Lower Suwannee Waterfowl, Part 1

Years ago, when boning up for my new job as Staff Specialist for Migratory Bird Research in the Fish and Wildlife Service, I quickly learned that Florida is not a hotspot for wintering ducks, geese, or swans. 

Now that we live in north Florida, we occasionally see wood ducks and mottled ducks, both year-round residents. The only snowbirds we have routinely noted are small rafts of lesser scaup, seen near Cedar Key, and frequent and abundant hooded mergansers on freshwater ponds around Gainesville.

An exception was our sighting on a freshwater pond on the Lower Suwannee NWR of what in the distance appeared to be pintails. They stayed far enough away to make identification difficult. One did come close enough for us to take a fuzzy photo, which appeared to confirm the identification. Still other photos kindly provided by Tom Liebert revealed at least two additional species. I will post information about them later, when identifications have been confirmed. Meanwhile, I hope that others will add their observations.

Freshwaer pond on the refuge; zoom in to see what we believe is a pintail

A glance at the FWS graphics below offers clues why Florida is not more important for wintering waterfowl. The species breeding abundantly in the Prairie Pothole region--the continent's "duck factory"--winter in the lower Mississippi region. Lesser numbers breed in the northeast, and most winter along the mid-Atlantic coast.

Mississippi Flyway

Atlantic Flyway

What to do with Whey?

whey remaining from cheese curds recipe

In our last two cheese making adventures we tried to save all the whey when draining and pressing curds. We lost some, but in the end had 10+ quarts of the stuff. We found few recipes, but learned from Ricki the Cheese Queen that whey is a good substitute for broth in soups. So we tried several soups, substituting whey for the usual broth. Attempts and results are as follow: 1) cabbage soup (A winner and almost free, we made this with a half-head of leftover cabbage); 2)  mushroom soup (We loved it, but who could go wrong with any dish containing a half-pound of Grade A shiitakes?); 3) fusion gumbo (Our own creation, this was delicious as always and even better with whey); 4) split pea soup with ham (This was also good, the only difference noted was a bit more foaming in the initial cooking than with chicken broth or water); 5) pozole (This was a real challenge because we had trouble imagining how pozole made with whey would taste. It tasted pretty good, but fans of real pozole might think this one lacked authenticity).

pozole sintético con suero de la leche

I looked up Calories in whey, wondering how the caloric content of whey compares with homemade chicken broth. Searching the web, I found that whey has 59 Calories per cup, whereas the homemade "chicken stock" we normally use is credibly listed at 97 Calories per cup. This is in contrast to the canned or boxed "chicken broth" found in grocery stores, most kinds of which have about 20 Calories per cup. So whether using whey saves Calories depends on whether you normally use homemade chicken stock or store-bought chicken broth.

The recipes linked above are not meant to be prescriptive; we seldom follow them to the letter, and aren't afraid to get creative.

More on Longleaf Pine

Reproductive Stages of Longleaf

I finished Lawrence Earley's book and made some additional windshield surveys for longleaf pines, seeking to explain their apparent absence as one approaches the Gulf Coast.

One bit of good news: they aren’t completely absent from the areas where I had failed to notice them earlier. Searching more intently, I spotted a few along State Highway 24 between Bronson and Cedar Key. Indeed, they were not infrequent in the Cedar Key Scrub State Preserve, sharing a scattered overstory with sand and slash pines. They even appeared to be reproducing in a few locations. They were rare in the Devil’s Hammock, an area obviously intensively managed for slash pines. This area is quite wet, as is much of the land between Otter Creek and Rosewood, and slash pines might dominate wet sites even in the absence of management.

Information gleaned from the book led to some insights concerning otherwise suitable places where longleaf pines are rare or absent. These pines take many decades to reach maturity and once cut over, there is little incentive for commercial foresters to replant them or encourage their regrowth. Loblolly and slash pines, on the other hand, grow much more rapidly and can be harvested after only a few decades. And pines grown for pulpwood are best for paper production if harvested at 20 years or less. The economic advantages of quick rotation have caused commercial forest management to favor these fast-growing species to the exclusion of longleaf, and many public forests have also been managed for maximum timber harvests. It should be of little surprise that the longer and more intensively an area has been managed, the less likely one is to find longleaf. Conversely, occasional specimens are often encountered on suitable lands that were never subjected to intensive forest management.

The Amazing Cheese Story, Day 1

Last night was our first class in The Amazing Cheese Story at Santa Fe College Community Education. We have a fantastic group of cheese enthusiasts in the class. We talked about the best of times and the worst of times for American cheese. We sampled two artisanal cheddars, a goat milk and a cow milk. And we tried the cheese curds that Russ and I made earlier in the day...not quite ready for prime time, but pretty good. They just didn't have the magic cheese curd squeak. We are eager to try again with better milk. We had to use homogenized because it was all we could get yesterday. Maybe the squeak was pulverized out when it was homogenized.

Longleaf Pine

Longleaf Pine (San Felasco State Preserve)

I just bought a copy of Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest by Lawrence Earley (University of North Carolina Press, 2004 ). It tells the story of a southern tree, longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and the diverse ecosystems it once dominated. These trees formerly covered vast areas of the coastal plain of North America, from southern Virginia to east Texas. 

I am less than 20% through the book, but already find it both revealing and challenging. I am hoping that before reading too much farther I will get a better sense of the local distribution of longleaf pine and understand why it apparently does not now occur on the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. Is past management at fault, or are more basic constraints at work? The species is regarded as the keystone of a unique and once widespread ecosystem, and losses over its once expansive distribution are decried by conservation biologists. Efforts are underway to reintroduce it on the Lower Suwannee Refuge, and any insights gained about strategies for restoration might prove useful. 

San Felasco longleaf (r) and loblolly (l)

We have longleaf pines near our home in Gainesville, in an area of pine flatwoods where we often hike, in neighborhoods and roadsides, scattered among loblololly (Pinus taeda) and slash (Pinus ellioti) pines, often rapidly being crowded out by oaks and other broad-leaf trees. They are abundant in varied habitats on the San Felasco Hammock State Preserve and are reproducing in areas subject to heavy management. Driving, as we often do, between Gainesville and Cedar Key, we see few longleaf pines until we get to Archer, whereupon they become frequent, being among the most abundant trees seen along the ten-mile stretch between Archer and Bronson. Thereafter, through the Devil's Hammock to Otter Creek and on to Cedar Key, scarcely a longleaf pine is to be seen. Slash pines are dominant, increasingly joined by scrubby sand pines (Pinus clausa) as we approach to coast.


We are puzzled by the apparent absence of longleaf pines on the refuge and wondering whether they were ever a dominant species there. Stay tuned. Reading Easley's book is like following a mystery story, wondering what clues may appear to reveal where the story is going. Follow us as the mystery unfolds.

Good Bacteria versus Bad

Last week at our Local Cheeses, Dairy Farms, and Cheese Lovers presentation at Gainesville’s The Atrium senior community, I was asked a question to which I responded inadequately. It was a very good question, but I had not anticipated it and was unable to give it the full explanation it deserved. So I’ll use this blog post as an opportunity to try to do it right.
 
The question went something like this: “You said that the good bacteria used in cheesemaking overwhelm and outcompete the bad bacteria. My question is how do they do that?”
 
So here is what I hope will be a better answer.
 
1)    Oxygen is in short supply in milk. Bacteria in the starter culture (Lactococcus lactis or similar) thrive in the absence of oxygen, a condition that many other bacteria can't tolerate.
2)    Starter bacteria are added in overwhelming numbers so they will be far more abundant than other bacteria in the milk.
3)    The milk is at a temperature favorable for growth and reproduction of the starter bacteria, but less so for some less desirable bacteria.
4)    In growing and reproducing explosively, the huge numbers of starter bacteria rapidly deplete the supply of the sugar lactose, the most available food, converting it to lactic acid.
5)    The accumulation of lactic acid makes the milk more acidic, increasing its acidity as much as 100 fold, and  making conditions unsuitable for many other bacteria.
6)    The good bacteria are helped in their competition by cheesemakers who alter the selective environment by adding salt to the curd, creating conditions that inhibit many bacteria.

There may be even more to it if one were to delve more fully into the microbial environment, but if I could have given the above answer to the questioner, I would have felt much better about having provided a worthy response.

Getting Ready

The first session of our community education short course The Amazing Cheese Story is scheduled for next Tuesday. We are having a grand time getting ready for it. Participants will be learning about cheese, sampling cheeses, and making simple cheeses. We hope and trust they will be having as much fun as we expect to have.