• About
  • Anacotilla: History & Hearsay
  • Junk: A Curated Collection
  • Resources
  • Species List
  • Yarnauwingga and beyond

Yarnauwi Farm

~ Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia

Yarnauwi Farm

Tag Archives: insects

Tiny communities

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by Joel in ecology, regeneration, trees

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ecology, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, insects, photography, revegetation, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, spiders, summer, trees

New growth on a red gum sapling.

We’ve been talking a bit recently about when a woodland becomes a woodland. Asher suggested 500 years of growth, but was willing to settle for 50. Perhaps it’s a woodland when the birds think so, when the firetails and blue wrens jump the boundary fence from neigbouring scrub and decide they’re safe flitting from branch to branch. As our earliest plantings grow taller than humans, and the canopies thicken and throw shade, we started noticing an increasing diversity of tiny life. Insects for whom a gum or wattle tree is their universe are finding their way across the paddocks to settle in the emerging plantings. Despite the heat and dry of summer, the trees are heaving with insect life. We recently saw the documentary The Biggest Little Farm about an idealistic (and evidently well-funded!) couple who start a diverse 200 acre farming project outside of Los Angeles. One of the messages of the film is that when you create the right conditions, nature finds a balance. As we walked through the saplings, on one, the new growth and leaves were being systematically devoured by small copper coloured beetles. We walked to the next tree, the copper beetles were present, but as we watched, were body slammed by wasps and carried away. At the next, the beetles had been busy, but now a spider had arrived, and was meticulously wrapping the beetle population in silk. Perhaps these tiny communities are beginning to find the balance too.

Here’s a tour of some of the life on the trees – we’d love your help with identification!

Beetle eats leaf.

Spider eats beetle.

Ants farm aphids on an Acacia.

A huntsman and egg sac.

Leafhopper, with comrades.

Two-spotted cup moth caterpillar.

Case moth cocoon, constructed from silk and twigs.

Ants on twisty leaves. What’s going on?!

Wasp galls on a golden wattle.

Small mysteries: A year in bugs

27 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by Joel in ecology, regeneration, trees

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ecology, farm, insects, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, trees, winter

As part of our record-keeping, in the almost-two-years since we bought Yarnauwi we’ve tried to document the natural phenomena we observe season by season. At the end of each year, we go back over our journals and add what we’ve discovered to the records of the previous year. Over time, we hope, we’ll get a much more complex understanding of the ecological patterns that occur in our landscape, as well as the changes that may occur as a result of our activities.

Already, in the short time we’ve been on the block, we’ve noted shifts in the populations and presence of certain plants and creatures. While we often overlook insects, when looking back through our photos and notes, we realised that we have actually been observing their more subtle role through the seasons: the sudden chorus of crickets after the opening rains, or the way the grass flickers with grasshoppers in late summer. In their honour, here’s a year in bugs. Representing less than a couple of years of observation, it’s far from authoritative, but perhaps it offers the beginnings of a pattern.

Autumn

IMG_4085

Crickets sing from the cracked soil after the first flush of rains.

IMG_2396

Bardi grubs (Rain moth pupae) emerge from the soil around the River red gums following the first rains.

Continue reading →

Yarnauwi on Etsy

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 221 other subscribers

Yarnauwi on Instagram

From where we'd rather be...actually there's nowhere we'd rather be! Big thumbs up for the kids' new hammock under the old gums. So glad to finally be here at last! Happy 2023 all 🌿
First fig of the season. A monster Black Genoa, organically grown in our little windswept orchard.
As proof of the recent confusing weather patterns, these Amanita mushrooms came up a few days ago! We've never seen mushrooms here in November, they're usually all finished by August, and we've never seen this species or anything like it here before! Amanitas are mycorrhizal (they form a partnership with a tree/plant to help feed and nourish it in exchange for sugars) and these ones were growing only 1m or so from a Eucalypt we planted about 7 years ago which has always grown really well. I just wonder if this species has been there all along, waiting for perfect conditions of 45mm in one day in Nov to be able to fruit! And now it can reproduce and spread to other parts of the farm. It makes me wonder what else is out there ready to take advantage of crazy climactic conditions!
As long time admirers of @thegreenhorns we're thrilled that Joel's comic about weeds will be published in Vol. VI of "The New Farmer's Almanac". It all releases this January and pre-orders are available now through @chelseagreenbooks
Frog spawn! 🐸 We've never seen this before at Yarnauwi but with the best rains in years our dam is filling up, the air is full of the calls of the Spotted Grass Frog and the Common Froglet, and we seem to be providing enough grassy water habitat for these eggs to be laid with enough shelter for them to grow into the little black tadpoles you can see inside! Lying next to the dam listening to frog calls definitely takes us to our happy place and makes it all so very worthwhile 💚
2022 marks a decade since we started working to regenerate Yarnauwi. To celebrate Joel's been working on a little comic to acknowledge all the amazing folks in our community near and far who have supported us and this place over the last 10 years. Here's a sample, but the whole thing is on our blog - follow the link in our bio!
Thanks to everyone who came joined us on our farm tour as part of @historyfestival and @heritagefleurieucoastfestival - we really appreciate your interest and enthusiasm!
We're honoured to have this story pop up on @abcnews_au sharing some of the work we've been doing to regenerate our patch. Our deepest thanks to all the friends, neighbours and family who have helped transform the property over the last decade!
It's been a good year in our little orchard, with plenty of ripe figs for us - and others! Here's one we found, positioned just like this on top of a fence post. I'm looking for a raven with fig juice running down its chin.

What We’re Writing About

alpacas annual report art art and craft bees before and after birds books building cheese climate change craft damara design downloads ecology embroidery erosion etsy events farm fencing fire Fleurieu Fleurieu Coast Fleurieu Peninsula food fungi future hack hiking history illustration insects kangaroos leather leathercraft linoprint livestock logo nursery permaculture photography picnics planning Plastic-free July printing propagation rain recipes recycling regeneration regenerative agriculture reuse revegetation sea seasons seeds shed sheep sheepskins shop soil southwestern Fleurieu summer textiles tour tractor trees ute waste water waterways winter zones

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Yarnauwi Farm
    • Join 221 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Yarnauwi Farm
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...