Farm Talk: Live Long and Lobster and The Ipswich River

After three days in Maine I am back and reporting for duty.  I plan to still continue with the 21 day challenge of commenting on daily conversations both in personal life and work.  Maine was a fantastic weekend get away from the city with some of my oldest and best friends from growing up.   We spent a day on pontooning on Lake Thompson, two nights at the new and always over crowded Oxford Casino, and one epic night of bomb fire madness with oversize marshmellows and a fortress of wood.  We capped off the weekend with a dip into Portland, ME.  What started out as a quick trip to find food turned into a two hour wait for a lobster roll.  But with great summer weather in one of New England's finest port towns there is nothing to really complain about.  was great weather

That was the weekend.  Today at the farm we moved the harvest operation to the tot soi an Asian mustard green-spinach like plant.  One topic that came up was the Cicada Wasp.  Get this!  This parasitic wasp captures cicada's and can have a torso that grows over an inch long.  Major heads up if you are a squeamish bug person!  An even more startling factoid is that once the wasp catches a Cicada it implants eggs (which acts as a parasite) into the Cicada that proceed to hijack its bodily functions until the hatch.   It sounds gruesome but true to mother nature's form, balance is the key, with one death comes another birth.

After the day I took a fantastic river cruise in The Ipswich Wildlife Sanctuary in one of the canoes belonging to Green Meadow's Farm.  Next time I think I will push it to the Atlantic some 6 miles away!

More from the Farm Cooler tomorrow.

Z