The annual mulberry festival is underway on our Littleton, Colorado, farm. The fruit of the white mulberry trees and our lone weeping mulberry are now ripe and the supply appears to be well above average.
Robins, house finches and fox squirrels will be the primary celebrants, joined by smaller numbers of raccoons, northern orioles (Bullock's race), cedar waxwings, blue jays and an assortment of casual visitors. From the looks of the crop, the festivities will last a couple of weeks or more.
Mulberries thrive in the sunny, mild, dry climate of the Front Range. Best of all, they need no artificial irrigation, managing just fine on the twenty inches of annual precipitation (rain and snow combined) that we receive; since they flower rather late in the spring, mulberries are also relatively unaffected by the hard freezes that are common here in March and April. On our farm, the mulberry trees are second only to chokecherries in the abundance of fruit that they provide for wildlife; of course, we humans can indulge as well.
