The Old Farmer's Almanac Farmers Calendar

Wild Turkeys Go From a Novelty to a Nuisance

Wild turkeys are such a familiar sight now that they are as likely to inspire annoyance as awe. When we see two hens bringing a couple dozen poults across a road—one hen on each side of the crossing, herding the little ones on, gently correcting the slow learners who are bumbling off in the wrong direction—we may honk the horn to hurry them up.

Biologists call such a group a brood flock. A hen lays 10 to 12 eggs, and there’s no evolutionary advantage in an unrelated hen looking after the young. They apparently find some efficiency, or increased safety, or sheer pleasure in combining forces with another mother. Maybe it’s as simple as having one adult on each side of the roads that must be crossed.

In the brood flock that hangs out in our neighborhood, the poults are adult-size now. They likely hatched in June. The two other brood flocks farther up the road have smaller poults, probably mothered by hens that renested in late summer and brought off a second brood.

By winter, the young turkeys will have separated by age and sex into larger flocks, stalking through the snowy woods, leaving four-toed tracks like the dinosaurs that were their ancestors. Watching them now, it seems amazing it took so long to see the resemblance.

Why Oak Trees Decide to Make More Acorns

It’s hard to believe how much noise something smaller than a thimble makes when it falls 60 or 70 feet. On warm autumn nights, if the windows are open, we hear acorns ripping through leaves and thudding onto the roof of the toolshed. When there was an aluminum canoe out there, turned upside down, the cascade sounded like a Jamaican steel band.

Most of what’s inside an acorn is protein to nourish an infant tree, producing more oaks. But squirrels and other inhabitants of the wood—chipmunks, deer, rodents, even birds—also eat acorns. In the old days, farmers used to drive their pigs into the woods to fatten on heaps of fallen acorns.

Oaks produce more nuts than all other trees put together. In a good year, an acre of red oaks can produce 500 pounds of acorns. Not all years are good for oaks, though; scientists think the oaks have abundant acorn years at irregular intervals so that the creatures that eat acorns can’t consume the entire crop in one year. There’s a theory that the oaks “choose” when to produce a supercrop, communicating with each other by emitting chemical signals through their roots.

All those thudding, ripping, and clanging sounds that keep us awake are oak trees talking to each other, planning a sophisticated strategy for survival.

Taking Down the Trees, Taking Back the Milky Way

The arborist came today, accompanied by five sturdy young men, an enormous crane, and a chipper. They’ve been charged with taking down four very large trees that were threatening the house.

This threat did not occur overnight, of course. The land under and around the house was cleared almost 40 years ago. At the time, none of these very large trees hung over the roof. It was clearing all the trees around them that set off a growth spurt.

Under a magnifying glass, the stump of one of the fallen trees, a 60-foot-tall red oak, revealed some 80 growth rings. The first 40 or so were narrow—just a millimeter or two in width. Crowded by other trees, it got little sun. But the lens showed that in ensuing years, after space was cleared for the house, the rings expanded rapidly. Ring number 41 was half a centimeter, and the outermost ring was almost 4 centimeters wide. When that tree was no longer competing with others, it grew much faster.

That oak’s seedling set its roots soon after the Great Hurricane of 1938 roared up the Connecticut River Valley, scything down millions of trees. But it left open space for millions more. Now that the big oak is gone, the Milky Way is visible above the house for the first time in decades.

Part Chatauqua, Part Amateur Hour: A Small-Town Church Where the Members Do the Sermon

The pastor of our little church takes the month of August off. So does much of his congregation. It’s not a big group to begin with; on an ordinary Sunday in October or May, we’ll have 50 or so present. In mid-August, we seldom see more than 25. So, rather than pay some retired minister to “supply the pulpit,” we supply ourselves. Four lay persons, all volunteers, read Bible verses and say a few words in lieu of a sermon.

It’s part Chautauqua and part Amateur Hour. Last August, one of the deacons talked about the Amistad case, in which a group of Africans who had been kidnapped by slavers rose up and took control of the ship. On the second Sunday, a gentleman talked about the Bahá’í faith, which has a landmark in our town. The next week, a woman who had lost two siblings in childhood spoke movingly about the best ways to “be there” for people who have suffered such losses. At month’s end, a choir member revealed funny details of rehearsal shenanigans.

Amateur Hour makes us appreciate each other a little more. We share our experiences, our joys and griefs. We discover unexpected depths and eloquence in our midst. We learn that certain people may be paying close attention to what we say and do—and maybe even taking notes.