Late December Duck Pond

We built this shallow pond for our resident wood ducks  (Aix sponsa), and it's also very popular with frogs, toads, peepers, salamanders and turtles.  When there is snow on the ground, the tracks show that it's also a popular stop for mammals and birds.

A nesting box built by Alicia Johnston and Gina Armstrong in 2007,
and erected by Grace Young and Katie Lloyd (and their helpful parents).

With the river in the background.

South Branch in the Snow

Just photos.

Looking upstream toward Levels, WV.

Snow highlights the unusual cliff formations across the river.

Cheat River Festival Coordinator

Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Do you love Cheatfest?  Do you love Cheatfest so much you want to be our fearless fest leader?  Apply by 1/4/13!  Please share this opportunity with appropriate friends, colleagues, and groups. Friends of the Cheat Job Opportunity Cheat River Festival Coordinator Friends of the Cheat, Inc. a non-profit, grassroots, watershed group based out of Kingwood, WV is seeking a coordinator for the annual Cheat River Festival held on the first Saturday of May since 1994.  The Festival Coordinator will be responsible for handling all aspects of festival coordination and execution, including:  leading Friends of the Cheat’s Festival Committee; serving as the primary point of contact for festival vendors, key volunteer leaders, and the press; recruiting and coordinating vendors and exhibitors; developing and managing event advertising, marketing materials, and associated grant writing; procuring goods and services related to the festival such as fest merchandise and contractors (sound, security, sanitation, etc.); procuring donations of goods and services for silent auction and raffles; assisting the volunteer coordinator with volunteer recruitment and management; researching alternative parking procedures; updating and maintaining the festival website and social media outlets; drafting/compiling a festival manual for comprehensive record keeping; and leading the setup, execution, and cleanup of the 2013 festival to be held May 4, 2013.  The Festival Coordinator will also work with and provide input to the Festival Site Committee to develop long-term site development plans.  The successful Festival Coordinator must be able to coordinate with veteran festival volunteers to maintain and expand the popular aspects of the festival while balancing the organization’s desire to improve the status quo for a more meaningful festival experience and maximized profits. The successful applicant will be competent in MS Office and possess strong verbal communication skills. Excellent organizational skills are a must.  Attention to detail, flexibility, and the ability to both work unsupervised and be a team player is key to success.  Graphic design knowledge and experience with Wordpress websites is beneficial but not required. Friends of the Cheat is offering this position as a $5K contract with a potential cash bonus based on festival profits.  The ideal contract period is from 1/15/13 through 6/15/13.  Hours will gradually increase from about 10 hours per week to full time as the festival date approaches and taper off during the wrap up period after.  Evening and weekend work is required; however, the work schedule is flexible and many duties may be completed from an adequately equipped home office.  Festival related travel and mobile phone reimbursement will be built into the contract. Interested applicants should submit a cover letter, resume, and list of three references with contact information by Friday, January 4th to Friends of the Cheat.  E-mail submissions are preferred to Amanda@cheat.org.  Send hard copies to:  Amanda Pitzer, Executive Director, Friends of the Cheat, 119 South Price St., Suite 206, Kingwood, WV 26537.                                                             Smiling Faces Look how many people you would make happy by being a successful fest coordinator!                                                             Important Funds Each year, the festival raises around 40% of FOC's annual operating budget. May 4, 2013 will mark the 19th Cheatfest!  forward to a friend  Copyright © 2012 Friends of the Cheat, All rights reserved. You are a friend of the Cheat! Our mailing address is: Friends of the Cheat 119 South Price St. Suite #206 Kingwood WV, WV 26537-1478

Happy Birthday to Sallie See

As Editor of the Hampshire Review, Sallie helped me brainstorm this blog back in  2009, and her Hampshire Review Blogs Page continues to drive lots of readers here.    She's also provided a home for lots of other great blogs serving our part of West Virginia.

Silver lining to a dark cloud - Bat fungus

from today's Washington Post:

Research on stricken bats may help AIDS fight

(Greg Turner/ Pennsylvania Game Commission ) - A small brown bat is seen in May after it came out of hibernation with tearing of its wings. This is an example of what bats with white-nose fungus sometimes suffer in the same way that humans with AIDS do.

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By Darryl Fears, Published: December 9

In a government lab where scientists slice open dead animals to study the exotic diseases that killed them, Carol Meteyer peered through a microscope at hundreds of little bats and started to notice something very weird.

The bats had managed to survive the white-nose fungus that had killed millions of other bats hibernating in caves, mostly in the Northeast. But they had succumbed to something else that had left their tiny corpses in tatters, their wings scorched and pocked with holes.

Meteyer finally realized what had happened: In the struggle to fight off the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, the bats were killed by their own hyperaggressive immune systems.

Meteyer, a scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, had stumbled upon a phenomenon never before seen in mammals in the wild. A similar finding had been observed only once before — in people with AIDS.

Now scientists hope studying the immunology of bats might help in the development of treatments for AIDS.


Read the whole story here.

Potomac Watershed Partnership 2012 Winter Information Exchange

December 11, 2012 (9am-3pm) – WVU Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, 2400 Foundation Way, Martinsburg, WV – This year’s theme: Kids in the Wild: Engaging K-12 Students in Environmental Educational Experiences. 

Topics will include environmental literacy strategies, engaging students in local and national parks, classroom preparation for outdoor experiences, field trips, etc. To register, visit:http://www.cacaponinstitute.org/PWP/PWP_winter_2012_information_exchange_RSVP.htm. For more information, contact pwp@cacaponinstitute.org or 304-856-1385.

Gathering Osage Oranges

On a foggy morning my brother Brian and my nephew Luke transport the fruits of the Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) to places along the flood plain where the seeds will be planted to develop a natural hedgerow/fence.  We have dozens of these trees on our farm, and soon we'll begin seeing the deer and squirrels relying on them for food.

(Click on the photo for a larger image.)

Leonid meteor shower tonight

The Leonid meteor shower will peak between sunset November 16th and dawn on the 17th. It will be visible in all timezones.

This is one of the brightest meteor showers of the year.

The Leonids (named from the constellation Leo, are associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle as Earth moves through its meteoroid stream of particles ejected as the comet's frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun whenever it's anywhere closer than Jupiter.  These tiny particles give off huge amounts of light when they impact Earth at over 70 km/s (that's 43 miles per SECOND).  

Milkweed along the South Branch

Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) along the South branch of the Potomac.  Last year we began culturing milkweed for schools with butterfly programs.


Milkweed sap has toxins called cardiac glycosides. When the caterpillars of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and other milkweed butterflies (subfamily Danainae in the family Nymphalidae) ingest the leaves of milkweed, the glycosides make the caterpillar poisonous to some predators. Adult butterflies retain the glycosides.

This useful table was prepared by students in Fairfax County Public Schools:

Animals Using as Food Source	Animals Using as Shelter	Associations With Other Plants	OTHER
Monarch	Goldenrod Spider	Silver Maple	Eastern Yellow Jacket Po
Milkweed Bug	American Dog Tick	Pokeweed	Chinese Mantid FP
Green Lacewing	Chinese Mantid	Smooth Crabgrass	American Dog TickFP
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail	American Goldfinch	Queen Anne's Lace	Ruby-throated Hummingbird Po
Painted Lady	Black and Yellow Argiope	Smooth Sumac	Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Po
Mourning Cloak	Carolina Chickadee	Red Clover	Clouded SulphurPo
Great Spangled Fritillary	Eastern Mole	Devil's Beggar-tick	Honey Bee Po
Buckeye	White-footed Mouse	Lamb's Quarters	Mourning Cloak Po
Eastern Black Swallowtail	Green Lacewing	Common Ragweed	Painted Lady Po
Pipevine Swallowtail		Jimsonweed	Golden Northern Bumble Bee Po
Pearl Crescent		Black-eyed Susan	Green LacewingFP
Honey Bee		Bushy Aster	Pipevine Swallowtail Po
Golden Northern Bumble Bee		Kentucky Bluegrass	Monarch Pa
Black Carpenter Ant		Common Mullein	Organ-pipe Mud Dauber Po
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Cicada Killer
Eastern Yellow Jacket
Fungus Gnat
Clouded Sulphur
Bald-faced Hornet

Smithsonian Chestnuts

I took my dad, who maintains the Boyd American Chestnut nursery in Pennsylvania, to help winterize the Smithsonian Museum's nursery near Front Royal, Virginia.  Other members of the team recorded individual tree data.

The Smithsonian interns got practice driving in four-wheel drive on side slopes.

Training Young Trees

Structural pruning on young trees will prevent a lot of the storm damage in mature trees.  Now University of California has a great on line video for home use.

Training Young Trees is simplified for home gardeners, but horticulture educators and green industry professionals can also benefit from this resource. The 18-minute video and its shorter chapters are available free at their YouTube Channel:  http://tinyurl.com/trainingyoungtrees.

18:53Training Young Trees39 views | 1 month ago

0:51Chapter 1: Introduction6 views | 1 month ago

1:20Chapter 2: Why Train Young Trees?1 view | 1 month ago

0:49Chapter 3: What Does A Well-Trained Tree Look Like?2 views | 1 month ago

0:55Chapter 4: What's the Investment?1 view | 1 month ago

0:49Chapter 5: When Do I Prune and How Much?1 view | 1 month ago

0:52Chapter 6: The 5 Steps to Training Young Trees5 views | 1 month ago

0:48Chapter 7: Step 12 views | 1 month ago

1:04Chapter 8: Step 23 views | 1 month ago

1:14Chapter 9: Step 33 views | 1 month ago

1:18Chapter 10: Step 41 view | 1 month ago

0:58Chapter 11: Step 54 views | 1 month ago

4:41Chapter 12: The 5 Steps in Action2 views | 1 month ago

1:07Chapter 13: Tree Response to Training Over Time2 views | 1 month ago

2:14Chapter 14: Summary and Review2 views | 1 month ago