the 2016 Growing Season

There are still more than ten weeks until the danger of the last frost of spring has passed here at DomEc, but plans are in the works for the spring planting season.  The main  landscape design plans for the home have now been made, starting with the large plants.  Last fall an order was placed with Chief River Nursery for a number of natives that will help occupy what is now lawn space.

A sun-scorched corner of the property will receive a Paper Birch.  They plants are known for surviving dry, rocky sites and hopefully the shade it provides will reduce evaporation in the surrounding soil where several of our milkweed plants are located.  The site may prove to be to sun-scorched for this northern species, but it is the best option I could find to substitute for the Gray Birch that I actually wanted to plant in the site.  In addition, birches are great natives that support many insect and bird species and also have great aesthetics because of their textured or colored bark.  If you choose one, be sure to purchase a native variety-- There are now many species and hybrids of Asian origin available in this taxon.

Unfortunately, a late summer heat wave killed the sapling American Chestnut that was planted last year.  The upcoming order includes a replacement, which hopefully will survive the summer; this time under closer supervision.  An American Plum will be added to a portion of the landscape in a yet-to-be-determined location, to be chosen for one of several possible sites.  This plant may provide food for animals and humans alike.

Finally two domestic apples will be planted.  While our push is always for natives, the greater purpose is sustainability.  Home grown produce is a far more sustainable option than flying in fruits and vegetables from warmer climes hundreds or thousands of miles away, so appropriate domestic crops are the sole exception to our "natives only" rule.  In this case, the apples also play host to many insects and birds despite their Asian origin, though probably not as many as native crabapple species.

Deer control is the grand challenge for all of these plantings and those already extant on the property. There is a temporary fence being planned to create several deer 'exclosures' around some of the beds. That project will warrant a post in its own right.

Warm weather is on its way!

A New Side at DomEc

Well, four sides.  Well actually, four sides of siding.  The new project at DomEc is new vinyl siding for the home.  The need for new siding comes from the fact that the old, probably original siding, was literally falling off the house.  Those cedar shakes (shingles) were badly sun-damaged, thinning and falling apart.  The particular under course used was cheap and has become host to myriad insects and attracted a good number of woodpeckers to the house.  I can't blame to woodpeckers--They were not the problem. Rather the infested, degraded house covering needed to go.

We decided to go with vinyl primarily because we wanted a long-term, low maintenance option.  Any plastic product has its environmental downsides, but in this case it seemed the best option compared to years of applying more paint to wood or another surface; the old paint flaking off into the environment.  It seemed better than more wood shakes that would have to be replaced and also painted or sealed.  And most of all, unlike expensive brick or other coatings, vinyl is an option that I am able to instal myself, having past professional training and experience.

Another nice bonus of vinyl is that the under-coating is an insulative foam.  We opted for better-than-minimum thickness foam which will give us additional insulation capacity up to R-3.  Inadequate insulation is, of course, a major problem in winter here at the DomEc homestead.  The exterior walls have only R-7 insulation.  Most modern homes are built with R-11 or R-13 rating. (The higher the better: The R-value represents the insulating potential of a component where a value of R-1 is equal to the insulative capacity of a 1-foot thick concrete wall.)  By adding an additional R-3 layer outside the walls the home is starting to approach modern standards.  In some cases, the project is affording me the opportunity to open up the wall from the outside and replace the wall insulation itself with new R-11.

This is a long-term project that will take months to finish with primarily one person working on it and only part-time at that.  Progress is slow, but steady.  Having started in late August, the building is now  a fifth or a sixth covered.  More updates are to come, especially when winter comes and the insulation is put to the test.

Yom Kippur Thoughts

Since today is Yom Kippur, I thought I would read through some of what the book of Leviticus has to say about the occasion.  Of course in English, we know Yom Kippur as the Day or Atonement, and while it is primarily celebrated by Jews it has great meaning for the Christian as well.  What many people may not realize is the connection between Yom Kippur and conservation.

In Leviticus 23 the Lord says to Moses that the Day of Atonement is meant to be a day of purification and rest.  What I find very interesting is there connection between rest and the Sabbath Year in Leviticus 25.  In general the Sabbath, the holiest day, is meant to be a day of rest.  Purity, rest, and holiness are all tied together on this day.  Of course, there is also the parallel between the Sabbath and the creation week, ending in the seventh day when God rested.  Wholeness is bound to holiness which is bound to rest.

The Sabbath Year was a seventh year in a cycle and, like the seventh day of creation, was meant to be a holy year of rest.  God told Moses that no one was supposed to work the ground.  Rather, the land would provide for the people out of the abundance of the sixth year.  In that year the Israelites were to eat whatever the land provided on its own from the seeds and plants remaining from the sixth year.  Today we recognize the wisdom of this principal: A year of rest would let the land recover from intensive farming.  The soil would regain nutrients from lying fallow.  Today sustainable farmers use forms of crop rotation to produce a similar effect.

After seven sevenths years of Sabbath came the Year of Jubilee; a fiftieth year of supreme rest and holiness.  In this year the Israelites were again prohibited from working the land.  This time, the abundance of the land from the sixth year would be so much that it would sustain the Israelites through the seventh year of Sabbath and the following year of Jubilee.  God says to Moses in Leviticus 25:23 "When you plant your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the sixth year. In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new crop is harvested in the ninth year."

But the Jubilee year didn't stop with sowing and harvest.  In that year land was meant to return to its original owners based on tradition family claims.  Homes within walled cities reverted to their original owners.  Indentured servants were absolved of their work responsibilities and released to be independent citizens again.  The essence of the year was to ensure that the every Israelite had the provisions he or she needed to sustain their familys' livelihoods.  God recognized that a period of rest and restoration was needed to ensure the sustainability of His people.

And so we circle round to the connections between Yom Kippur and the mission of Domicile Ecophile.  We may not all celebrate the Day of Atonement, but we all need to recognize that the land on which we rely for the survival of the human race needs a sabbath.  Without a healthy planet we are all on the path to losing the air we breathe, water we drink, and food we eat.  Living sustainably means treating God's creation in such a way that it gets the rest that it needs to provide us with our livelihoods.

God provided the Sabbath Year and Year of Jubilee to ensure both the survival of His people and His creation.  In that way sustainability is the spirit behind the Sabbath and Yom Kippur.  Paul writes in Romans 8:20-21 that, "Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay."  Though humanity's imperfection and sin is the source of creation's decay, the redemption that comes through Christ will redeem not only people, but God's whole creation.  The day of Atonement is a symbol for that redemption.  As we who love God act in a way so as to see "Heaven on Earth" through our actions, let's not forget that God longs for a day when His entire creation will be whole.  Let's let our actions not only be an example of Christ-like character, but also an example of sustainable respect for God's creation.

Species Updates

After a long summer we needed to make some updates to our species lists.  With the addition of many new bird sightings and new plantings like the chokeberry, Swamp Milkweed, Cardinal Flower, and other, the list was becoming a bit outdated.  Unfortunately, we here at DomEc didn't have the availability to make these updates incrementally over the summer as we would have liked.

We logged our first reptile at DomEc this summer--a young Black Rat Snake.  We don't have a category in the sidebar for reptiles because they are so rare here.  The same is true for amphibians; none of which have yet been logged.  Hopefully that will change.  Birds are now up to 106 species with Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and Cape May Warbler added in just the last few days.

Sadly some of the native plants didn't survive the heat wave and lack of rain that has afflicted the Domicile Ecophile property this August.  The American Chestnut seedling was one of the victims.  Many years ago a fallen tree created a hole in the canopy along the eastern edge of the property.  The chestnut had been planted in that hole in hopes of one day replacing the missing tree.  There are Eastern Poplar seedlings around the property.  One of them might get transferred in as substitute.

Butterfly Weed, a milkweed species, is now finally reproducing on its own.  About half-a-dozen seedlings have come up around the small hillside patch that was planted in the summer of 2014.  I suspect that since it is a temperate species the seeds may require a form of stratification (temperature changes to break down growth inhibitors in the seed).  Temperate plants often employ growth inhibitors to prevent them from germinating late in fall and dying in winter.  I suspect our new recruits are born of the 2014 seeds, not the plentiful 2015 crop that is blowing around the property now.

The Dappled Willow that was part of the horrendous (but typical) exotic-based landscape installation present when we took over the property has been pulled.  Many of the exotics are now being removed in conjunction with the vinyl siding project that is ongoing.  Two Burning Bush, two huge Japanese Barberry, and the willow have been removed so far.  In time these will all be replaced with natives or (human) food-producing plants.  More updates to come...

Our FIRST Video!

Posted below is our first video.  It's just a demo really.  We needed a place to test out settings, formats, and generally just see what the contest will look like when it is actually live.  This is not to say the content is fake: It is a legitimate video of activities happening here this week.  The production value, however, is a bit low and some of the editing a bit rushed.  Eventually we expect it will be deleted and replaced with a more formal version with a better intro.  Enjoy and feel free to give feedback on this very early attempt!

 

Animal House

No, it's not the classic John Belushi movie we're talking about today.  Rather the it is literal animal homes about which this post is.  The weather is warming.  The days are lengthening.  The birds are singing.  Yes, singing birds.  Most of the time singing birds means breeding birds and songbirds utilize nests.  Many birds, especially cavity-nesting species, utilize man-made birdhouses and here at the DomEc homestead we will be installing several such homes in hopes of aiding nesting and successful breeding this spring.

Wren/Chickadee house [front], screech-owl/kestrel box [rear], and bat house [right].

We've got three homes to be installed.  The first is a classic "birdhouse" designed for small songbirds, specifically chickadees or House Wrens.  Now would be the time to deploy the house for Black-capped Chickadees.  Resident species like chickadees, cardinals, titmice, and other tend to nest earlier in the year than migrants.  But since I would prefer to try for a House Wren I am going to delay positioning of the house until April; a week or two before the House Wrens arrive at this latitude.  I very much enjoy the incessant singing of the House Wren.

Next up is the most exciting of the three projects for me--a screech-owl box!  In this box we hope to host Eastern Screech-owl.  We have the species in the area and have seen them hunting the area and vocalizing several times.  These owls, like many owls, in natural circumstances would nest in an old woodpecker cavity or some other void in a tree.  For this reason it is often beneficial to include some small wood chips in the bottom of the box.  The same is true for American Kestrel, a falcon species of open area which this box might also host.  Years ago I did some work with a kestrel breeding program and we would add wood chips to the boxes during the spring clean-out to prepare the boxes for the new breeding season.

It it worth noting that quality nest boxes do not have perches.  Native cavity-nesters are accustom to entering tree hollows without the aid of a perch.  Not only are the decorative perches on many less-functional birdhouses unneeded, but they also aid predators and aggressive species in entering the nest either to prey on chicks or eggs or to start nests of their own.  These might include squirrels, House Sparrows, European Starlings, and others.

Last up is not a bird house at all.  Rather, the last box is a bat house.  These homes are not homes so much as communal roosts.  Bats populations in the eastern United States have declined sharply lately as a result of an infection caused by Pseudogymnoascus destructans.  This fungus causes the fatal White-nose Syndrome and is spread between bats roosting together during the winter and can kill whole colonies.  For this reason bats need all the assistance they can get.  Providing roosts like this one will give them an easier time finding safe shelter and a better foothold (literally and figuratively) in more areas.  A nice benefit is that bats also eat loads of mosquitoes.  If mosquito numbers are ruining your backyard BBQs, consider hosting some bats instead of spraying poisons.  In the long run it will be healthier for you and the bats (not to mention plenty of other native insects).

We'll keep our readers updated on the progress of nesting once the boxes are mounted.  Look for updates as spring progresses.

Foiling a Common Problem

If you have ever grown plants indoors you have probably dealt with the problem of plants bending towards a window.  Plants in these circumstances often become very thin and tall.  They rely on light for their metabolism and have very intricate internal mechanisms for maximizing light exposure. In short, they can sense the directionality of light and grow their green parts towards it.  This response is called phototropism; in this case positive phototropism because the plants grow towards the light source.

The obvious problem here is that your plant is going to grow in a lop-sided fashion and may eventually break or fall over under it's own weight.  To compound the problem, these window-fed plants are often also exposed to too little light, resulting in thin, weak stems that will break even more easily.  If the plants eventually go outside they often topple or break due to mechanical stress from wind or increased growth that results in a top-heavy body on a stem too weak.

These problems were affecting a Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) that I recently allowed to re-emerge from winter dormancy.  I decided to try a little camping trick I developed. When camping in some stone shelters at a local state park we often use tea lights (candles) to provide light.  Unfortunately, they provide little light. (Perhaps one candlepower?)  One provision often present, even as a waste item, is aluminum foil.  If smoothed and bent around the back of the candle the reflection can appreciably increase the light in the shelter, especially if several candles are being used.

I applied the same method to the Butterfly Weed and noticed immediate results.  The plant has remained nearly vertical for over a week now, whereas before I was rotating the plant twice a day.  It was reaching an angle near 45 degrees in just a few hours.  I can't guarantee that this method will completely prevent the symptoms associated with low light levels, but it certainly has improved the situation.  Give it a try and see what kind of result it produces for you.