Week of 8/11/24

Another summer week has skipped by, and fall is fast approaching. The signs are all around. Yellow is the color of fall and the golden red bursting out in full bloom. The leaves of some of the early trees won’t be far behind, such as the walnut trees. The nuts on the trees are now becoming quite visible. There is a fair crop on the hickories, a small crop on the red oaks, and on the white oaks I do not know. On the few other trees that are left on my farm I haven’t seen any. Soon there will be no white oaks left, as there has been no regeneration in maybe the last 50 years.

With the huge population of both turkey and deer, the few nuts that aren’t eaten and left to germinate the saplings are soon eaten off by the deer. I have planted a couple hundred about ten years ago and not a single one of them survived the deer. It would take tree guards at least 6 ft tall at about 10 dollars each to protect them, which is just not feasible. The walnut crop is light, as maybe only five percent of the trees have nuts, and these trees are not really loaded.

Out in the woods the few wild Ginseng Berries that are still left on the plant are turning red, as the turkeys also like them. It is hard to get new patches of Ginseng started, as the turkeys and the other critters will find them and eat the seeds. There appears to be a good crop of turkey. I saw two hens the other day, each of them had about a dozen poults following them.

I spent most of this week in the garden harvesting. Picked the last of the aronias and the blackberries. I’ve picked over a hundred quarts of wild blueberries this summer, which is a huge crop. Likewise, the potatoes, where I have about 20 bushels dug now and maybe about 10 more to go off a patch of about 600 sq ft. The tomato crop is just starting and that also looks to be big.

We did well at the farmers market in Spring Green on Saturday. Again Ruth sold out of all her pies, of which there were 30. We ran out of books and we are hoping to get the next batched shipped soon. Meanwhile the books can be ordered from Dorrance’s Bookstore online.

-Helmuth Krause