Lost Valley Nature Center News (July 18, 2007)
Cosponsored by Lost Valley Nature Center and NextGEN (the youth branch of the Global Ecovillage Network), this event will focus on fall ecology, indigenous tradition, and the harvest season here in the western Cascade foothills. We'll explore what is happening on the land at this time of year, and how we humans can harvest the bounty from our gardens, farms, orchards, and from the wild. We'll learn about the ways of the Kalapuya who preceded us here, as well as sustainable food growing and preservation, resource stewardship, ecological restoration, and traditional seasonal celebrations. We'll bring together people ages 12 through 112 to explore how we can learn from one another and pass ecological wisdom and insights back and forth between generations. We'll also learn about school gardens, mushrooms, lichens, and mosses, building community, ecovillages, and more. Guest presenters include Esther Stutzman (Kalapuyan storyteller), Bill Burwell (Kalapuya researcher), Jude Hobbs (Permaculture teacher and designer), Jerry Hall (ethnobotanist), Jen Anonia (Food for Lane County Gardens Program Manager), Heiko Koester (Permacultural landscaper), Sharon Blick (former director, School Garden Project), Rick Valley (Lost Valley land steward), Alison Rosenblatt (NextGEN--Global Ecovillage Network), Tammy Davis (mycologist), Tobias Policha (ethnobotanist), Sarah Kleeger and Andrew Still (Seed Ambassadors Project), Dave Kofranek (lichenologist), and others to be announced. For more details, check www.lostvalley.org/fallecology, or contact Chris at 541-937-2567 ext. 116, nature AT lostvalley.org, or write Lost Valley Nature Center, 81868 Lost Valley Lane, Dexter, OR 97431.
Birds of a Feather
A large California quail family (formerly a pair) has successfully emerged from a nest in the shrubbery near the Meadow Garden, and is now scurrying and fluttering all around that area (including among our tomato and squash plantings). A dark-eyed junco nest in the eves of the guest house porch, black-capped chickadee and tree swallow nests in the snag by the barn, a western screech owl nest in a snag between the office and the basketball court, and countless other nests all over the land have also produced offspring. If our site is typical (based on information gleaned from Dave Bontrager's bird classes), probably at least an equal numberhave failed--l ike the Steller's jay nest which was attempted on top of the electrical lines going into the lodge bathroom/laundry building. Further up Anthony Creek, near the remnant old-growth about a mile and a half from us, osprey have been nesting on top of a snag, with one of the parents frequently observing from a perch on a taller, neighboring snag.
Meanwhile, across Route 58, I have been taking part in a fascinating class led by Dave Bontrager on Birds of Elijah Bristow State Park. For the months of July and August, we are visiting the same stretch of riverside land one or two full mornings a week. We've had our eyes on several nests, have seen or heard 48 bird species so far (including both adult and juvenile green heron, perhaps the most striking bird we've encountered), and are enjoying the benefits of getting to know one piece of land and its avian life through repeated visits over time. The site is only two-and-a-half miles from Lost Valley, which makes it especially convenient as a nature-study home-away-from-home for Nature Center staff.
Oregon Country Fair
As usual, Swainson's thrushes sang up a storm along the Left Bank throughout the Oregon Country Fair weekend, apparently unfazed by the tens of thousands of pedestrian visitors to their home ground. Our land steward collected seed of particularly choice serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia). >From the Permaculture booth in Energy Park's Ag Alley, we distributed seedballs containing native plant species to help in revegetation efforts in natural areas, and other nonnative-species seedballs for use on more disturbed sites. We also distributed literature and talked with interested parties about various upcoming activities, including October's Fall Ecology and Harvest event (see above and www.lostvalley.org/fallecology) and the fall Ecovillage and Permaculture Certificate Program (see www.lostvalley.org/epcp). Current land and garden interns and many Ecovillage and Permaculture students took breaks from activities on the land here to participate in this larger gathering. Back at home,our newly-harvested garlic continued to dry, berries continued to ripen, and our large squash patches, along with our kale, cukes, quackgrass, and other vegetables and weeds, just kept growing.
2007 is shaping up to be the Year of the Thimbleberry at Lost Valley Nature Center. Last fall we removed much of the nonnative Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) that was overshadowing native vegetation along the Cedar Trail and other trails. This year, we are being richly rewarded by better growth on many of those native plants, including a more abundant and easily accessible crop of thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus), which have recently started to ripen. Their distinctive, soft, maple-like leaves occur on annually renewed canes emerging from underground rhizomes. Their sweet, red, raspberry-type aggregate fruits, resembling broad, shallow thimbles, will never be found in stores. In fact, they never even make it to the kitchen here. Because they do not hold their form once picked, they need to be popped immediately into the picker's mouth. Rumors have it that they can also be preserved in the form of jam or dried fruit leather; however, that would require a measure of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification not always associated with wild berry picking at the end of a long day. As of now, the Year of the Thimbleberry can be experienced only by going out onto the land, finding the spots where thimbleberries like to grow, plucking the ripe fruits one by one, and letting each melt in the mouth before it melts in the hand. Although the earliest thimbleberries here are now ripe (or in the Nature Center staff's stomach), most are not ready yet. Thimbleberry season will certainly overlap with salal season and nonnative blackberry season, which have not yet begun on our land.
The Traveling Dewberries
Our earliest blackberry is the native dewberry (a.k.a. trailing blackberry, tripvine), Rubus ursinus. These delicious fruits have been available for several weeks, and continue to ripen. Synchronistically, the Nature Center staff has formed a "group," The Traveling Dewberries, to record a homemade follow-up album to last summer's Train Off the Tracks, an acoustic guitar recording of which a number of the people on this list have copies. If you are interested in finding out more about the new one, please email nature AT lostvalley.org for a fuller description and details about how, for a small donation of either money or goodwill to the Nature Center, you may be able to obtain a copy, assuming the Dewberries consent to a little more traveling and decide that the fruit is actually ripe. Thanks to improved recording capabilities here, bona-fide "benefit albums," comprised of music arising from the considerable talent currently residing at Lost Valley, are also a future possibility. Please let us know if you would be interested in such a prospect, and also whether you'd prefer the songs on the album to be sung by humans or birds. Your vote counts!
Happy Summer,
Chris