November Farm News

This summer we had a family of four geese living on the pond.  Homer kept himself busy for the first half of the year scaring them off the dock regularly, at our urging.  The geese were annoyingly persistent, and the chase often ended multiple times a day with Homer in the water swimming after them until we told him “that’s far enough!” I think what finally sent the message was when we had another canine visitor for a few days.  Two big dogs chasing them into the water was more than they wanted to risk just to keep their dock real-estate.

At some point this fall, I noticed the family of four had become a family of ten, then twenty. Then one day I looked out, and there had to be well over one hundred geese on the water.  They made a ton of noise throughout the day and night.  I imagined to myself, they were holding “town meetings” and one of them inevitably said something radical that sent the whole group into an uproar, only to quiet down again for a brief time. This seemed to go on for several weeks, and then the geese started taking off in small flocks every morning. The days would be quiet, and then right around 5 or 5:30pm the small groups of geese would return, calling out as they approached. Sometimes they came swooping so low over our field, we could hear the low pitch of their wing feathers as the air passed through them.  Joni quickly learned to recognize the sound of the approaching geese, pointing at the sky in the direction of their honking.  We started intentionally walking the field in the evenings to watch the geese touch down, making their daily big splash on the water to the delighted squeals of our 1 year old.    My CSA volunteer told me one day when I lightly complained about the ruckus on the pond while we were out working, that the geese pick a location and get ready for their migration south with mini daily practice flights.  When the young ones are ready, they leave for the winter.  Once she pointed this out, it became so very clear to me that this was exactly what they were doing and I felt slightly more tolerant of their temporary presence.  I don’t know why they picked our pond this year.  We sleep on our screened porch all summer and fall, and there were nights I was up cursing the geese wishing they would head on their way, or else hold their meetings exclusively in daylight.  Then one morning I walked out, and the pond was quiet, and I found myself oddly disappointed they had left.  I think their honking, wings flapping, and evening splashing had distracted me from noticing that the other sounds of summer were slowly disappearing with the geese.  The pond suddenly quiet, last sounds of summer gone.

Many of you may be doing our winter CSA but for those of you not, or in addition to, we will have bulk carrots available for sale starting now throughout the winter.  Certified Organic.  2$/#.  Email us at any point to buy and arrange a pickup time/date.