We took the afternoon at the farm and we found it drier than we expected. Blueberries are ripening. We found new mushrooms we hadn’t seen before. We are planning to camp next weekend and looked for a fire pit location and tent spots. The weather was beautiful with a cool breeze in the shade and the sun shining.
We culled more black cherry trees from the clearing and broke them down into burnable chunks. These were infected with black knot fungus and burning them is the only way to get rid of them.
After finishing our job, we walked down Fern to Ridge Trail and looked for more Black trumpets along the southern set back line. We found a few but left them hoping for rain tonight so they can grow.
We walked through the Pawpaw orchard and were satisfied with how it looked. We are making plans to get more light to these trees. There are hundreds of them as they make root suckers that are clones of the original tree.
We found a baby deer laying by the waterway at the base of a tree waiting for its mother. It was so sweet. Didn’t even lift its head as we walked by. Following directions well and staying safe. We hope mom comes back soon.
We are hoping for more rain tonight so the mushrooms will grow.
We went out to the farm to clean up a few spaces, look for more black trumpets and cut a trail through the south side. We were able to clear out some tiny tulip poplars and maples, paying close attention to keep any understory oaks as we learned the old oak forests throughout the world have a problem with understory oaks regenerating the forests. We decided we would only thin out diseased or failing oaks. https://youtu.be/NRWHHOAf39U?si=akypzxLUNo_7tOfn
Oaks have strong mycorrhizal https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/mycorrhiza connections as well, so we truly appreciate them for a number of reasons. SAFF has older, medium, saplings and seedling oaks all throughout so we aren’t seeing this problem. https://dcist.com/story/23/12/20/dc-local-forests-failing-tree-regeneration/
We were out to mow and have a work day. It was lovely cooler weather so we got lucky in multiple ways. We mowed the clearing up top, the front along the road and the southern border. Then we went for a little walk and found the mushrooms we’d almost given up hope finding at SAFF. What a wonderful day. We feel like anything is possible if you stay focused and keep going. 😀
We saw plenty of lone star ticks as well. Since we’ve been mowing regularly we don’t see them in the clearings but along our trails we find them on the tippy top of Galium, bedstraw. They hang out with their legs open waiting for an animal to walk by to attach to. We saw plenty of them yesterday. It’s a bad year for ticks here in Virginia. The mild winter weather didn’t kill them off so they are even more abundant than usual. We are staying mindful.
So far we have seen plenty of deer ticks, dog ticks and lone star ticks at the farm this year. The clearing seems free of them right now since we keep it mowed down well. In the forest, the wetter and greener areas where deer and dogs are known to move through have been hotspots. Our tick mitigation measures have kept us from getting any bites but we have found them crawling on our socks, shoes and clothes. It’s definitely tick season unfortunately.
We were going to mow but left our keys to the tractor at the house in Staunton so instead we had a lovely walk around. The ground and forest litter was wet from the storms that have passed through. With the heat, it felt very muggy.
We have been working on the shed which will house a compost toilet and shower for us to camp luxuriously. We plan to camp in the next month and hope to report back about the wonderful night time adventures at Saint Andrews Forest Farm.
We found 9 or 10 of these Eastern American Platterful Mushrooms on the south side on the slope just above the waterway. They were big and impressive emerging from the forest litter. We’ve been searching for morels for months and hadn’t seen much of any fungi. They were a delightful sight for sore eyes. They are not delicious and some have been sickened by them despite the name “Platterful” so we left them there.
Top of the Megacollybia rodmanii.
After going out on April 27 (a little over 2 weeks ago) and hand pollinating the pawpaws, we were delighted yesterday to see them beginning to grow the tiniest fruit. About 10 trees have fruit forming so far. These were the trees we found flowering and used Q-tips to pollinate. There are at least 100 pawpaw trees down there. We have plans to bring more sunlight into the pawpaw patch and move some of the pawpaws to spread them out. We are beyond excited for these fruits and can’t wait until fall to harvest them. We hope to grow our population of pawpaws and increase their productivity.
The blueberries continue to develop and we find more and more plants flowering and growing small green blueberries. We hope to taste a few before the animals get to them.
We expected to find many mushrooms at the farm since it’s been raining a lot this past week, but we only found these Gloeophyllum along the sunny southern border.
We found this colorful pair of six spotted tiger beetles down by the waterway at the south side. They feed on a wide variety of arthropods and over winter in larval burrows.
We continue to pull up and clear out invasive trees as we find them. So far, tree of Heaven, mimosa and paulownia are the invasive species and we find them mainly along the road. We also continue to take down black Cherry trees that are diseased and dying.
We’re taking back our southern border and clearing out overgrown brush. It is so satisfying to cut the tangled overgrown weeds back. We are thrilled with our old Husqvarna.
Yesterday in the forest,we found pawpaws blooming and blueberries flowering and fruiting, and in the clearing we found our first cover crop of crimson clover flowering. Butterflies and other insects were enjoying the flowers.
We are constantly amazed by the abundance of food growing naturally in the forest. We look for ways to encourage and support the continued growth and development of a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
Yesterday we went over for a quick visit, and to our delight, we saw the blueberry bushes were flowering and getting berries.
We’d been watching them and noted a few weeks ago they were leafing out. We have observed hundreds of them all throughout the forest. We’ve read that they are more productive when they have plenty of sun.
These fruits are eaten by terrestrial turtles, black bears, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, deer and many bird species including wild turkeys, grouse, blue jays, robins, wood thrush and eastern bluebirds. These wild blueberries are smaller and sweeter and grow in acidic soils that are moist and well draining.
We continue to marvel at the abundance of food growing wild in the forest and feel lucky to be able to caretake this incredible environment.
We also noted the tulip poplars, dogwood and sugar hackberry trees are all beginning to leaf out. The transformation of the forest to green for summer has already started.
St Andrews Forest Farm 