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Sedges Have Edges by Marty Gearhart

9/26/2025

1 Comment

 
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Northern Shorthusk--Brachyleytrum aristosum
How does that poem go again? While I’ve given up on identifying New Hampshire’s woodland thrice cut ferns, I am still working on identifying NH’s native sedges, rushes, and grasses. But what is the word that rhymes with “grasses?”

I realized I needed that poem when I was using the iNaturalist app in the swampy unmowed green by Brookside’s parking lot. Barely moving a quarter turn, I had photographed two sedges and a rush huddled together, celebrating their reprieve from Grantham’s mower and congratulating each other on their contribution to biodiversity at Brookside Park. I found a grass on a subsequent visit, easily recognized with the help of an Illinois Extension Blog that quoted the poem in full:

Sedges have edges,
Rushes are round,
Grasses have nodes from the top to the ground


https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/grasses-glance/2023-04-17-telling-apart-grasses-sedges-rushes
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Sallow Sedge--Carex lurida
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Black-girdle Bulrush--Scirpus atrocinctus
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Fringed Sedg--Carex crinita
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Northern Shorhus--Brachyelytrum aristosum--Note the sedge edging its way into the picture at the upper left
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In Search of Raw Honey by Marty Gearhart

9/18/2025

2 Comments

 
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Garden Club member Ellis Robinson and I recently set out to see local honey production in action at King Blossom Farm on Dunbar Hill Road (https://www.kingblossomfarm.com). Our members will remember Jeff and Susan Figley’s engaging February presentation at the Town Hall. Jeff and Susan also have generously guided Grantham’s Conservation Commission with pruning suggestions for the future health of the apple trees in Brookside Park’s Orchard.

At King Blossom, Susan shared her knowledge of bee keeping with us. The farm has had apiaries for at least 15 years, but Susan also places hives at a site near Stocker Pond and at Greg Morneau’s Daisy Hill Farm on Dunbar Hill Road. Susan and Greg help each other in their respective honey enterprises.

Susan credits these three locations with keeping her bees healthy. While many of the nation’s bee keepers lost unusually high numbers of colonies in winter 2024-25, Susan lost none. Not only does she place her hives away from pesticides, but she also breeds her own queens with genetics that thrive in New Hampshire. When she does purchase queens to diversify her stock, she buys from a well-regarded bee keeper in Vermont.

Susan uses two types of hives — the conventional wooden Langstroth hive as well as  Russian hives. These are twice the size, heavily insulated, and bear-proof without electric fencing. Greg Morneau’s help is invaluable when harvesting honey from these large Russian Hives.

Pick Your Apples Season is happening now at King Blossom Orchards. They also sell fresh vegetables, jars of jams, jellies, pickles, maple and simple syrups, and their own raw honey.
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Susan Figley's conventional hives with electric fencing
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One of the Russian hives
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Local Raw Honey is the Real Deal by Marty Gearhart

9/8/2025

0 Comments

 
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I had the pleasure of helping Grantham Garden Club member and hobbyist beekeeper Amelia Lantz run a program for Eastman’s All Day Gang and Kid City campers this summer. 
 
Amelia is beekeeper who participates in the Kearsage Beekeepers Association or KBA (https://kbanh.org). She is passionate about all species of bees and how vital good habitat is to all parts of our ecosystem. Amelia speaks for KBA to public groups, works in the their apiary in Sunapee, and helps teach at their Bee School in Newport on five Saturday mornings starting in January. (Yes, you too can sign up if you’re interested.)
 
The campers, who ranged in ages from 4 through 12,  dressed in bee veils, jackets, and gloves. They handled Amelia’s tool belt and the smoker used to calm bees when the hive is opened. The hit for the children was the observation hive that Amelia brought which contained 15,000 lives bees.  Amelia pointed out the queen.
 
Campers were given hive boxes, frames, covers, and a stand to figure out how to build an actual bee hive. This led to discussing the pioneer history of beekeeping in the United States. In the 1860’s, Ohio beekeeper, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, was essential to the industry becoming standardized. A teacher, clergyman, and pioneer; he improved the existing hives and built and patented the moveable frames inside the hives which make it safer for the bees and beekeepers and still used worldwide today.
 
Beyond all this information, Amelia’s main take-home message for the children was clear “Please eat only local raw honey.”  Raw honey has enzymes that activate nectar.  It has bits of pollen (protein).  Raw honey has the anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-viral qualities that heated, filtered, blended honey does not.  Local raw honey is the real deal.
 
Local Raw honey can be purchased in the Upper Valley at:
Beaver Pond Farmstand
Bouldevale Farm
Rum Brook Market
King Blossom Farm
Edgewater Farm
Kearsarge and Upper Valley Food Coops
Sutton Farmers Market
Spring Ledge Farm
Grounds Coffee Shop

 

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