as I cringe a bit inside watching leftovers slowly rot away wishing I could take them home.

This isn’t because I don’t want to. My goats love pumpkins and are busy eating them every morning and night. They eat close to a pumpkin a day.

It’s because I raised both my goats’ favorite squash and pumpkins last summer. My pantry has so many piled in it, I have trouble reaching the shelves for stored food. The goats will be eating these easily to March.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although “The Pumpkin Project” is primarily a science activity book, it has lots of information about pumpkins in it. The last section has recipes for soups, breads, cheesecake, pie and more.

Eating Pumpkin

My goats don’t get all of the pumpkins and squash. Some of the pumpkins turn into puree which becomes cookies usually.

The goat special squash is a cushaw cross we don’t care for. So the goats do get all of these.

There is the yuxi squash. We generally eat one or two of these. They are big and, as older people, we don’t eat a lot.

Besides, we love butternut squash. These vines were very busy last summer and we will be eating these for months.

My goats love pumpkins and goat squash and butternut squash. I enjoy sharing them with my goats.

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Averted Tragedy

Last night one of my new hens, one of my winter layers didn’t come in. All night I thought she was picked off by a fox or a hawk. This morning she was the lucky one that averted tragedy.

Accidents Happen

Rural living is an invitation to accidents. Machines don’t work as expected. Wire snaps. Wood or metal beams fall.

Livestock has its share of accidents too. Some end tragically. Some are averted tragedy.

Trapped Goats

As told in “For Love of Goats”, we had a young doe slip down into the crotch of a tree. My companion found her and lifted her out. Otherwise she was trapped, unable to get her hooves on anything to let her push out of the tree.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Part of “For Love of Goats” is a series of memoirs taken from my many years raising dairy goats. Kids are often in trouble. They can get trapped, lost, hurt. The best account is averting tragedy for the kid in trouble.

There was another such incident. This time a doe was stepping over a fallen tree. It had two trunks. The ground was a hillside covered with gravel.

The doe slid down the tree trunk into the crotch and got stuck. When she didn’t come in that evening, I went looking. It took two of us to slide her up out of that trap.

The next morning that upper trunk became firewood.

Trapped Chicken

I have extra water buckets placed upside down along the fence into the goat barn lot. The buckets I’m using sit on top of these, easy to grab to fill at the hand pump.

This morning the bucket had fallen onto the ground. When I picked it up, my lost hen was under it. She was eager to get back in the chicken yard where she promptly grabbed the vole the flock was arguing over.

Avoiding Tragedy

No matter how careful I try to be, accidents happen. Some do end in tragedy. Most do not. There is reason for this.

When my flock goes back in their yard at night, I count them. Three of this kind, three of those, seven of the other, until all are accounted for.

The same is true for the goats. I make sure everyone goes out and everyone comes in.

The chickens are locked up at night. The goats are in their barn.

I much prefer taking precautions to having another averted tragedy tale to tell.

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Wildlife Defenses

Winter ends most gardening. A few cold weather crops remain in protected areas. Most of the garden is cleared and ready for erecting wildlife defenses.

One thing a rural gardener learns early on is that wildlife is persistent. And numerous. And inventive.

Groundhogs

Four or five groundhogs invaded my garden last season. These herbivores are voracious. Although they have preferences, any vegetables will appear on their menu at some time except mints. But I don’t want to only raise basil, mint, monarda and catmint.

These persistent creatures can climb, but prefer to dig under fences. My wildlife defenses will include old roofing tin dug down along the fence lines.

wildlife defenses are challenging against groundhogs aka woodchucks
The groundhog aka woodchuck lives in the back yard far from my garden. It’s an interesting creature to watch. Any living near my garden require defensive measures to prevent digging under the fence or climbing over it. The only really effective control is live trapping and shooting.

Deer

Every year I seem to have a deer leaping over the fence. The Jerusalem artichokes and greens disappear. Any tomato showing color disappears.

Last year I put up another layer of fencing so increase the height of my garden fence to six feet. This worked except for the gates.

Putting wire across over the gates worked. It also made garden access difficult.

My wildlife defenses include taking all gates up to four feet tall, putting in tall gateposts and stringing wire across starting six inches over my head. Anyone else can duck.

Squirrels, Chipmunks and Pack Rats

These invaders eat greens and tomatoes and peppers. What they don’t eat, they carry off. Either way, the plants and their fruits disappear.

I don’t mind sharing with any of the animals, but they don’t share. They take every last one.

My wildlife defenses include cold frames over the raised beds to protect the greens. These will have hardware screening for the warm seasons and plastic over the late fall and winter. I’m hoping the screening will discourage small herbivores like cabbage moth caterpillars and grasshoppers as well as the furry ones.

Tomatoes and peppers will need wire cages. This will make harvesting difficult unless I can think of a way to make gate access to each one. That will be left for in the spring.

wildlife defenses sometimes are needed against livestock
Chicken invasions of the garden are a disaster. Even in their yard, they dig holes. Their droppings burn vegetation due to high nitrogen content. A good fence of 2 x 4 welded wire has worked around my garden as long as I remember to keep the gates closed. They look at the garden longingly hoping I will slip up and are delighted when I do.

Weeds

The best weed defense I’ve found is covering every bed with cardboard and mulch. This stops most of the unwanted weeds from getting started over the winter which dead nettle, chickweed and wooly mint do.

Winter will be a busy season this year as I put up my wildlife defenses and smother weeds. The payoff will come next year, I hope. However, the invaders will come up with other plans to thwart.

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Our Bird Feeder

Changing seasons bring a change in customers at our bird feeder. All summer morning doves, goldfinches and cardinals have foraged through the various offerings. Now our winter birds like blue jays, chickadees and titmice have moved in.

Winter Birds

The summer birds like warblers, tanagers and hummingbirds have left for more southern climes. A flock of robins who stopped for drinks at the rain barrels before flying off were the last migrants we’ve seen.

chickadee on our bird feeder
Winter brings the black-capped chickadees back to the Ozarks. They are among the hit and run crowd at the bird feeder. Fly in, perch and watch, swoop in, grab a sunflower seed and fly off.

Late October to early November bring in several birds that are migrating south to the Ozarks. Nuthatches, juncos and several kinds of sparrows hop across the yard. For now, they are busy devouring giant ragweed and other weed seeds.

Competition At the Bird Feeder

Dawn brings the chickadees and titmice down to the feeder platform checking to see if we have put breakfast out yet. Some morning doves still wait up in the black walnut trees.

blue jay on our bird feeder
Blue jays are year round residents in the Ozarks. They don’t spend much time at the feeder during the summer. Come fall, the parents and their fledglings move in. Few other birds will stop on the feeder while the blue jays eat their fill.

Once the spread is set out on our bird feeder, the blue jays move in. They chug down whole sunflower seeds as the nuthatches, chickadees and titmice swoop in to grab one and fly off. The doves march across the feeder roof occasionally dropping down to encourage the jays to leave. Cardinals wait in the old peach tree.

Then the first squirrel arrives. There are three or four regularly foraging walnuts in the back yard. They think they can also gorge on sunflower seeds.

nuthatch on our bird feeder
Nuthatches are such interesting birds. These birds can go up tree trunks looking for insects and their larvae, turn around and go down again head first. They are hit and run birds on the feeder. They hop up the posts or fly in, grab a sunflower seed and fly off.

All the birds wait when the red squirrel sits in the tray. The nuthatches, chickadees and titmice swoop by when the gray squirrels are there.

Chasing the squirrels works for a short time. Usually we wait until they go elsewhere and put out more sunflower seeds. If cold weather comes back, it will chase the squirrels into their nests leaving our bird feeder to the birds.

Woodpeckers

Even the red squirrel doesn’t deter the red-bellied woodpeckers. These and the Downey woodpeckers move up the posts to work on the suet cake. Few of them are regulars now. This will change in another month.

Our bird feeder stocked with sunflower seeds, hen scratch and suet will keep us entertained all winter with our winter birds.

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Winter Garden

With killing frost ending the summer into fall garden, my winter garden takes over. This year finds it a bit meager thanks to the groundhogs and deer, but there are a few plants left.

Choosing Plants

Cold hardiness is a must for a winter garden. It’s hard to help more sensitive plants survive.

My choices are spinach, turnips, Napa cabbage and carrots. Some others a bit more sensitive include yellow heart cabbage and winter radishes.

Chinese celery likes cool weather, but is not frost hardy. Bok choi is hard to keep too.

Winter Tactics

I use old blankets and towels along with plastic. The main raised bed is set up for a plastic cover. The new raised bed has the beginnings of a cold frame so the blankets and plastic are jury rigged for now.

This round I got caught with some leeks and beets. Luckily the beets are in the same bed as the turnips which are frost tolerant to mid twenties. The forecast is for lower, so all of this bed is covered for a few days.

winter garden strategy
Blankets and plastic may look clumsy and ineffective as winter garden protection, but this picture was taken after a night at eighteen degrees and another at fifteen degrees. The winter radishes and spinach came through just fine. All of my other beds protected in this manner survived well also, no casualties.

The Shade House

Plastic goes over this cattle panel structure turning it into an unheated greenhouse. Although the plastic doesn’t keep the inside from freezing, old towels and blankets protect plants overnight. The plastic does heat up the inside if there is any sun. It gets quite toasty necessitating opening the door.

The plastic I use is nothing fancy. It’s clear – actually cloudy white – from the hardware store. This is not greenhouse grade, but it works for the winter.

Winter Garden Greens

Generally this will hold plants into January, occasionally into spring. The shade house need only covering attention and door opening to raise some good Chinese celery and greens.

The raised beds need a more permanent winter garden solution. I’m hoping to get cold frames over both, but will make do over this cold spell.

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Yellow Gingkoes

Overnight the green gingkoes became a glowing yellow gingkoes standing at the back of the yard. This is a rare fall sight as killing frost usually takes off the leaves before they turn color.

What Is a Gingko?

Sometimes called a maidenhair tree, this tree is a living fossil, related to pines. It and its relatives were once browsed on by dinosaurs. Only one kind, Gingko biloba, has survived to modern times thanks to man.

This species is native to Asia and was planted in monastery gardens in China. The nuts are edible when roasted.

The leaves are the reason for the species name. Unlike most flat leaves with a main vein branching off into smaller and smaller veins, gingko veins split into two and those split into two and so forth.

yellow gingkoes are striking
In the evening this gingko tree was green with yellow hints. When dawn came, the tree glowed in lemon yellow even under an overcast sky.

Modern Gingkoes

I first met a gingko in Philadelphia. A large female tree, there are separate male and female trees, was dropping its fruit over the sidewalk by Benjamin Franklin’s grave.

The main drawback to this tree was very evident. The flesh from the fruit stunk like dog feces.

However, gingkoes are very resistant to air pollution so cities like to plant them along streets. They plant only male trees to avoid that major drawback.

Beautiful Fall Color

This place is a frost pocket so our three gingkoes have a hard time both in spring and fall. The late spring frost last spring devastated the three. It took so long for them to leaf out, we thought they might be dead.

This fall has had several light frosts. Killing frost is supposed to arrive next week, but the warning temperatures encouraged the yellow gingkoes to flaunt their glowing lemon yellows for a few days.

Are these trees male or female? We don’t know. We’ve never seen them bloom or had any fruit. They do make lovely yard trees.

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Squirrels and Black Walnuts

Black walnuts pave the road and the yard now. They start falling in early September carpeting the ground with leaves, twigs and nuts. Squirrels and black walnuts go well together.

There were lots of squirrels here when we moved here. Then all of them moved out leaving us with a pile of unused walnuts for years. Now the squirrels are back for a crop that would feed several times the squirrels living here.

squirrels and black walnuts fan
Two kinds of squirrel live around our Ozarks place now. This is the larger red or fox squirrel. It has the red/brown underside and thick, bushy tail. This particular individual lives behind the yard and raids the bird feeder regularly. It has been seen to check out the feeder before the seeds are out in the morning. It chases the smaller gray squirrels away or tries to.

Black Walnuts

These are not the tepid nuts sold in the store. Black walnuts have a strong flavor, if you can crack the shell. Regular nutcrackers do not even make a dent.

There are special nutcrackers available. I resorted to a hammer. It takes a very long time to crack a cupful of nutmeats.

Squirrels have tough teeth. They toss off the hull and start gnawing. Rodent teeth, squirrels are rodents, grow constantly so these lucky ones wear theirs down getting to the tasty stuff inside.

Walking Problems

Black walnuts are round and hard. Walking from place to place with them underfoot is not easy. Picking them up is back breaking work.

However, I do pick them up in the areas we walk frequently and deposit them elsewhere. Squirrels and walnuts can meet up there.

There is also a running battle in my garden. A big tree drops part of its leaves and walnuts in my garden.

Unfortunately black walnuts produce juglans, a form of plant chemical warfare. That part of my garden will not grow tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, beans and some greens. The squash and pie pumpkins do fine.

another squirrels and black walnuts fan
This is a gray squirrel, smaller than the other kind. These also live around our Ozarks place. These seem to be more numerous than the red squirrels. Three were checking for walnuts by the barn one morning. I’m getting suspicious they are also snacking on my winter squash. One morning a gray squirrel was checking for walnuts in a patch of giant ragweed while a chipmunk was climbing the ragweed for the seeds.

Squirrels and Black Walnuts

Squirrels are fiercely territorial. This is why so many get hit on the roads.

A squirrel runs down the road to get a walnut. A car comes. The squirrel can’t run off the road as the resident squirrel will attack. So the poor squirrel must run back up the road to its own territory before being able to get off the road.

There are several black walnuts along our road dropping nuts on the road. I kick them over to the edge so the squirrels can stay off the road. Then I can continue to watch the squirrels and black walnuts for the fall.

There’s more about black walnuts and squirrels in “Exploring the Ozark Hills”.