Listening to Pooh

With the sudden switch to warm weather, the bird chatter on the farm is reaching a crazy level of intensity.  I feel a bit like a little girl, listening in on my parents talking in Dutch around the kitchen table.  I knew they were talking about Christmas presents, or vacations, because otherwise they wouldn’t switch to a language I didn’t know, but the cadence of their words made me wild with curiosity.  What are these birds chattering about? Mating, home building, establishing territory? All the important parts of life.  

Did you know that when you visit our farm, you are entering a realm of wild things?  We have a squirrel family that nests in the tree right where the strawberry wagon starts to roll through the grove.  When we walk towards the male, he chitters angrily at us and sometimes even throws leaves or bits of bark at us.  He’s such a ridiculous little figure that we start laughing at him, and he hides at the insult.  Next time you go through our grove, peek up and to the east. You might be able to see him leaping from tree to tree.  He’s following the wagon to make sure you all leave his domain.  

In preparation for your visit, Dan will (hopefully!) be removing the straw from the rows this week.  We need the soil temperature by the strawberry roots to reach 40 degrees before we can remove straw, and the weather forecast looks promising.  All the buds for the strawberry flowers were set last fall, and protected through the winter by the straw.