March Conservation Tip

Wolves in Peril!

...again and again...

Once almost extinct by humans, wolves had a bit of a comeback here in the Rocky Mountains. But now the US Congress has taken away their endangered species status and hence opened the doors for states like Idaho and Montana to once again kill them by the hundreds.
Right now, until March 27th, there is a world-wide petition going on, trying to convince the Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse this.
Please consider making your voice heard, too!
Just click the link below

NRDC Biogems Defenders

To find out more about the status of wolves in North-America and why they are so important to a healthy eco-system please check out this site:

Defenders of Wildlife - Wolf 101

Antarctica Flashback

It's already a year since I spent 6 weeks in Antarctica...time for a flashback!

This blog I would like to dedicate to one highly adapted bird, also the icon of Antarctica, the penguin.

Follow the Gentoo Penguin, Pygsocelis papua, as it masters mission impossible, raising young  on the White Continent.

At the beginning of the Antarctic summer, the Gentoos start building their nests or remodel older nests. They typically have their colonies near the shore line on snow free ground.

Most of the colonies though are on higher ground, to be safe from flooding.

If the way from the breeding ground to the open water is covered in snow, the penguins will create paths in the snow that they will use over and over again, so-called penguin highways, that make it easier to waddle up and down the slopes.

They nest in colonies ranging in size from only a few to thousands.

Pebbles play an important role for the Gentoos, they build their nests with them and seem to be very picky as for which pebble might be just the right one for a certain space. A male might even bring a especially nice pebble to a female to impress her...pebbles are a girls best friend...;-)
Even the youngsters can be seen playing with little rocks.
A Gentoo nest can contain as many as 1700 of these pebbles!
Although Gentoo Penguins reach maturity with the age of two, they usually start to reproduce around 3 to 4 years old. By that time a male looks for a good potential nest site and tries to attract a female. Once they find together, Gentoo Penguins tend to stay together for life.

Early in the Antarctic summer the female lays two eggs within three days. Both partners share the task of incubating the eggs for 35 days. Although both parents try hard, not all eggs get to hatch.

Some roll out of the nest, many get robbed and eaten by Skuas. One afternoon on Cuverville Island I was watching a incubating penguin being distracted by a neighborly dispute. A Skua spotted this instantanously, flew in with lightning speed and stole the egg. The parent realized what just happened and was most distraught and kept looking and calling for some time. Quite heartbreaking.

After the chicks hatch they stay in the nest under close supervision for about 3-4 weeks

And again both parents share the task of either defending the nest or finding food for the chicks and themselves
.

After this close nest period, the youngsters are huddled together in so called creches, a kind of Gentoo kindergarten, so that both parents can go and find food.

At around 70 days old, the little ones will fledge and explore their surroundings more and more.

During that time, until they finish their first molt from "baby" feathers to waterproof adult feathers and become independent, they will still call for their parents, each parent and chick is able to distinguish between it's parent/chick in between hundreds of other penguins, and

their parents will still come and feed them. The feeding of the young works via regurgitation...a rather noisy and a bit stinky business as I was lucky enough to observe closely. But also highly effective, nothing is wasted.

With about 100 days, the young Gentoo penguins reach their independence. Their molt will have completed and they are ready to go into the water and look after them self. However only 30% to 50% survive the first year. The Skuas are a serious threat for the eggs and the small chicks and once they are too big for the Skuas and ready to go into the water, seals, especially Leopard Seals, will wait for the inexperience youngsters.

Once the fledglings have made their final departure, the adults start their annual molt. For a good three weeks they seem to stoically endure the ordeal of a complete change of feathers. During this time they can't go into the ocean and hence they do not eat during that time.

Once the molt is completed though, life goes on as usual. The Gentoo Penguins breeding on the Antarctic Peninsula will seek out ice free regions farther north during the Antarctic winter months and return in spring to start all over....

February Conservation Tip

EASY TREATS FOR OUR
FEATHERED BACKYARD FRIENDS

Earlier this winter, when we had these bitterly cold temperatures and lots of snow, I went out one afternoon to feed the horses. Passing a nearby tree, all of a sudden a half dead bird, a Yellow-Shafted Flicker, fell out of the tree and right in front of me. That poor thing was just bone and feathers. We tried to bring it back to life but starvation had already taken it's toll.

Time to get active and feed our backyard friends I thought, but wasn't sure what they would need and like. So I called my very knowledgeable birder friend Judy for some advice. And went right to work...

It was such a great success, that I did this all winter long and just made a batch yesterday as our weather forecast calls for snowfall for the next couple of days.

And this is what Judy recommended:

You need only need a few things, pine cones, peanut butter, sunflower seeds and a strong string.

Secure the string, I used some ribbon, tightly at the thicker base of the pine cone and leave enough extra string to hang the cone later on.
Then thickly spread peanut butter on the pine cone. Please don't use peanut butter like Skippy or Jif, not only are they sugared and salted, which the birds for sure don't need, most of them also contain palm oil, which nobody should use! (please see "Palm Oil, a Pressing Matter" for more info)
Just get the natural, plain peanut butter with no additives.

After the pine cone is covered with peanut butter all around roll it in a bowl of sunflower seeds.

That's it. You are ready to hang the bird treats. This is so easy, it is probably also a great activity to do with kids!

All you have to do now is hanging them. I chose some trees where I had seen the birds hang out and which had branches low enough for me to reach but high enough off the ground so that the cats could not reach.

Just for the fun I made a few for my chickens, too. They loved it.....

Exploring the Kootenays

Part IV

Fort Steel Heritage Town in Winter

Fort Steele, only a few miles down the road from where we live, is a bustling tourist attraction during the summer with an annual visitor count of close to 80000.

In the off season though, although the town site itself is open, all the shops are closed, and peace and quiet settles over the place.

I always wanted to photograph this lovely place in the snow and on a leisurely Sunday after a recent overnight snow fall I did exactly that.

Gate with view of Fisher Peak

In absolute solitude, nobody was around except a very few of the staff, I could a explore the "winter" beauty of this historic site.

Old Stables

The towns very beginnings reach back to the 1860' gold rush at the nearby Wild Horse River. At that point it was called Galbraith's Ferry. Named after John Galbraith who was smart enough to offer a ferry service over the Kootenay River to the miners.

Restored Store Front

The town went trough the for the west so typical booms and recessions and went from a population of 11 to one of a thousand and back.

One of my favorite shops, the Harness maker

Around 1888, by popular vote, the town got renamed Fort Steele, in honor of  Superintendent Samuel B. Steele. He and 75 members of the North West Mounted Police helped to resolve serious issues that started to erupt between the native Ktunaxa and the new settlers.

One of the little chapels

Unfortunately for the town of Fort Steele, the long-awaited Canadian Pacific Railway bypassed Fort Steele in favor of the growing community of the nearby Cranbrook.

Fort Steele Water Works Tower

In 1904 the government offices were moved to Cranbrook and by 1910 the population of Fort Steele was rapidly declining.

Icicles instead of Ice Cream

By popular demand the Government declared 1961 Fort Steele as an historic park with a mandate “to preserve, present, and manage for public benefit the historic settlement of Fort Steele . . .”

Not only is the town site lovingly restored with lots of educational and fun happenings during the summer season, Fort Steele is also the year-round home of many endangered heritage livestock breeds,

as the Cotswold Sheep here, they must just have had their breakfast...

and of course the beloved Black Clydesdales.

"Historic" Junk Yard

Apart from bringing the history so lively to the people, Fort Steele is also a photographers dream,

Pavilion

the scenery is spectacular

Old Wagon framing the Fisher peak Valley

and lots of old and older artifacts beg to be captured.

Rusty Remnants

Detail with View

And the snow just made my day!

Small Tree overlooking the Kootenay Valley

Starburst

Please visit the Fort Steel Heritage Town website for more information....and if you are in the area, make sure to stop by. It is well worth it no matter the season!

January Conservation Tip

Easy Raised Plant Beds 

and

Applied Permaculture for Horse(wo)men

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a gardening book:
" Gaias's Garden" by Toby Hemenway. This is not your common gardening book...It's about permaculture on a home scale. I just had heard about permaculture, a fascinating and very natural concept, so I bought it. 

Leafing through it I would like to have started a garden right away, but for some reason I never got to it.

This last March we were lucky enough to be able to attend a permaculture workshop here in Kimberley led by no other than the author of my book: Toby Hemenway

To describe permaculture here would go way beyond the scope of this blog, let me just quote one of the "founders" of modern permaculture:

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system " 

- Bill Mollison

After the workshop I was seriously ready to get my hands dirty! But I needed to build up some compost first. For how I did it please follow the Hot Composting link below.
With two horses no problem, just a matter of time...;-)

Since the soil here is very rocky, after all we are living in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I had to build up the soil first. And I wanted to do this in raised plant beds for easier access and maintenance. An how-to article in the Organic Garden Magazine from 2012 gave perfect instructions for an easy way to build some.

And here is how I did it: 

First I prepared the wood for the boxes, for a 8' by 4' box I used three 2-by-12 boards, 8 feet long, one 2-by-4 board, 8 feet long and galvanized deck screws. I sawed one of the 2-by-12 boards in half, these 2 pieces became the end pieces, the two uncut boards became the sides. The 2-by-4 board I sawed into one 4foot piece, which ended up being the center brace, and four 1foot pieces for corner support.

Since the elements here are rather harsh on the wood I wanted to treat it for protection, but not with anything that would seep into the soil and/or plants. After some research and with the help of the local hardware store I found LifeTime wood treatment. It's a tiny package of non-toxic, eco-friendly powder, that you mix with water. Painting the boards with it felt like painting with water, I am curious to see how it holds up.

Assembly was easy, I just screwed the boards to the corner support 2- by-4's to make a box. Instead of assembling the whole planter box, I only did it half way, so that I could fill it easier.
I also watered the ground where the planter boxes were to go up very thoroughly the night before the assembly. 

Now the process of filling started....in theory you can just fill it with good, compost-rich, expensive soil and be done with it. But where is the fun there?...;-) So I followed Toby Hemenway's instructions for sheet mulching, since I had all of the "ingredients" at hand anyway, thanks to the horses.
There are plenty of different ways to make your sheet mulch with. If you don't have access to free horse manure, get "Gaia's Garden", the author explains the whole process in much more detail, with lots of alternatives. I just had all this, hence the title "permaculture for horse(wo)men"...;-)
The ingredients I used are:
horse manure
big sheets of card board, since I had planned this since quite a while, I kept plenty of the moving boxes
compost, which I had "hot-composted" out of horse manure
old hay, 1 1/2 to two bales per box
straw, 3/4 of a bale per box

First came a thin layer of horse manure on the wet lawn, to attract worms and other "soil aerators".

The manure I covered with a layer of thick card board, which I had saved from the move. A thick layer of newspaper would have worked, too. I had to make sure the card board overlapped and covered the whole area in order to successfully inhibit weeds and existing plants to come through. Then another good watering was called for.

On top of the wet cardboard I put another thin layer of manure. At this point I also finished assembling the box by closing it with the help of the two remaining corner support 2-by-4's and adding the one 4 feet long center brace.

The next step was adding a eight to twelve inch layer of bulk mulch. I had some rained on and rotten hay that I used for that, breaking it up in flakes and covering the manure with it.
At this point I gave it another good watering. The goal was to get it damp but not wet. Kind of the same wrung-out sponge feel that one would want for compost.

Speaking of compost, that was what came next, about two inches of it.

The final layer should be a couple of inches of weed- and seed free organic matter. As you can see I used flakes of straw, but bark or wood shavings would have worked, too.

This is how it looks right now...

According to "Gaia's Garden" one could directly start planting, but the productivity will be strongly enhanced after about six months. So all I have to do now is to wait for spring, late spring for my climate here, and then the planting can begin!

I will keep you posted.

Sources:

Toby Hemenway: "Gaia's Garden" A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd edition
I only can recommend this book!

LifeTime Wood Treatment

Hot Composting

Build a Raised Bed by Organic Gardening Apr/May 2012
Unfortunately the article is not available online. If more instructions are needed, please feel free to email me

December Conservation Tip

Here we are again, searching for meaningful gifts for family and friends.
At the same time many of us are de-cluttering and favor the "less is more" movement, so another tie or book is just not going to do the trick...

How about a Gift Donation then? There are always the well known organizations, that come with nice certificates and even small plush toys, like:

World Wildlife Fund

Defenders of Wildlife

Polar Bear International

Heifer


This year I also looked out for some smaller, more individual organizations, that need your support and are just a bit more specific:

Want to protect the oceans?

There is no better way than support the Sea Sheperd Conservation Society!!


How about this for the horse lover:

Support the American Mustang Movie!
Great gadgets with your pledge!!
More here:




Having a heart for elephants?

Foster an orphaned elephant with the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust , the perfect gift for any elephant friend and a great help for these gentle giants!


Want to stay closer to home and do something for the farm animals ?
An organization that I personally really admire since they are taking in the beaten and sick, no matter what, is the Gentle Barn. You can adopt a farm animal, bid to name one of the rescued ones or support them by getting one of their Christmas ornaments.

Another farm animal related group that needs support might be especially interesting for my German friends: Kuhrettung

Watch the movie, it will make you smile!





Not into animals? How about helping to fund some cancer research?
Zach Sobiech, a teenage boy with a rare form of cancer, a osteosarcoma, wrote the song, "clouds" last year about him dealing with his imminent death. He debuted it last December. He died in May 2013.
This December a choir of about 5000 people sang his song....



You can buy the song on iTunes and 100% of all net proceeds benefit Zach's Osteoscarcoma Research Fund. Or you can directly donate to the Childrens Cancer Research Fund.

You have already the perfect gift? All you have to do is to wrap it?
Consider wrapping it in reused paper. Regarding to "Give a shit about Nature":
If every American family wrapped just three presents this holiday season in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.
Now, that's a lot of paper!

There are certainly many more good causes out there that need support and would make a nice gift. I will keep my eyes open and will post more ideas on my facebook site.

In this spirit

HAPPY HOLIDAYS