Spring Time in Bayview
A delightful visitor.
Community & Table
I was drawn specifically to this area on the island. I always think of Bayview as a hub. The community here is centered around food, plants and generous people. I didn't want to start this project in the woods, tucked away in a remote area of Whidbey. Not that I wouldn't appreciate the peaceful serenity of that life, but after all I wanted to start a business where we lived. We are lucky to have Good Cheer Food Bank, Bayview Garden, The Farmer's Market, and so many small businesses surrounding our farm.
This spring season we have been privileged to be included in another community, an avian community, as well. We have golden finches starting families on our farm. If you've never seen our state bird's babies, then you are missing out on true bird cuteness.
The barn swallows have returned this year to help us with our bug population. They make mud nests under the eaves of our historic barn, and “decorate” the exterior walls as well. The mess is a small price to pay for the work they do and the joy of watching them elegantly swooping about the farm.
Every year we have a few families of Killdeer that make their nests amongst the row crops. Usually, they make nests by the beach, but I guess the fields look like a nice flat beach-like place to lay. The parents are particularly good at distracting you from getting too close to their nests. They do this funny dance that looks like they are injured to draw predators to another location. Although the Killdeer think our farmers are predators, so they just flail around on the daily. It's pretty amusing.
One part of this bird community we are not so lucky to have on our farm this year are the bald eagles. Although they are majestic birds, they have now taken about 12 of our laying hens. The eggs our hens lay are so precious because we use them in preparations such as our pasta and ice cream. The eagles just motivated us to up our bird protection game and to hatch out some more birds in our incubator. This year we started 25 chicken eggs and had 23 survive the hatch-out.
It's a feathered community here on our farm.
-Tyla Nattress; Wine Maven
Field peas are planted to cover crop but their flowers and tendrils are so tender we put them in our salads and on our flatbread
From the Farm
The goldfinches are back! Full transparency: I’m not sure they were ever actually gone, but this spring I’ve been seeing them all over the farm. Lots of them. It started in late March during my Monday morning farm walk, when a scattered flash of yellow zipped by. The birds eventually settled in an overwintered bed of kale that had bolted and gone to seed. At first, it was hard to make them out among the yellow brassica flowers, but there they were: a family of about six tiny goldfinches. In my five years on the farm, I had never noticed them before—though that didn’t mean they weren’t here. Since then, I’ve seen them everywhere: hiding in the pea trellis, bopping around the flower beds, and I even opened a high tunnel one morning to find about ten of them anxiously buzzing around inside.
This week, I found out that Vince and Tyla had noticed the same thing. In the 15 years they've owned the property, they had never seen such an abundance of these tiny birds. I figured there must be a reason for this adorable infestation, so I did some research. My hypothesis was that the increase was due to the greater diversity of edible plants we'd added to the farm, but I had never actually seen them eating any of those crops. It turns out I was wrong. The goldfinches were using the edible plants for habitat, but they weren’t eating them. Instead, it was the less edible plants they were after: sunflowers, bachelor’s buttons, zinnias, rye grass, oats, and even thistle.
Over the last couple of seasons, we expanded our flower and cover crop programs to boost farm-stand sales and improve soil fertility. What we actually did was increase biodiversity, which then compounded to create even more life. My hypothesis wasn’t entirely wrong; I was just attributing the goldfinch boom to the wrong types of plants.
Farmer Pat
Head to Toast to book you Summer Experience with us. Reservations available Thursday through Sunday. July 9 through the first week of September.
