2017 Life Logs, Day 207: AM at Peterson Farm; PM at Wood Neck
Date: Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Weather: Clear and Sunny; High 75, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
This morning Sam and Jonah went to their fort building camp and Ollie and I went to a Buzzards Bay Coalition Field and Farm workshop. This workshop took place at Peterson Farm which is on Falmouth conservation land. It is a place we have visited many, many times as until this winter/spring, there have been resident sheep and a llama in residence. Each spring we would go see the baby lambs and we loved watching them grow. The flock was sizable and they kept the farm well-trimmed. Unfortunately, the woman who owned the animals moved to western Massachusetts and took the llama and sheep with her. So, this morning when Ollie and I arrived, it was a bit of a shock to see the fields overtaken by tall grass and weeds.
But that was great for the purpose of this workshop. We were looking for critters that live in fields and there were lots of those—mostly bees, wasps, grasshoppers, and butterflies.
That was enough to keep the interest of the little ones. Ollie took a fishing net we had in the back of the car in the hopes of catching some insects. At one point, he had the net over his own head, so I had to ask the name of what he just caught!
Ollie was as interested in all the different kinds of weeds lining the path we were on than he was the insects, and he pointed out some really interesting plants that I totally missed. I was not able to get a good photo of the beautiful Monarchs and Painted Lady butterflies we saw, but I did get a photo of one Monarch that was hiding behind a milkweed plant.
We had a little time to kill after the workshop before picking up Sam and Jonah, so we went to Highfield Hall to take a little walk . . . always a delight.
At noon, Ollie and I picked up Sam and Jonah and went to my place for lunch. Since all of us had spent our morning stomping about in the woods and tall grass, we shed our clothes at the front door and did full tick checks before getting dressed in our bathing suits. The threat of disease from tick bites just get scarier and scarier, so we try to be as careful as possible. We then switched into beach gear and headed to Wood Neck. There was a line of cars waiting to get in as the parking lot was totally full. I assumed the boys would want to turn around go to another beach, but there were adamant that we wait and hope for a parking place. I told them we would wait for 20 minutes before leaving, but after 15 minutes, the gate keeper let us in. Our parking spot was right inside the entrance and far from where we wanted to go, but the boys didn’t let that dampen their spirits. I gave them their boogie boards and sent them out in the water to make their way to Lazy River. I walked along on the beach and loved watching them gallop like wild ponies through the water. Lazy River is how the water from the marsh behind the beach makes its way out to sea.
Low tide was at 4:30 this afternoon, so the water was rushing out when we arrived. Sam, Jonah, and Ollie has agreed that they would spend their beach time today jumping waves and riding Lazy River, not exploring the marsh. And they had a great time.
But just before dead low tide, they all decided to walk all the way to the back of the marsh to see how many crabs we could see. We were especially interested in the horseshoe crabs. We saw only one, but she was the biggest horseshoe crab any of us has ever seen and she looked absolutely GoPro in its waterproof case to get photos of our finds. We also found a spider crab that allowed me to carry him around for a bit. He wasn’t large, but I was surprised at how strong his legs were. And we saw lots of large green crabs. We also observed lots of sand pipers and other small water birds feasting in the mud flats. It was another spectacular day with the Goldpebbles.
It is public radio pledge week here, so Heather went to work this morning before the boys got up and had to be on the air until 7 pm tonight. She has to do the same tomorrow, so she asked if we could do a mid-day meet up with her tomorrow. The boys were very excited about that. So Heather is going to bike from Woods Hole (where she works) to Falmouth to pick up Sam and Jonah after fort building camp. Ollie and I will meet up with them and all of us will bike back to Woods Hole with her. After we have lunch, Heather will head back to work and the boys and I will head to Stoney Beach in Woods Hole. We’ll either take the trolley back to Falmouth or hitch a ride with Jed.
