It's the Bees' Knees!

We wanted to check on the progress of the honeybees that we placed in a box after catching a swarm.  Tricia put on the bee suit and I put on the veil and we went out to the box to inspect.  The bees, so far, have been very gentle.  We haven't needed to use the smoker to calm them down.  Once they have honey and lots of brood to protect, things might change.  

I want to show you some photos from our inspection of the hive.  You can see below that the bees are drawing out comb on the foundation.  Slowly, but surely, they are filling up the frame.

This next photo is very interesting as it shows several stages.  First, in many of the cells, you can see a tiny, white thing that looks like a grain of rice.  That's the egg that the queen has laid.  Right in the center of the photo, you can see three cells that have a big white "C-shaped" thing in it.  That's the larva.  Finally, you can see golden-colored capped cells.  The cells that are capped for between 8 and 14.5 days.  This is the pupal stage and at the end of this time, an adult honeybee will emerge.  Queens can lay approximately 1,500 eggs per day, so you can imagine the colony sized begins to increase quickly.  They'll all go to work filling the frames.  You don't want them to run out of space as they can swarm, so we added an additional box with frames on top to allow for growth.

Bees are SO busy.  You can understand why the term "busy as a bee" was coined.  I took a photo of a bee full of pollen as she flies into the box.

Here is a more close up photo.  Note the bright yellow pollen on the back legs of the bee.  She's been working hard to bring pollen back to the growing hive.  We know we have a laying queen as we've witnessed the eggs, larvae and capped brood, and we know the bees are bringing food into the hive.

As I slowly looked at the activity, I was looking for one other thing.

The queen.  Our colony is very small as it wasn't a large swarm.  If I'm going to ever spot the queen, it has to be now, before the growth is exponential.  I spotted her!  If you look at the bottom, right hand corner of the frame and work your way up to the left diagonally, she's the 3rd bee from the bottom.  Do you see her?

She has a longer abdomen (or tail) in comparison to the others.  It has a little red tinge to it.  She also has a more black and shiny dot on her thorax.  Now that I spotted her, I carefully put the frame back in the box and closed the top.

Long live the queen!  We'll let her get back to work.  The flow is about to start as the white dutch clover, privet and (soon) the Chinese tallow tree will be flowering.  We're not sure if we'll get to pull honey this year, but we'd certainly like to.  We're also trying to catch another swarm.  No success yet, but we've seen scout bees checking out the swarm trap.

Carrots For Days

Normally, we're harvesting the fall crop of carrots in February.  Our very cold weather delayed everything.  In fact, I thought it had killed our carrots.  I even planted two rows of spring carrots, which I never do, as I thought all hope was lost.  But alas!  The fall carrots rebounded and we had a reduced, but still sufficient harvest.

On a recent trip to where she grew up in Corpus Christi, my wife returned with a big basket that my mother-in-law had given her.  It works out nicely for harvesting.  We have a nice haul of Danvers carrots.  They're our 'normal' orange variety.

Then I picked the other two rows of the other varieties of carrots we have planted.  We fed the carrot tops to the animals by the fence watching our every move.

Here is a better look at the varieties after they're all washed up.  On the left, we have the Cosmic Purple Carrot.  It is purple on the outside with an orange flesh.  The one in the middle is your regular run of the mill Danvers carrot.  The one on the right is my favorite.  It is the Atomic Red Carrot.  It has a beautiful red color all the way through.

We eat a bunch of them, mainly oven roasted with olive oil and salt and pepper topped with some fresh parsley.  But we preserve a bunch, too.  We will can some of them.  We dice them up with a food chopper and then blanch them and bring them to a cool temperature in ice water.

We bag up a lot of quart bags of carrots.  These work perfectly for a quick meal as a side dish or, our new favorite, Cream of Carrot soup.  Into the freezer they go until we're ready.

We are trying a new experiment this year in dehydrating some carrots.  We'll do a couple of trays to see how they come out.

This is the same tray as above after drying.  Wow, they kind of went away, didn't they?

We'll put them in a jar like this.  When we were finished, we had a pint full of dehydrated carrots.

Tricia is thinking that when we don't have fresh carrots, she can throw a couple of tablespoons into stews where they'll rehydrate.  We'll know how this experiment turns out and whether or not this is something we will continue to do as another option to preserve the harvest.

The Heat is On

In This Post from November we posted about bringing Nick back home.  He was a registered Jersey bull that we borrowed from a friend to breed our two heifers and cow.  We haven't seen LuLu come back into heat and, although we haven't had her palpated, when we look at her back end, we think her bag is starting to grow.

Here's a more close up shot.  Hopefully we're right.  If we are, somewhere in August, she'll be calving.  That's always exciting.

I wish we could say the same for Elsie and Rosie.  We've seen both of them go back into heat.  Nick had stayed here for two cycles.  We thought things were done, but obviously not.  A friend of ours has a breed of cows called Devon.  Devons were brought to Plymouth in 1624 from England.  They are a rare breed that are dual purpose - milk and meat.

We both figured it would be good to have a Devon - Jersey cross and since he has a two year old Bull, it just seemed like we should play matchmaker.  We drove to our friend's home and picked up Billy Boy and brought him back to our place.  Here's Billy Boy:

He's a stout fellow with horns.  The other animals are all keeping their distance from him.  He's walking around the pasture, getting a feel for the new surroundings.

The next day, however, he's become fond of Elsie.  She's expected to come into heat in the next day or so.  Elsie and Billy Boy have been spending time together, but Elsie is not in standing heat yet.  Things won't work until she's in standing heat.  We'll be watching for that.

Until that time, Billy Boy shadows Elsie everywhere she goes...

We estimate she'll get bred in a day or two.  We'll be watching to record the date and plan to keep Billy Boy around for another month to ensure that once bred, Elsie and Rosie don't come back into heat again.  Rosie ought to be ready to be bred in about a week.

From the Garden - Spicy Radish Dip

Radishes are one of the fastest maturing crops in the garden.  You can plant them and in no time at all they are ready to harvest.  Radishes are good sliced thin in salads.  We've even pickled some.  But our favorite way to eat radishes are in a quick and easy, tasty and spicy fresh garden dip.  The bushy greens in the photo down below is our mini patch of radishes.  And they are ready - past time for being ready, actually.

The first item in the radish row isn't a radish, though.  It's a celery plant.  This is the first celery I've been able to grow from seed in the garden.  We've grown some from cuttings from a store-bought one, but this one grew from a seed.  Come to think of it, this celery would be excellent for using in the dip we're making today.

I'm going to pull out four of the biggest radishes for our dip.  There's a big, fat one right there.

I wash them off and then throw the greens to the cows, goats and chickens.  

I was about to go in when I noticed that two of our 300 onions had gone to flower.  See them?

I pulled them up as I've learned that once onions go to flower, you should pull them and eat the bulbs as quickly as possible as they don't last or store well.  I chopped off the tops of these little Red Creole onions.  I have a plan for them.

I cubed up the radishes and put them in the old food processor.

Along with the radishes, we dropped some fresh parsley, four cloves of garlic and I decided to add one of the Creole onions as a new addition to the dip.

In a bowl, we softened a block of cream cheese and added jalapeno pepper powder and more minced onion.

I sliced up some Atomic Red Carrots and Some Uzbek Yellow carrots that we had just pulled.  We'll use these for dipping into the radish dip.

We folded the cream cheese mixture into the radish mixture and stirred up read good.

Spicy Radish Dip, ready for the taste test...

Delicious!  Only thing I'd change is (believe it or not) NOT putting the onions in the dip.  It didn't taste bad.  It tasted good, but it changed the ordinarily creamy dip into a chunky dip.  The texture just wasn't the same.  Tricia and I ate this dip yesterday evening.  The bowl of radish dip with fresh carrots didn't make it 24 hours before we were cleaning the bowl.  It's time to make some more.

A Review of the Purple Teepee Bean

Most every year we purchase the tried and true varieties we've come to trust as we've planted them over the years.  Some varieties we no longer buy since we try to save the non-hybrid heirloom seeds that we originally purchase from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.  Their website is Rareseeds.com.  They are an excellent seed company that we support.  Their seed catalog is like a coffee table book - beautiful photographs and very descriptive verbiage about the seeds that are collected from all over the world.  There website is responsive and easy to navigate.  There are also reviews of each variety along with popularity of varieties in terms of sales.

In making my purchase of snap beans, I ordered the normal varieties I normally buy, like Contender, Italian Roma II, and Blue Lake Bush.  However, something caught my eye.  I always like buying things that are strange, different, new and brightly colored.  There was something on the page that was irresistible.  The Purple Teepee Bean.  It is a french bean, a bush bean that has a straight pod, and as the name suggests, it's purple.  it is the row on the left.  It makes a small bush and doesn't spread out quite as much as the Contenders, Bush Blue Lakes, or Romas that you see in the middle and on the right.

It makes a beautiful purple flower that catches your eye.  The honeybees seem to be attracted to them, too.

The Purple Teepee bean is highly productive.  I mean very highly productive.  The beans are high off the ground.  That's a good thing.  Other varieties' pods lay on the ground and are susceptible to bug damage.  

This handful of beans were just the mature beans off of one plant.  I left the young ones for later pickin'.  There were more small ones coming, too.

When I finished the (back breakin') job of harvesting the row of Purple Teepee beans, we had a beautiful basket of purple beans.

Chlorophyll gives these beans their beautiful purple color.  These purple beans, when cooked, turn deep green.  We've yet to cook them, so I can't give a taste test, but from production alone, the Purple Teepee Bean will be in our rotation from now on.  I think I'll harvest the whole row as they mature and leave one plant in which I'll save seeds from.  I give the Purple Teepee beans five stars and a thumbs up.

Food So Fresh!

Tomorrow shows a 90% chance of rain.  Those showers will make the garden jump in growth.  The sweet corn has really grown here lately with about 50% of the crop tasseling and silk is appearing.  This is a crucial time for the corn, so I hope the rainy and overcast weather tomorrow doesn't hinder pollination.  Poorly pollinated corn results in corn cobs that have missing (or few) kernels on the corn cob.  I've seen this a lot.  To prevent that, this year I tried to plant a little closer together.

But if I have concerns about pollination, I'm going to try a trick I read about - hand pollination.  Apparently, you gently cut the tassel off the top of the plant with scissors so you don't knock pollen off.  Then you move the tassel over the corn silk, trying to ensure each strand is dusted with pollen.  Reportedly, it is best to do this between 9-11AM after the dew has burned off.

We've been picking and eating lots of fresh vegetables here lately.  I harvested a huge bowl of Contender Snap Beans and snapped off the ends and Tricia cooked them.  So delicious.  We also picked some beets and two varieties of carrots.  The orange carrots are Danvers and the yellow ones are a free variety I received from Baker Creek.  They are called Uzbek Golden Carrots.  

We sliced up the root crops, salted them, put pats of butter on top (we eat a lot of butter!) and roasted them in the oven.  Roasted vegetables are so sweet.  We ate a plate full and went back for seconds.  Gotta be honest, there weren't many leftovers.  Not only do the vegetables taste great, but the colors are beautiful.

We're planning on picking some radishes tomorrow and making a spicy radish dip that we'll devour with raw carrots we'll cut up and use in place of crackers.  Looking forward to that.

The Swarm Trap

We've caught two separate swarms of honeybees in the backyard.  We are novice beekeepers.  I guarantee you we will mess this up, but that doesn't stop us from trying and learning.  One of the swarms appears to be healthy, while the other is not.  In fact, we've lost hive 2.  Tricia thinks we accidentally injured/killed the queen.  Maybe I'll report on that later.

We are putting out another swarm trap out to try to catch another swarm or two.  We live in prime honeybee area.  The nation's fifth largest honeybee producer lives less than a mile from us.  As a result there are lots of bees in the area.  While we haven't had tremendous success in KEEPING bees, we've been blessed to catch two swarms in less than 3 weeks.  We're trying again.

Here's how we do it.  It starts out with an attractant.  We use lemongrass essential oil.  There is another product called Swarm Commander.  Either attractant is a pheromone that attempts to mimic the scent that scout bees emit when they've found a place that they want the colony to locate to as their new home.  Swarm Commander is 3 times the cost of lemongrass essential oil, so we opt for the economy product.

We put three drops on a cotton ball.  We've been told to be careful with this as the worker bees like the scent, but if you put too much, the queen doesn't like it.  Since the object is to get the queen in the box, you want to have the right amount.  It's trial and error.  We've learned that every beekeeper has their own method for doing things, so you have to try things out to see what works best for you.

Our swarm trap is a 'deep box' on top of a bottom board, with a top board and a telescoping cover.  We drop the lemongrass oil infused cotton ball in the trap next to a frame of drawn out comb.

I put the trap on top of a six foot ladder and use a ratchet strap to tie it down.

And now, we just wait and check it every day.

Hopefully, we'll have some scout bees come check out the box and will want to move in.  We will simply wait and check it every day.  We'll let you know and post if we catch another swarm.

Not Enough Sense to Come in Out of the Rain

Saturday morning it rained.  It wasn't a torrential downpour.  It was more like a slow, soothing, soaking rain.  It rolled in from the west and deposited 6/10ths of an inch of rain.  Before it started coming down in buckets, I walked out to the barn to put the goats inside.  There was an old saying people used to say about people who weren't too sharp.  They'd say, "Ol Kyle, he ain't got sense enough to come in outta the rain."  Sometimes they're right.  Conversely, the animals RUN to the barn to get under the protection of the tin roof of the barn.  Cows, goats, and chickens alike skeedaddle to stay dry.

I have two videos to show you today.  I got stranded out at the barn while the spring showers passed over.  I wasn't in a big rush so I sat out and took in the sight and sounds of a nice spring rain.  Here is the first one.  This is looking southward toward the little piece of woods that borders the sound end of our property.  I have my egg collecting baskets hanging from the rafters of the main barn.  The hen house is the structure you'll see close to the woods.  That's why we catch so many possums in our traps and snakes in the nesting boxes.  I need to get out my sling blade and clean up the encroaching wilderness!

I ran around to the north side of the barn and sought refuge with the cows.  You can see the two big water troughs that fill with rainwater running off the roof.  You can also see (curiously enough) a badminton racquet hanging from the rafters on this side.  It is a nifty tool I use to kill carpenter bees that like to drill holes in the 2x4s that support the tin roof. The video also shows Rosie, LuLu and Elsie high and dry.  

The best part of the video is the sound effects.  If you turn up your volume, you can hear the relaxing sound of rain falling on a tin roof along with the added bonus of hearing the thunder roll.  If you're not careful, you'll fall asleep!  Around these parts, many people grew up on a wood frame house on piers with a tin roof.  We had a camp in Oberlin at the farm just like that.  I tell you, there's nothing quite like the sound of rainfall on a tin roof.  Someone, (my brother-in-law, maybe?) told me one time the story of a lady who got married and moved into a brick home with a composite shingle roof.  She missed the sound of rainfall on the tin roof so bad, she made her husband lead a sheet of tin against the side of their house so when it rained, she could hear those soothing, nostalgic sounds!

As I stood there listening  to the rain, I couldn't make it back to the house without getting soaked, so I began to think of songs about the rain.  Here's my list:

Elvis    Kentucky Rain

Ronnie Milsap    Smokey Mountain Rain

Keith Whitley    I'm no stranger to the Rain

Conway Twitty    Rainy Night in Georgia

BJ Thomas    Rain Drops Keep Fallin' on my Head (Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

Albert Hammond    It Never Rains in Southern California

Boy, those songs sure bring back some memories!  Do you have some favorite songs about rain?

Saving Broccoli Seeds

After we harvested the broccoli main head and picked the florets every day for weeks, it was time to let the broccoli go.  It went to flower and cascades of yellow flowers filled the broccoli row.  The honeybees buzzed around the broccoli, moving from flower to flower.  Soon the plant filled with pods that were at first green, but dried out and turned brown over several weeks.  Since we grow open-pollinated, non-hybrid, heirloom plants, we can save the seeds from year to year.  For most plants, its pretty easy to do.  I clipped off the tops and brought all the broccoli seed heads into the garage in a bucket.

Broccoli is a cole crop.  The seeds look like cauliflower, cabbage, and turnip seeds.  They are very small.  Broccoli seeds are in pods that are about 2 1/2 inches long.

There is definitely an easier way to do this, but the way we did it was like this.  Russ and Benjamin sat in the backyard with me and pulled pods off.  Once we had four or five pods in our hand, we rubbed our palms together over a big blue bowl until the dry pods disintegrated, leaving the seeds exposed.  We tried our best to pick out the chaff.  As you can see, we're collecting a pretty good bit of broccoli seeds, but a lot of chaff, too.

I went inside and got a fan and turned it on high.  Then I poured the seeds into the bowl from a bucket.  It took some trial and error, but soon had it sort of fine tuned where the chaff would blow away and the heavier seeds would fall into the bowl.

We could have cleaned the seeds more with additional time, but we got the seeds about as good as we could, considering the time and effort involved.

I poured the saved seed into a dark colored bottle and labeled the seeds, "Waltham Broccoli Seeds, saved Spring 2023" with a Sharpie on freezer tape that I affixed to the bottle.  Then I put in our saved seed box.  This fall we'll pull these out and plant.  Since they're saved, I'll generally plant a little heavy as I haven't tested germination.  Always good to plant heavy and thin out later than not have enough coming up in the rows when you need.

A Springtime Walk Through the Garden

Today was a gorgeous spring day.  It was one of those days that you want to relish and enjoy before the humidity, mosquitoes and heat kicks in.  After work, I did just that by taking a walk in the garden and checking on things.  First, I checked an experiment I was running on old seed.  I planted some butternut squash and green striped cushaw squash from 2009 I had saved.  It's old seed, but I figured at least some of it would germinate.  Nope.  Not one.  It teaches me that saving seed is good.  Saving seed for too long is not.

I also checked on a row of cowpeas I planted.  The variety was Ozark Razorback Peas.  They were from 2012.  I knew the germination would be low, so instead of planting every 4 inches, I planted every 2 inches.  On the 15 foot row, I would say only about 20% germinated.  I filled in the holes today by planting in the gaps at a 1 inch spacing.  We'll see how well this fills in the holes once Round 2 germinates.

Let's take a look at the other garden progress:

Straightneck Yellow Squash

Crookneck Yellow Squash

Black Beauty Eggplant

The Onion Crop

About a month away from harvest

The row of zucchini

Baby zucchini just forming

One row of blackeyes and one row of purple hull peas

The trellis of cucumbers blooming

Baby cukes setting on the vines

39 Heirloom Tomato Plants trellised

A Cherokee Purple setting fruit

Snap beans flanked by sweet corn

I'll be picking the first mess of Contender snap beans tomorrow!

Watermelon, Cantaloupe, and Butternut squash where they can vine

                                                                40 feet of Irish potatoes

Hope your gardens produce bountiful produce for your kitchen tables!