The ash trees here are holding their leaves 10 days to date later than previous years. Their colors are not the normal shades of yellow they’ve been for the 13 years I’ve lived here. This year the trees are still 70% covered and the colors range from light shades of yellow to burnt orange to deep maroon. They’re unusually pretty.
We started out with 32 Eastern Wild turkeys in the neighborhood after the poults hatched and as of this morning, there are still 32 turkeys. The flock consists of three adult hens, three adult toms and poults from all three hens. They walk the road like they own the neighborhood and aren’t very concerned about traffic. Everyone knows they’re here and slows for them.
It has been quiet on my farm this year in regards to wildlife. One moose walked through the market garden once. Two bears have been here to eat our raspberries and blackberries but appear to have moved on now that the berries are gone. There are no signs of them coming to the house like the bears that were here last year did. We had one deer walk through the garden last week. Knock on wood, no skunks or raccoons have made an appearance to dine on the poultry. The woodlot across the road from us was harvested this summer. The moose will like the new saplings next spring so I’m hoping to be able to see them often.
Deer are moving around a lot now. We watched a doe fawn (no marks where antlers will grow next year) for five or six minutes on Monday, September 20, before moving on to pick more mushrooms. She was very dark colored. We missed seeing a moose by minutes. It left tracks in the road during the 20 minutes we were gone. A Great Blue Heron stood in a stream on West Lake Road, a beaver swam in a boggy area on Old Mill Road and a partridge walked in the edge of the woods keeping up with my vehicle. There aren’t any signs of deer under my apple trees yet but it won’t be long. Our trees produced well this year so there are a lot of apples for us and the deer and partridge that eat them.
