Posted by Joe Barnes on April 21st, 2010 in Bundoran Farm Events and Occasions, General

The Batesville Store, located a short drive down Plank Road from Bundoran Farm, is one of the many things that make this part of Albemarle County so unique and special.  In addition great food, it’s one of the many nuclei of the Batesville/North Garden area.   Whether meetings friends for lunch or be listening to a small concert with local musicians, the Batesville Store is always worth a visit.

This Thursday evening, April 22nd, they are having another Big Ol’ Country Store Cookout. Kyle will be grilling up half-pound burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, and sausages.  Sharing the menu with Kyle’s “pieces de can’t resist ‘em” will be French fries, onion rings, mac & cheese, and a whole mess of other sides.  We’ll also be serving from the full deli menu.

Word has it that there’ll be a couple of kegs hanging around the store, looking to be useful, and as always, the store’s sommelier, Cid Scallet,  has chosen suitable wines for the occasion.

And the sounds from the Corner Lounge?  Those will be provided by one of their fave new local groups, Batesville Produce, who yielded a lot of buzz in their store debut a month ago.  Spend an hour with Produce and you’ll hear a peck of Delta blues, a bushel of Western Swing, a barrel of old-time country, and about ten kilos of great music!

The fun begins at 6:30 p.m. and lasts till 9:00 p.m.

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Posted by Joe Barnes on April 10th, 2010 in Education and Inspiration, General, Nature/Environment, Project Updates

This past week has been a pretty big media week for Bundoran Farm.

The week started out with a cover story in C-Ville Abode, C-Ville Magazine’s publication focusing on all the essentials of homes, gardening and neighborhoods in the Charlottesville/Albemarle County region.  The article entitle “Little Houses in the Big Woods” features some of the houses at Bundoran Farm that exemplify several of the planning, design and environmental principles being applied throughout the property.  It’s always nice to see the efforts of those involved building and living in a sensible (the homeowners, their builders and their architects) recognized.

A complete version of the article can be found at C-Ville Abode.

Later in the week Bundoran Farm on was featured on a segment of PBS’s Charlottesville-Inside Out

The episode, which aired on April 8 2010, includes a tour of the farm and interviews with Bundoran Farm team members Leif Riddervold, David Hamilton and Joe Barnes.

This is segment on Bundoran Farm is part of the third season of WHTJ PBS’s Telly Award winning show “Charlottesville Inside-Out,” hosted by Terri Allard. “Charlottesville Inside-Out” is a fun and unique interview program in which Terri Allard, a local performing artist and native daughter of the region, introduces viewers to the people and places that define the Charlottesville area.

You can air the segment by going to Charlottesville-Inside Out.

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Posted by David Hamilton on April 1st, 2010 in Bundoran Farm Events and Occasions, General, Nature/Environment

After environmentally-conscious developers, gentleman farmers and Norwegians with a sense of humor, we’ll have to add one more supposedly mythical creature to the Bundoran Farm menagerie.  Always-bubbly Natural Resource Manager Leif Riddervold pulled off this grab shot of an elusive resident of Israel Mountain, after Bundoran residents Grady and Diane Lewis reported some unsolicited shrub-trimming outside their home early this morning.

Good Forestry, Clean Water, Good Habitat for Sasquatch

Riddervold was lucky enough to trade a few words about local physical geography with the stealthy resident, who explained (here I paraphrase from Leif’s account):

“…It not called Tom Mountain.  It Sasquatch Mountain.   Sasquatch run Tom off after he borrow stick and not return…  Sasquatch miss Tom but Sasquatch majestic creature of forest, not $#%$&#$  Rent-A-Center…”

Apologies to Garrison Keillor for the Scandinavian jokes, and to Graham Roumieu for everything else.

Happy April 1st from the Bundoran Farm team and our forest friends.

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Posted by Joe Barnes on March 28th, 2010 in Education and Inspiration, Nature/Environment

FIELD SPARROW

Spizella pusilla

The field sparrows, who do winter at Bundoran Farm, have begun singing their lovely plaintive songs to declare their territories.  The song is distinctive: an accelerating series of soft, sweet whistles starting with long duration tones and increasing in rate to a trill.  The male must have an exclusive territory to attract a mate, but territories may be contiguous and only about 2 acres of open grassland.  Thus I hear several singing during a short walk at Bundoran Farm. Click here to hear their song.

The male and the female look alike, are non-streaked with a rusty brown side and crown and two white wing bars.   The pink bill and legs are distinctive.

Nest building begins in mid to late April, with the female selecting the nest site.  The nest is composed almost exclusively of grasses and is located near the ground in early spring, typically near he base of woody vegetation.  The second nest may be in a small sapling.  Since they need open grassland with some growth of short vegetation the field sparrow has been losing habitat and numbers have been declining. The nest may be preyed upon by snakes, small mammals and raptors.  Chipmunks have been observed eating a nestling.   A hot spring day may cause loss of eggs or death of nestlings, but a nest on an eastern slope is less likely to suffer such loss.

The female develops a brood patch and she incubates the 2-4 eggs for 10-17 days depending on the temperature.  The mass of the eggs is approximately 13% of the mass of the female.   Both parents feed the young who are naked when hatched, but are fully feathered by day 8 when they leave the nest.  The parents continue to feed them until they are 26-34 days old.   Like many birds they “outgrow” the nest and leave it before they can fly and feed themselves.

This time of the year the male stays close to the female, so you can usually see both.  They do not flock during the spring and summer, but I have seen small flocks in winter at Bundoran Farm.

 The field sparrow eats small seeds year round, and in breeding season increases the protein content of the diet with adult and larval insects.   They forage on the ground or low-lying vegetation within the breeding territory.  They may perch 3 or 4 meters off the ground to scan for food, pounce then go to another perch.

Dorothy Tompkins – Master Naturalist and Bundoran Farm Steward

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Posted by Joe Barnes on March 22nd, 2010 in Bundoran Farm Events and Occasions, Education and Inspiration, General, Uncategorized

Too often in today’s world our open spaces are either overly programmed or overly protected. Open space ripe for enjoyment are typically reserved or programmed for one thing and one thing only (baseball fields, golf courses, etc.). If they aren’t a single use space, they might be so protected that you can’t do anything on or with them (Stay off the Grass, No Dogs Allowed). It’s rare to fine a place large enough, diverse enough and cool enough where a “kid can be a kid” and do almost everything they want to do if they have a vivid imagination and sense of adventure.

This Sunday, my two son’s, during their frequent visits to Bundoran Farm with me, got a chance to explore and be boys in the truest sense with 2,300 acres of open landscape as their arena and a beautiful blue sky on a early spring day as their backdrop. First on the agenda was the launching of my youngest son’s model rocket. After a few launching glitches (come on, even NASA has some), his rocket went straight and high in the air. (See attached footage of this memorable event) The parachute deployed perfectly and the rocket started its graceful decent to the ground. Unfortunately, the breezes were a bit stronger than anticipated and the rocket landed high up in a tree along the edge of the pastures. If you find a rocket on the ground named “Crossfire” please drop it by our offices at the Baldwin Center. You will make an 11 year old boy very happy.

Click here to see the video of the missle launch.

With our space program on the shelf until we built another rocket, we turned our attention to another one our favorite pastimes with the sky — Cloud Shapes. We lay down on our backs, look into the sky and take turns describing the various shapes and figures we see in the clouds. Today we saw a many things including rabbit, a profile of a man’s face and a Jai Alai player.

After a good round on Cloud Shaping, we took a stroll over to observe the cows and all of the new calves. Not wanting to startle them, we watched from the fence lines as the cows seemed to enjoy this beautiful Spring day as much as we did.

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