Nettle Valley Farm

10/05/2026

Thank you Restoravore for hosting a community seed harvest day on Pleasant Bluff Prairie Restoration!! What a joy it was to be out on the bluff with human and plant friends new and old. I was able to bring home several big handfuls of grasses and forbs to add to our oak savanna inspired silvopasture.

10/01/2026

Happy update about the mailbox monarch chrysalis!! Looks like he or she eclosed in the 24 hrs since I last checked. Good luck on your way to Mexico lil buddy!

09/30/2026

Oh what I’d give to be able to time travel and walk our weird little valley 100, 200, 500, 1000 years ago… It’s fascinating to see the changes in tree cover and field shapes and road placements even since the first photo was taken in 1937.

09/28/2026

Making progress on our oak savanna inspired silvopasture by subtraction endeavors! This whole process has been a great invitation to let go of a bit of perfectionism and impatience 😅

09/23/2026

Here’s what we’ve cobbled together thus far for processing a dried butterfly or rose milkw**d pod into cleanish seed using a mesh drying rack, an air compressor and a shop vac. The cleanish seed will need several more rounds of screening / winnowing before it’s CleanCleanClean and ready to sell.

It ain’t perfect but it works ok for our small scale of production (hoping to get at least 15 #, maaaaaybe 20 # if we’re lucky)! If you have experience growing milkw**d commercially at a small/medium scale (less than 50 #) and have advice for this beginner on how to improve the cleaning process, I’m ALL ears! ☺️

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09/20/2026

09/11/2026

Lunch break thoughts on the drama I observed yesterday: We have hundreds of rose and butterfly milkw**d plants here on the farm for seed production, so we’ve attracted zillions of monarchs but also zillions of monarch predators like spined soldier bugs and tachinid wasps. It’s interesting to observe my first knee jerk reactions to a sight like this or a parasitized chrysalis (“nooooo those jerks!” “ACK bring every monarch cat inside!!”) but then I remember this is exactly what growing native plants and organic farming is all about: the FULL circle of life, not just a single species.

Plus I had a fantastic chat with a technical assistance provide from Monarch Joint Venture (shout out Becca!!) who assured me that I’m doing the right thing: leave ‘em be and just keep focusing on creating more habitat. She also shared that research is showing that monarchs reared in captivity might be weakening the gene pool, spreading disease and not migrating very successfully.

So! I’ll just be over here feeling my feelings but learning to love and celebrate the spined soldier bugs and the tachinid wasps too.

09/10/2026

Anybody know more about how monarchs decide to where to form their chrysalis?

09/08/2026

Check out what Buddy and I spotted when we checked the mail! It’s over 60 feet from any milkw**d if I’m not mistaken. Good luck pal! 🥰

09/07/2026

Milkw**d fluff is NO JOKE! IYKYK

I’m done processing rose milkw**d, now it’s on to the butterfly w**d!

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