Walk Along Middle River in Swoope—June 4, 10 ’till noon Come walk along the Middle River with Virginia Senator Emmett Hanger and ninth-generation farmer Jeanne Trimble Hoffman on her farm in Swoope, Virginia. Middle River is a tributary of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River—headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay....
This is the place . . . Swoope. I wrote a book about it . . . Swoope Almanac, Stories of love, land, and water in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
The riparian buffers on our farm on Middle River are now fifteen years old. Fifteen years ago, the “River Farm” was basically a cool-season grass pasture with a few scattered mature trees along the banks of the river. Now, in addition to excellent forage for cattle, there are hundreds of...
The emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis, is a destructive, non-native insect that kills all species of ash trees. First discovered in Michigan in 2002 it has spread to thirty-three states and is confirmed in all six of the Chesapeake Bay watershed states. They have arrived in Augusta County, Virginia in...
I watched it devour a whole nest of tent caterpillars. Yellow-billed Cuckoos, we need a lot more of them – they prefer to eat hairy caterpillars like the eastern tent caterpillar that defoliate trees. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Coccyzus americanus, sometimes called the rain crow, nests and forages in the riparian...
This is a sifting of writings and ruminations for the year 2017:
As summer moves closer to autumn it seems there are more native plants in the various riparian buffers we have around the farm. Butterfly weed, jewelweed, wingstem, purpletop, and many other plants are in bloom now. However; there are many invasive, non-native plants in bloom as well. Invasive Species Control...
America’s Most Successful and Largest Conservation Program on HOLD. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) – America’s most successful and largest conservation program on private, “working” lands is on hold, except for CREP (but not in Virginia, I’ll explain later). Earlier this month USDA instructed its county offices to process only...
The downstream and upstream pictures in this post were published by the Bay Journal in William Funk’s article “Virginia Faulted for Handling of Cattle Pollution in Shenandoah“. Cattle Destroy Streams and the Aquatic Ecosystem. Livestock that have access to streams and rivers pollute the water with their manure and urine....
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