Go Natural recently built a pumpkin festival butterfly enclosure for Hundsader Farms in Bradenton, Florida. The festival pumpkins were grown in Michigan, where it’s cooler and drier, but you can find pumpkins for sale at places like Publix supermarkets across the Sunshine State.
It Started with a Seed
Go Natural and the Hundsader Farms Pumpkin Festival have a 19-year history together. Over three decades ago, three brothers from Wisconsin bought a farm in Bradenton and began growing tomatoes. During the fall, one of the brothers’ wives ordered some pumpkins and set up a barbeque grill. This roadside stand was such a success that it became the seed from which an entire festival grew.
Go Natural’s connection to this annual event began when an exhibitor asked us to build them a butterfly enclosure as a way to attract festival attendees. The exhibitor discontinued its approach, but Go Natural continued to bring the butterfly enclosure to the Pumpkin Festival. That’s how we met our friends from Sarasota Jungle Gardens, which now has a beautiful butterfly enclosure of its own.
From Prototype to Pumpkin Festival to Palm Beach
The butterfly enclosure that we brought to this year’s Hundsager Pumpkin Festival was originally a prototype for Yoga with Butterflies in Sarasota, Florida. The structure then stayed in Lakeland for a few years, but it now travels with us. After the Hunsader Farms Pumpkin Festival, it’s headed to a yoga studio in Palm Beach. The photo below shows how the structure looked before we disassembled it for transport.
Our butterfly enclosure readily supports disassembly, as you can see from the picture below. There are 2 x 8s at the base, 4 x 6s for the supports, and 2 x 8s along the top. We use 2 x 6s with 45-degree angles to connect the 4 x 6s to the 2x8s at the base. For fasteners, we use 3-inch T25 deck screws.
Once the butterfly enclosure was disassembled, we loaded up our trailer and headed to Bradenton.
We arrived at Hundsader Farms and began to setup the butterfly enclosure. Shown below is the netting that we use. This top is made of ALUMINET and the sides are made of a special screen developed by an Israeli company. We attach it with 3/8th-inch staples, which are easy to remove.
Below are some more pictures of our butterfly enclosure at Hundsader Farms.
Here’s what the inside of this enclosure looks like. It’s easy to see how people of all ages enjoy interacting with the butterflies.
If you look closely at the picture below, you’ll see how the girl in the green baseball hat has a butterfly right at her fingertips. That’s because she’s holding a Q-tip that’s been dipped in Gatorade, a food source for butterflies. In a single weekend, Go Natural hands out 1500 Q-tips to folks who want to experience a butterfly up-close.
Whenever we setup a butterfly enclosure, people ask about the plants that we bring. In the picture above, you can see some of these plants in pots along the butterfly enclosure’s walls. Often, people want to know how to plant a garden that will attract butterflies. That’s good news for these forgotten pollinators since a butterfly garden can help to sustain them.