Photo is a female Gambusia collected in August/September in the Big Bend region of Texas. The author hopes it's a new species. In August and September of 2012 I took two trips out to the Big Bend region of Texas. The first trip was with a daughter, Cara, and a son-in-law, Ky. Ky is the husband of ... Read More
Blog
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Our 108 Year Old Fig Tree
Photo: A 108 year old fig tree planted in 1908 by my great grandfather. Fig trees are common around old farmhouses in Goliad County. They were easily propagated and maintained and provided a fruit that could be eaten fresh or dried or preserved as a jam. When my grandfather was an infant in ... Read More
Creepy Copper the Copperhead Snake
Photo: Creepy Copper, the copperhead snake, swallowing a leopard frog while coiled up at the base of a hackberry tree. For the past few weeks, a copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix laticinctus), has been coiling up in the late afternoon under a sugar hackberry tree (Celtis laevigata) that grows a ... Read More
Dragon Blood Peacock Cichlid Genetics
Photo: A mature male Red Dragon Blood Peacock Cichlid. A while back I set up a cross between a Red Dragon Blood Cichlid male and some Protomelas taeniolatus ‘Sunshine’ females. That’s him in the photo above. By the way, the grid behind him is in inches, showing how large he is. The Sunshine ... Read More
Canary OB Peacock
Photo: A very young (about four months old) male Canary OB Peacock. By the way, while the grid behind him shows one-inch squares, he is not six inches long. He's at the front of the aquarium and the grid is at the back. He's actually only four inches long, barely large enough to reliably determine ... Read More
Orange OB Peacock
Photo: One of our two current male breeder Orange OB Peacock Cichlids. We just processed our Orange OB Peacock Cichlids. For a discussion of the development of this and other strains of peacock cichlids, see http://goliadfarms.com/our-peacock-cichlids/. I did a very tight selection on this ... Read More
Copperhead Eating Lizard
Photo: by Ky Harkey of a copperhead feasting on a green anole lizard. About this time of the year our copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix) switch from cruising around in the evening and early night for emerging cicadas and June bugs to climbing into shrubs to feed on green anoles (Anolis ... Read More
Rescuing a Baby Cardinal
Photo: Rescued baby Cardinal perched on fence. This afternoon our German Shepherds (Canis lupus hybrids), Oso and Maya, and I (Homo sapiens) were walking up to the yard from the greenhouses when the dogs alerted to a distressed chirping sound in the grass off the path. Following the dogs I found ... Read More
Manning a checkpoint for the Texas Water Safari, the world’s TOUGHEST canoe race!
Photo: Charles Clapsaddle directing racers to downstream check-in and portage. Susie (wife), Carl (son), Tony Kouba (friend and fellow Canoe Trail Goliad enthusiast), and I spent Sunday through Wednesday manning on the behalf of Canoe Trail Goliad (http://www.canoetrailgoliad.com/) the final ... Read More
Living Close to Nature
Photo: A yellow jacket or paper wasp (Polistes sp.) nest on a ladder. On the farm, we live very close to nature. An example of this happened today. Susie, my wife, complained that the cellphone booster wasn’t working right. She thought Saturday morning’s storm might have misaligned it. Yes, we ... Read More