יומן של The Cole Harbour Heritage Farm

The garden has natural areas where wildflowers grow undisturbed and birds and insects go about their day-to-day activities, as well as more intensively used areas which provide greens and vegetables for the museum’s tea room. Visitors to the garden are encouraged to stroll at their leisure or sit and enjoy the sights and sounds.

While exploring the property look for wildlife and share observations with iNaturalist!

How many species of ‘wild’ plants can you find on the farm property? By wild we mean plants that are not being cultivated (grown and cared for) in the numerous gardens. If your focus is on exploring the gardens versus the fields and trails, keep an eye out for wildflowers, ‘weeds’, garden escapees, and invasive species. If you wish to look for different taxa keep your eyes/ears open for pollinators, insects, spiders, frogs, birds, etc.

At the start of the 2022 season, 36 species of plants had been posted to iNaturalist by 12 observers from within the farm property.
Help enhance these stats - share your observations today! Visit often and help highlight changes over the season(s).

Below is a list of species to look for while exploring – how many can you find? Were they budding, in flower, fruiting or gone to seed?

• Clovers
• Marsh cinquefoil
• Azure bluet
• Grasses
• Common dandelion
• Sheep’s sorrel
• Common sorrel
• Curly dock
• Spotted deadnettle
• Ground ivy (creeping Charlie)
• Bitter wintercress
• Colts-foot
• Wild carrot (Queen Anne’s lace)
• Brassiceae
• Creeping buttercup
• Common yarrow
• Rough cinquefoil
• Oxeye daisy
• Forget-me-nots
• Northern blue flag iris
• Green algae
• Common duckweed
• Broadleaf cattail
• Ferns
• Sensitive fern
• Moss
• Crisped pincushion
• Haircap moss
• Common grape hyacinth
• Common serviceberry
• Tamarack
• Grey alder
• Red spruce
• Roses
• Wild pansy
• Lady’s mantle
• White meadowsweet

This project was initially setup prior to the 2019 City Nature Challenge (CNC). This was the first year that HRM was registered in this global event and participants were being encouraged to explore their backyards and numerous areas around the municipality – an invite was extended to the community to visit the farm! Similar invites were posted on Facebook during subsequent CNCs – COVID of course did limit visitation.

The intent of the CNC event was to introduce iNaturalist to the community. It was hoped that people would visit the farm and practice using the app and then continue to use this tool in their everyday life.

Of course, iNatters are encouraged to come to the farm anytime of year – iNatting is not limited to the 4-day CNC! Information on when the farm is open to visitors is regularly posted on Museum’s Facebook page.

As mentioned in this project’s description this project was created to compile iNat observations recorded at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm. This property is located in Cole Harbour, NS.

Any iNat observation that falls within this geographic area will automatically be added to the project. However, we do encourage iNatters to join this project – members will be automatically notified if/when news items or articles are added to the project journal! It is our hope that the community will adopt iNaturalist as a great tool for use while visiting the farm where wildlife surrounds the captive animals and cultivated plants.

The Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum is a community museum dedicated to preserving and interpreting Cole Harbour’s agricultural past, and to developing understanding of plants, animals and farming today. It is not owned or controlled by any level of government but is administered by the volunteer Board of Directors of the Cole Harbour Rural Heritage Society. The museum relies heavily on community support, volunteers and visitors’ donations.

This iNaturalist project is reaching out to the community to help build a species list for the property.