They really are. Insects are everywhere I look and everywhere I go on the farm. This is a good thing since it shows just how ALIVE our farm is. We don't use much of anything aside from sun, soil, and water for the produce so the insects are usually more prevalent. We have some that are seriously annoying but for the most part the insects around the farm don't bother us.

This Boxelder bug landed on the Lilac flowers as I was getting shots yesterday. It is amazing how I can be taking pictures of flowers or bushes and almost always an insect lands in frame. They seem to have a homing sense for the lens. Maybe it is the reflection or the glint of the lens?

These 2 were on the grass near some bulb flowers I was shooting. The beetle on the left was only 1/2 inch long or smaller. It was perched right on the tip of the blade of grass. The cool thing is the empty shell attached to the blades of grass. This is the shell of a Giant Stonefly that managed to make it the 25 feet from the creek to this spot in order to molt.

THIS is a Giant Stonefly. They are like little kamikaze bombers sputtering through the air. It is really disconcerting to be in the garden focused on work when one of these things slams into my body and begins crawling around. The adult don't eat anything and I have never been bit by one, so it is nothing to worry about. It's just that they are up to 3 inches long and feel really odd crawling on the skin.

The wood ants are out in force now. We have forest all around us so these guys have plenty of opportunity to roam and build colonies. I have been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to keep them at bay but they are sneaky buggers. I found this one in the garden not long after I planted the asparagus.

On the topic of ants, I am having a slight problem with tiny sugar ants all around the base of my hives. I don't think they are IN the hives but I will know more today. I may need to do something to try and dissuade them from surfacing right here. Maybe @bushkill or one of the other honey producers may have a remedy for this.

The butterflies have been out in force now that the weather is nice and warm. It seems they are timed to be with the first flowers of the season. As the area fills with flowers the size and number of butterflies increases until we get the Swallowtails during peak flowering when the Mock Orange blow up.

The Wolf Spiders are EVERYWHERE around the farm and now they are mostly all carrying egg sacks. As I walk through the garden I move the plastic mulch with my feet, this causes a handful of spiders to scurry away. I love having them in the garden. ANYTHING to help keep these bugs at bay!

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For more information about our farm:
Fleming Family Farm
FLEMING FAMILY FARM, LLC
Sustainable & Organic Methods | Heirloom Produce

All images are original works of Fleming Family Farm unless otherwise notated and credited.

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