Butterfly Farm

Having grown up in the country, when someone mentions a farm I think of a red barn, chickens, cows, sheep, hay, all that good stuff. But did you know there are butterfly farms? On June 12, the kids and I, along with some friends, went on a tour of a butterfly farm. It was really cool.

Located in Potter Valley, California, this farm raises butterflies for special events. You can purchase butterflies to be released at your wedding, or other special occasion. Butterflies are also useful in populating the flowers in your area.

Here is Dee Dee, one of the owners of the farm. She has a mesh cage full of Mourning Cloak Butterflies, which she releases and lets us hold. The kids had fun running around catching the butterflies and having them land on their clothes.

These beautiful butterflies can live up to 10 months. The caterpillars like willow trees, elm trees, aspen and birch trees, to name a few. The adult butterfly likes fruit juice, butterfly bush, pussywillow and more.

The farm has a beautiful flower garden with many different types of flowers that butterflies are attracted to. There was also a beatiful Koi pond.

When Dee Dee is preparing to have butterflies available for a special occasion, she puts them in a styrofoam ice chest and stores them in a refridgerator. The cool temperature makes the butterflies sleep. Within a couple of minutes of being out in the warm air, the butterflies were moving around and some were trying to escape.

Sweet Memories raises their own butterflies in a flight house, so they can be sure they are disease free. Here is cluster of butterflies in the upper corner of the flight house.

Inside the flight house, the crysallis are kept in a "cupboard." When Dee Dee finds them on the plants she carefully removes them and lightly glues them to the wooden beams until the butterfly emerges.

These Mourning Cloaks are drinking up gatorade from a mesh sponge.

They also like to eat sweet, ripe fruit, such as bananas.

This is a beautiful Tiger Swallow Tail (one of my favorites!)

As a kid I used to collect Monarch caterpillars and watch them develop into a beautiful butterfly just like the one below.

In the flight house, the butteflies were all over the place. You might even step on one if you weren't being watchful. They landed on us numerous times. Here is one of Ethan's friends with three butterflies on her.

Up Close and Personal - Ethan with a Mourning Cloak on his shoulder.

We each got to take home two caterpillars to feed and to watch them emerge into butterflies. Aidan got two Painted Ladies, and Ethan and I got two monarch caterpillars each. The last of them emerged the first week in July. :-)

If you'd like to visit the Sweet Memories Butterfly Farm online, here is their weblink: http://www.sweetmemoriesbutterflyfarm.com/