Raspberry season

When the raspberries exploded into ripeness, Boris and his student helpers headed out early in the morning and harvested all of the plump purple berries. There were so many berries that the could not process them all in one day, so they spread them on shallow pans to flash freeze them, once frozen they placed the berries into containers in the freezer to be made into jam at a later date.
Later that same afternoon, Boris and his team returned to the berry patch, just as many berries as they had picked in the morning had ripened during the heat of the day. Another round of picking and freezing of berries before dinner, then the tired harvesters finished the evening with a large bowl of berries and cream as the sun set.

The following morning dawned warm and the big bear farmer spent it, once again, picking berries with his students. Before they put the trays of berries into the freezer, he reminded his crew to pick out the leaves, spiders and inch worms from the fruit. The many legged animals would be released back into the forest, and the leaves into the compost pile. 
Most of his customers for the raspberry jam were herbivores, so Boris was careful to keep as close to animal free as possible. His omnivore customers didn't really mind some extra protein in their jam, nor some of the herbivores, but there were a few who were strict to their diet and appreciated the extra effort that Boris put into his product.

Strawberry season

Boris had been working hard on the farm this week and today he was outside at dawn to get an early start before the day grew too hot for work.  It was strawberry season, the first sweet few weeks of early summer.  This morning he gathered the yearling cubs, and the students who where in his summer semester botany and forestry classes, and led them all out to the strawberry fields for a morning of picking.

The group started in the cultivated strawberry patch, there grew the large cat paw size strawberries that would be sent to Loupe Falls for the annual Strawberry Festival at the end of the week.  When all of the ripe berries were picked from this area they moved on to the wild strawberry patch. Here were the tiny berries that made the best jams and sauce.  Boris planned to start processing some this afternoon, they were a key part of his sweets business and he had customers waiting for the first batch.

Once the group finished with the picking fields, they moved on to the foraging fields and had their own feast of strawberries for lunch.  After eating, the three yearling cubs headed to the river for a swim and the Temperate Biome University students carried the strawberries back to the barns for processing.

Boris gathered up two large baskets of wild strawberries and with his students, headed into his house to start a batch of jam.

To borrow and to learn

Essie was now 11 years old, and had stepped up to the next grade level at school.  Today she was faced with some new vocabulary words; borrow, give, lend, take.  She looked at the two words closely, then began to write them on to her vocabulary practice sheet. B-O-R-R-O-W, G-I-V-E, L-E-N-D, T-A-K-E.  On the next line she repeated the words, continuing; as instructed by her teacher; until she had written each five times on her practice sheet.
Never very interested in reading and writing for very long, Essie began to chat with her classmate in ASL, both were Deaf and continued to develop their skills in American Sign Language. Like many deaf children of hearing parents, both girls did not begin to sign until they were school age, leaving them many years behind other kids their age in communication and academic skills. Because they didn't really have anyone to chat with at home in ASL, they took every moment of opportunity to finally have a conversation with another person, who could understand what they were trying to say and vice versa.
Essie's teacher allowed the girls to chat for a few minutes, she knew that both of the girls had been struggling with reading and vocabulary.  For a long time Essie would easily read the words, finger-spell them, attempt to speak the syllables as her speech teacher had taught her, and even put the words in proper order for phrases and sentences.  She would even sign all of the words on the page in her vocabulary or reading workbook, but when it came time for a test, Essie struggled with the deeper meaning of English words and grammar.  Unless there was an example of the words or sentences to use as a guide, Essie sometimes appeared to be seeing the words that she had been working on for a long time as if seeing for the first time.  The teacher could see that there was no connection between the printed word on the paper and the signs that Essie so easily used.
Today her teacher sighed to herself, and redirected Essie back to her vocabulary work sheet, and then to the page in her reading book that used the vocabulary.  The reading for this week started with the sentence "The boy gave the book to the girl."  Essie started by signing in English word order as she had been taught at her old school, "THE BOY GAVE THE BOOK TO THE GIRL."
Her teacher translated the sentence into ASL "BOOK (rhetorical eyebrow lift and head nod) BOY (body shift left) GIVE-TO (directional verb to the right) (classifier to indicate another person, eyebrow lift with facial 'who') GIRL (body shift to the right).
Essie watched her teacher, they copied the sentence in ASL with a look of bewilderment on her face.
The next line read, "The boy borrowed some paper from the girl."  Again Essie signed the sentence in the English grammar structure that she had learned at her old school, and then watched as the teacher translated the sentence into ASL.
This time as Essie copied her teacher, she did so with the look of bewilderment changing to curiosity.
As she read the next sentence, Essie started to make the changes herself, the sentence read in English, "The girl loaned some paper to the boy." Essie asked the teacher what the sign was for 'loan' and was shown the sign.  In ASL the sign for borrow and loan are the same sign, with only the direction changing indicating to another person or from another person.  Essie asked a second time, to be shown the sign, and the teacher took a moment, reached over to the paper cubby and took out a piece of paper.
Placing the paper in front of Essie, the teacher signed BORROW, and took the paper, then she signed LOAN and gave the paper back to Essie.  Then she wrote on the paper, 'I borrow the paper', showed it to Essie, then repeated the signed phrase PAPER BORROW-TO-ME and took the paper again, wrote the words 'I loan the paper', and repeated the signed phrase for the sentence and the action of loaning the paper to Essie.
Essie's eyes widened with understanding, she made the connection, the words on the page had the same meaning as the signs in American Sign Language.  Picking up the paper, she ran to another student and signed PAPER LOAN-TO-YOU, gave them the paper, then PAPER BORROE-TO-ME and took the paper back.  For the rest of the day, Essie borrowed and loaned a multitude of items from and to other students and adults in the classroom and in the classroom next door where she went for math and science.
From that point on, Essie's ability to understand written English began to improve as her ability to translate written English into ASL, by the end of the month she was translating many of her reading assignments easily, and remembering the meaning of the assignment.  By the end of the school year, Essie was reading books on her own and had finally begun to enjoy reading for pleasure, opening new opportunities for learning things that interested her.

Lou the bobcat - an aging old animal

Lou circled around to Boris' farm again, he was hungry, he was always hungry, though he had no idea why. Luckily for Lou, he had good friends who were willing to help an old bobcat, he just couldn't remember who, but he remembered where and this afternoon he was near a scent that seemed very familiar to him, something that meant not only food but a place where he could relax and not be anxious about the confusing world around him.

In many ecosystems of this biome a bobcat of Lou's age would have gone out to the local Free Game Preserve on their own and returned to the earth, but here Lou was a local hero who had suffered a serious concussion in his younger days saving the lives of so many young animals, now in his old age it seemed fitting that the community take care of him since it was really could not remember anything about the Free Game Preserve, or even what he had done five minutes ago.

Driven by the need to satisfy his bodily urges, Lou followed his nose when he was hungry, found water when he was thirsty, and rested where ever he fell after pacing in circle for hours at a time.

As he approached Boris' house, he could smell a pot of porridge that was cooking on his friend's stove. Boris spotted the old bobcat and ushered him in, presented him with a large bowl of porridge filled tenderized meat bits and goat cheese, and sat down to watch his old friend eat.

Lou was not a neat eater by any means, his old teeth were sore at the gums and he would shake his head as he ate, then circle the bowl before diving back in for another bite. This left a large ring of food bits around the bowl, and Boris didn't mind cleaning up for his friend, and did so in front of the cubs who were all watching from the edge of the room. With luck they would learn compassion for old animals and take care of the elderly when they grew up.

After eating his fill, Lou drank heavily from the water trough beside the door and looked around for a place to lay down. Boris had brought in and arranged a soft bed of straw and warm blanket in the corner of the living room near the hearth. Here Lou lay down and fell into a deep slumber, snoring loudly, and contently after a good meal in a safe home.

Environments

Skinny finished up the meal that Boris had served him, there was nothing like a big meaty bowl of porridge and Boris was the best cook on this side of the pass. The meal was followed by some maple pastries and an hour more of socializing before Skinny said good night and headed back toward the Truck Road.

It was almost summer and the daylight lasted well into the evening giving Skinny a chance to admire the farm as he walked back to his motorcycle.  It was a long walk, but well worth it to visit a good friend and see the workings of the farm and forest once again.  

Skinny had time to wonder that maybe he was spending too much time indoors working in the IT department of his company and for the University.  Maybe it was time to take an extended vacation, not that he wanted to take up the wild life, but to reestablish his connections to the environments in this biome that had all of the things he needed to survive.

Pollen

Skinny walked up the path toward Boris' house, he had left his motorcycle in the parking area on the Truck Road since the farm area between the mountains was strictly a walking zone, no motorized vehicles were allowed here.  It was the end of the Spring semester and Boris needed to submit his grades to the University, but his farm was out of range of the closest cell phone tower and he didn't use the internet, he preferred a low tech lifestyle that gave the students who worked for him a chance to really see and appreciate the environment around them.  The University knew this and sent Skinny to pick up the grades and bring them back.  

Having adapted to city life, Skinny only spent a minimum of time outdoors, mostly when on a family hunt in the Free Game Preserve outside the city. The long walk from the Truck Road was taking its toll on his nose, he was sniffling and sneezing so much that he had to stop repeatedly and clear his head.  For a short time he thought that he had come down with the virus that his brother, Shifty, had last year, but when he walked straight into a pollen cloud that was blowing out of a pine grove, Skinny realized that his sinuses had fallen victim to the reproductive processes of the local forest.

 

Sunshine after a week of rain.

Boris was happy to see the sun today, after several weeks of rainy, cold weather.  Finally his garden was starting to grow. The early crop of radishes and lettuce had sprouted and seemed to reach upward as he watched, toward the sunlight in effort to increase photosynthesis.  This made Boris glad to be a farmer, the constant change of the season allowed the different types of food available as the garden progressed though the late Spring and early Summer. 

Soon there would be small radishes and leafy salads to go with his soups and porridges.