Fern Hill

2012! The End? No...Just Another Beginning.

2012-01-14T19:37:00.001-05:00

It's almost time to get seedlings started for the garden. I waited too long last year to get tomato and pepper seedlings started for the garden. This year I'm going to start them in February so that they're well along come May.

My good friend Harvey Ussery had his book, The Small Scale Poultry Flock, published by Chelsea Green. If you are at all interested in raising chickens, ducks, or geese I highly recommend his book.

I'm not a big hunter by any means. I usually take a deer or two (almost always does) for the freezer. This year I decided to keep the hides and to try my hand at tanning them. I purchased Deerskins into Buckskins and I have found it to be a very straight forward reference for home tanning. My hope is to create soft buckskins that I can have made into gloves. I'm thankful for what the deer provide and it makes me feel good to use as much of what the deer provides as possible.

Last year I saved about two dozen primary feathers that my tom turkey shed during the moult. I researched the making of quill pens on the internet and fashioned the feathers into quill pens. This past fall I gathered up a few pounds of black walnuts and allowed them to dry completely. I threw them into an old stock pot and boiled them over a campfire outside. After about 24 hours total, the whole mixture had been rendered down into a very serviceable ink. I'll post some pictures of the pens, the ink, and the awesome inkwell I found as soon as I can.

Nice Flush of Shiitake Mushrooms

2011-05-22T11:16:00.003-04:00

Last week I took the opportunity to soak a few of the mushroom logs I innoculated last year. After about 5 days of waiting the first flush has begun to emerge. These little fellows are delicious. Check 'em out.

Apitherapy

2011-05-21T20:46:00.002-04:00

a·pi·ther·a·py
Apitherapy is the medical use of honey bee products. This can include the use of honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and bee venom

Well in my case it relates solely to the use of bee venom. A little over a week ago I started having lower back problems again. Not to bore anyone with my medical history but my lower back hurts and makes regular life quite difficult when it begins to act up. I, unlike most people, have ready access to honeybee venom. I limp out to the apiary in the front yard, grab a half dozen worker bees one at a time and hold them to my waistline above the spot where the pain is. Generally it takes only a second or so until the bee stings me. I leave the stinger in for about 5 minutes to deliver the entire venom load and it's warm (albeit temporary) relief. People look at me incredulously when I tell them about my treatments. "You did what?!" is the typical comment. I respond by telling them that pain, if severe enough, is a potent motivator to try new methods of treatment. I have no systemic allergy to bee stings and it's important to mention that until you know if you do, intentionally stinging yourself with bees is a potentially lethal thing to do. The sting from a single bee, if you have an undiagnosed allergy, can lead to anaphlaxis and death without prompt medical attention. For the vast majority of people though, bee stings are a painful, itchy nuisance but that's all. I have found relief from some of my back pain through the use of bee stings. Apparently the pain is relieved by the bodies' reaction to the area of the sting. The effect is similar to acupuncture in that you are stimulating the body's own systems to relieve pain.

Donielle in the Bees

2011-05-14T10:29:00.003-04:00

Now here's something you don't see everyday. Donielle in the bees! It's a little known fact that not only does she handle most of the marketing and delivery for Fern Hill Apiary but she's also a very capable beekeeper in her own right. I recently found myself out of commission due to back problems. Since the nectar flow waits for no man (or woman) Donielle threw on her veil and added honey supers. To my great surprise the honey supers I put on just last week were all full and nearly completely capped. It has been a banner year for black locust blooms. One of the best blooms I've ever seen. Often you'll get a decent bloom but then a couple days of rain washes the nectar out of them and it's all for naught. This looks to be a good honey harvest year.

Last week I got a call at work from Donielle saying one of our colonies was swarming and that she was going to split them. A split is nothing more than making one colony into two. By the time I got home she had the new split moved into a different bee yard and the bees were getting oriented to their new home. Kudos D!

M

Successful Apple Grafts

2011-05-14T09:30:00.003-04:00

Last fall I tried my hand at grafting fruit trees for the first time. I purchased (10) M-7 apple root stocks from One Green World (http://www.onegreenworld.com//product_info.php?products_id=1184) in Oregon. I have Gravenstein and Esopus Spitzenburg heirloom apples that I'm training to a trellis in the front yard (a technique known as espalier).

I took several branch trimmings from each tree and grafted the leaf buds from them onto the root stocks. The union where the scion (the trimming from the tree you hope to grow) meets the root stock must be sealed to hold the graft in place and hold moisture so the union doesn't dry out. I used Parafilm tape but you could also use beeswax, string, or plastic food wrap. Success or failure is determined by whether the buds begin to leaf out in the spring. Well, I'm happy to report that the majority of the grafts did take and have leafed out very nicely. My goal is to graft at least three and hopefully four varieties of apple onto each root stock and to espalier these as well. Five of the trees are planted in buckets because I hope their eventual home to be the orchard in my son's former school, Mountainside Montessori.

Note: Grafting isn't difficult but it does require a little technique. If you're interested in trying it I'd recommend a grafting workshop hosted by someone who has done it. If that's not an option you could learn it as I did from any of the excellent videos on YouTube.

Enjoy,
M

A Very Large Swarm of Bees

2011-05-09T19:41:00.003-04:00

While I was out in the garden on Mother's Day a very large swarm of bees departed one of the hives and began to settle down on a small oak tree in the yard. The swarm was way above my head but I was able to capture it by setting up some scaffolding and then placing a step ladder on top of that. I took two nuc boxes full of wax foundation and placed it on top of the ladder and then shook the swarm down into the box. Well, that was the plan. I ended up shaking about 1/3 of the swarm onto the front of my shirt but I didn't receive a single sting. After a few hours the bees were completely inside the boxes I had set up for them and I moved them over to the main apiary after dark.

This was pretty large as swarms go. It was about 4 feet long and I'd estimate it to weigh around 4lbs. I was very happy to have recaptured them. They should have the new boxes of foundation completely drawn out in a few days. Swarms are comb-drawing machines!

Enjoy.
M

Life and Death...We all have to eat.

2011-05-03T21:16:00.005-04:00

So the Friday before Easter our last remaining hen hatched out 6 new chicks. One of the chicks died shortly after hatching which is quite common but the remaining 5 are plugging along. I put them in the pasture shelter in the front yard and momma takes them all under her wings at night and keeps them warm. They're very cute and a lot of fun to watch. The little ones learn a lot from watching mom. She'll find bugs for them and crunch the bug so it can't get away and drop it in front of them. They compete totally and run around with food in their beaks trying to keep it away from their siblings until they can eat it.

Well, the only problem with being a cute little chick is that a lot of things would like to eat you too. Donielle came home today to find the turkeys going nuts and momma hen squawking like crazy. She went over to find a medium-sized black rat snake had taken one of the chicks. Black snakes are constrictors who normally eat mice, birds, and bird eggs. A tiny little chick is right on the menu. The snake had already suffocated the chick so Donielle removed the snake with the chick still in its coils and took it into the woods to finish its meal. I've heard of people taking mice and rabbits away from snakes to 'punish' them. That's ridiculous. Snakes consume many, many mice that would otherwise get into everything we hold dear. Mice are cute in someone else's house but not in one's own. I'd much rather have the snake. Anyway...this photo shows the snake just finishing up. The 'bulge' is quite prominent. I'll miss the little chick but we all have to eat. Snake 1 Chick 0
M

Catching a Swarm

2011-04-30T15:03:00.008-04:00

So while I was away this morning helping a friend with a project, one of our honeybee colonies decided to swarm. A swarm is when a colony divides itself naturally with about 1/2 of the workforce leaving the hive in a matter of seconds, taking the queen with them. Usually they perch on a branch while they find a new home which can take a day or two. At our place the majority of swarms choose branches that are way too high up to safely reach. This VERY large swarm chose a highbush blueberry tree very low to the ground. These are the ones you love to catch.

In this video I'm shaking the bees off of the branch and into a box filled with combs that I've set up underneath it. Newly issued swarms are generally so docile that you can put your hand into them without fear of being stung. I did so with this one to show one of my son's friends that it was indeed possible. After the swarm drops into the box there will be a period of confusion as the bees get reorganized and hopefully begin fanning at the entrance to indicate that they accept this as their new home. Enjoy.

Plugging Logs

2011-02-28T19:38:00.002-05:00

So Saturday I headed down to Louisa, Virginia to the home of Dan Boone (7th Generation from the original guy) who hosted a blacksmithing Hammer In at his home. A Hammer In is a get together for blacksmiths. It's kind of like a meeting of beekeepers except that instead of thousands of stinging insects you play with red-hot metal and shape it with a hammer. I could explain more but if you don't understand the allure of it nothing I can write is probably going to make a difference.

After leaving there I headed over to Cismont, Va to Sharondale Farm. Sharondale is run by mycologist Mark Jones who, among other things, propogates various types of mushrooms and inoculates sterilized sawdust that can be used to grow mushrooms at home. The process is quite simple. I bought several bags of spawn from Mark for shiitake mushrooms. The 'spawn' is nothing more than sterilized sawdust on which the mycelium for a specific strain of mushroom has been started.

Starting with freshly cut (though aged several weeks) hardwood log/branch sections, numerous holes are drilled into the logs with an angle grinder that has been fitted with a special drill bit. Once the hole is drilled, a plunger is 'loaded' with spawn by repeatedly stabbing it into the sawdust until the plunger tube is full. The plunger is positioned over the newly drilled hole and the handle is pressed down firmly ejecting the spawn plug into the hole. The hole is then capped with warm cheese wax to prevent dehydration and then the log begins to sit. It will take the logs 6-9 months to become fully colonized with the filaments of shiitake fungus before the log begins to 'fruit'. The fruit I speak of is what we recognize as a mushroom. Ninety percent of a fungal colony is hidden inside a substrate of some kind. The ground, trees, etc. It's only the fruiting body, the mushroom, that we see. Mushrooms exist to release the billions of spores produced so that the whole process can begin anew at some other location.

The 'Y' strain I purchased from Mark comes with a hearty recommendation. It supposedly produces abundant flushes of delicious mushrooms and is a reliable producer in our area. Time will tell.

Mike

More Projects

2011-02-19T21:09:00.004-05:00

As spring begins to ramp up I have eagerly bit off more than I can chew, as usual. On Friday I drove out to visit the forge of my new friend, and world-class blacksmith Nol Putnam. He graciously allowed me to watch as he split a piece of iron bar stock for a project he's working on.

Back at the house I'm working slowly, but steadily on a small forge setup of my own. I've decided to locate the forge in a small shed away from what will be the garage/shop/barn for reasons of fire safety. It also means it will be ready more quickly and that I can get going on a few things. I'd like to see if the boys would be interested in hammering a little iron themselves. I know it sounds a little quaint but I think it's important for young men to have 'manly' things to do. We live in a society where opportunities for adolescents to prove themselves evoke images of stupid stunts ending in injury, property damage, or tragedy. Put in a little time in the forge and you might build some muscles, get some energy out, and make something useful.

I checked on the bees on Friday and was pleased to see that to this point we've lost only about 3 over the winter. It's to be expected that you will lose colonies over the winter for a number of reasons. Sometimes you lose them and never know the reason. Check back soon and I'll be posting some pictures of the projects in progress.

M

Barn Building

2011-02-09T18:19:00.003-05:00

I finally secured a dozen old utility poles to use in the building of a small barn here. I bought plans about 5 years ago for a 20x30 barn but I think we'll actually build it 20x32 to make the best use of plywood dimensions, etc. The utility poles are all at least 16' feet long and VERY heavy. Tentative plans for the barn include parking for the cars and tractor, a small workshop, and a FORGE. My good friend and blacksmith Jeff Dunkelberger has piqued my interest in giving it a try. Jeff does some very nice work in his shop and we have several of his pieces here at the house, including an iron cross and a candle holder.

I've warned Jeff repeatedly that my wife is gonna give him an earful if he gets me hooked on another money-losing hobby. Jeff has assured me that there's big money in blacksmithing and that the profits just keep rolling in! Wink!

Check out his blacksmithing shop at www.blackforestironworks.blogspot.com

Almost time to plant veggies! Stay tuned.

Michael

Battling Elk

2011-02-09T18:16:00.003-05:00

A great video of bull elk bugling and battling during the rut. My father and I took a float trip on the Madison River a few years ago but we didn't witness anything like this. We did see and hear a large number of elk in Yellowstone. Very impressive.

M

Pretty Good Group

2011-02-05T19:28:00.003-05:00

I found this family group on one of the blogs I follow. Regardless of your religious affiliation you have to appreciate talent. The guy playing the dobro (the guitar played on its back) is really good.

My youngest Jake commented that no one is smiling in the video. I responded that the father (the man playing the guitar in the background) is smiling and Jake asked why. I told him it's a smile of satisfaction....that everything is functioning the way it should all at the same time. It's a rare moment in my life when that happens and would make me smile too!

Enjoy.
M

Smart Dog

2010-12-27T19:04:00.002-05:00

This is a video that Donielle took of our puppy, Champ. His ball rolled under the bed and Donielle told him to go get it. Very funny.

Michael

Raising Chickens (and flies?)

2010-12-26T20:10:00.005-05:00

Early in the fall Donielle and I ordered a flock of Freedom Ranger chickens to raise for the freezer. These chickens are able to forage for more of their own food than the traditional meat bird, the Cornish Cross. They grow more slowly and their feed/weight conversion isn't nearly as rapid but we decided to give them a try. Here are the newly arrived chickens in our stock tank. The stock tank stayed on the front porch where we could keep an eye on things yet keep the 'stinky' chickens out of the house. They got new food, fresh water, and a nice heating pad to sleep on. We actually split the order with some friends down the road so we ended up with about 15 birds of our own.

This next photo shows the collection tub of our BioPod. One of the blogs I follow regularly is called Blacksoldierflyblog.com. The larvae of black soldier flies are actually wonderful composters. What takes weeks or months in a traditional compost pile takes just days with BSF. The adults are attracted to decomposing food scraps in the pod and lay their eggs in the 'egg disc' in the lid of the pod. When the eggs hatch, the larvae drop into the food scraps and begin to eat. They consume the scraps and molt several times until they're ready to pupate. Their instinct is to go 'to ground' and they seek a way out of the pod to burrow into the earth. Immediately prior to pupating they 'poop' and molt one last time. The larvae are able to negotiate an incline of up to 45 deg which is something the pod is designed to exploit. The larvae climb the 'exit' ramps and drop into the collection bucket below. What you end up with is a totally clean, self-harvesting supply of grubs that are very high in fat and protein. Take it from me, the chickens (both chicks and adults) love them.

Look for more about Black Soldier Flies and BioPod in the future. Compost for the garden, grubs for the chickens. What's not to love?

Michael

Homestead Butchering

2010-12-26T19:27:00.006-05:00

Should have posted this one earlier. Several months ago our 'main' tom turkey Albuquerque got tangled up in the electronet fencing during a duel with one of his sons. Actually both turkeys got tangled but we were able to free the younger bird in time. Albuquerque, sadly, didn't survive. We don't regard our turkeys as pets; rather we see them as breeding livestock. When we lost the tom I immediately dropped what I was doing to dress him out for the freezer. We got some nice turkey breasts, legs, and quite a lot of turkey stock. I learned how to butcher my own poultry from my good friend Harvey Ussery in Hume. You can check out Harvey's site at www.themodernhomestead.us.

The first photo shows the turkey mostly plucked of feathers. This was all done by hand as my homemade chicken plucker won't handle a bird as large as this. The larger (primary) wing feathers were plucked first and set aside to be made into quill pens. Seriously, I've wanted to try this for a long time and found that it's not difficult at all to do.

The second photo shows the plucked bird in my processing sink about to be eviscerated. The evisceration or 'gutting' process is actually pretty straightforward. You are removing the entrails and separating them into the edibles (liver, heart, etc) and inedibles (intestines, lungs, etc). My youngest boy Jake watched with great interest and was especially interested in what the heart and lungs looked like. It may sound gruesome at first but it's actually quite interesting. We, as carnivores, are too far removed from how our
food is produced.

The next photo shows what young, healthy turkey livers look like. Chicken livers, though smaller are the same, rich, dark color. The light, anemic-looking livers you find at the store tell a story about the lives those birds lived.

It isn't my intention to gross anyone out with these photos. The photos on Harvey's website are much more detailed, in fact one could learn how to butcher their own poultry just from studying the photos on his site. One phrase from his site sticks with me. It's a rhetorical questions he asks playing the part of the shocked observer seeing a chicken butchered for the first time. "How can you kill and eat a bird that you've known since it was first hatched?" Harvey's response is, to paraphrase, 'How can you eat a bird that's unknown to you?' Literally Food for Thought.

Michael

Deer Hunting

2010-12-26T18:02:00.003-05:00

So I got up early last Thursday and walked out into the woods, in the dark, and climbed into my treestand. I sat absolutely still for about an hour until I could hear footsteps in the dark. I closed the bolt on my rifle and waited. In about a minute I could make out a small buck and a smaller doe in the small clearing beneath the stand. I watched both but could tell that both deer were very small and decided to give these deer a pass in the hope of getting something larger. I climbed down about 8:15 and walked to the top of a nearby hill. I sat down at the base of a small tree to see what might come along. I immediately noticed a very small squirrel coming down the log in front of me. The squirrel came closer and closer until I wondered if he'd come all the way down the log to where I was sitting. At the last moment he seemed to notice that something was wrong and froze. It was at that moment that I looked beyond the squirrel and noticed a herd of deer on a hillside about 100yds from where I was sitting. I found a large doe in my scope and steadied my rifle to take the shot. The rifle discharge caught me by surprise and I looked up to see a good-sized herd of deer bounding out of sight into the woods. I watched to see if one looked like it might be struggling to keep up with the others. After they were out of sight I walked over to the spot where the doe had stood and looked for signs that she might be wounded. Nope. It was a clean miss. No deer today.

I truly am thankful for the meat provided by any deer I kill. I don't have a preference for bucks over does since I'm not in it for trophies. I'll be out again next week hoping for something to put in the freezer.

Michael

New Direction

2010-12-24T17:53:00.004-05:00

I've decided to take the blog in a new direction. I used to use the blog to document the going's on of Fern Hill Apiary, the name of our hobby beekeeping business. The business has taken on a life of its own and now has its own site. www.fernhillapiary.com. There we feature the products and prices for the bee-related things we produce. I'll continue to feature beekeeping photos, etc on the blog so you can see what's going on here but the 'new' blog is going to have a more general focus on our family, homestead, projects, etc. We hope you enjoy.

2010 Honey Harvest! 430lbs!

2010-07-17T18:55:00.010-04:00

We finally got this year's honey crop harvested. We collected about 12 medium boxes of honey from the colonies in our out yard and here at the

house. Once the boxes were collected we moved them into a screened tent so the bees couldn't get to them. Removing the boxes from the hives involves the use of a fume board. A fume board is simply a plywood lid with a piece of felt stapled to the inside. You squirt some VERY foul-smelling liquid onto the felt and put it on the hive. The smell drives the bees down out of the super so you can take it off with very few bees in it. The boxes full of honey weigh approximately 50lbs a piece. It's an awkward lift so you have to be careful not to hurt yourself lifting or carrying them.

Once inside the tent we begin the extraction. First the wax capping covering the honey is removed with an uncapping knife. This knife is the only heat this honey will feel. The knife slices through the wax sometimes lifting it off in a single white sheet of wax. This capping wax is the most sought-after wax for making candles.

After the capping is removed the frames are put into the extractor. The extractor is nothing more than a little centrifuge. When fully loaded, the lid is closed and you crank the handle, spinning the frames within, which throws the honey out of the cells. It drains to the bottom and flows out of the honey gate and through several filters. After that it's ready to bottle.

Once the frames are empty (you've spun the honey out of them but they're still wet) we put them out for the bees to rob clean. They clean the frames, boxes, and tools until they are completely free of honey. Bone dry! It's total pandemonium when you put the boxes out but it's the best way to get the combs cleaned.

Honestly I sort of dread extraction every year. It's extremely hot, heavy, hard, painful work. You get some stings even though the bees aren't being aggressive for the most part. You pinch bees under the frames when you lift them, roll them against your leg when they come to clean up the honey you spill on yourself, etc. The actual extraction is miserable but the end result is worth it. Lots of pure, golden honey. MMMMMMmmmmmmm.

Enjoy.
M

So Dry But a Bit of Rain

2010-07-10T08:45:00.001-04:00

We finally got a little rain this morning at the house. I was having to go out every evening and water the garden to make sure everything didn't dry up and blow away. The 'lawn' itself went totally brown which is the grass going dormant. It should green up again in the late Summer/Fall, meanwhile I'm enjoying a break from mowing.

A few plants actually LIKE the heat we've been having. Next is a photo of the sweet potato vines taking over the greenhouse. I usually don't have anything growing in there in the summer because even with the door open it gets too hot. Sweet potatoes love the heat. I give them a drink about every other day (via the mist system you can see hanging from the top). I put them in the greenhouse for two reasons...they love heat and the deer/rabbits can't get in there.
It's time to start harvesting some of the herbs I planted in the garden. Many have already gone to seed (dill, cilantro, etc). With the cukes flooding in it's nice to have some fresh herbs to use in the canning process.

Just for the fun of it I let one zucchini plant go and one cabbage too. The idea is to let them get large enough each so that the boys have something to enter into the county fair. The zucchini, I think, is a little smaller than one I had last year but you get what you get. I put my keys on top of the cabbage for scale. This cabbage is supposed to be able to top 50lbs but I don't think we're going to get there. Still, it's pretty big right now.

The corn is coming right along. The tassles have been visible for a week or so and now the ears are starting to show. Corn is air pollinated which means it doesn't rely on bees to get the job done. Tell that to the bees though. I've seen lots of different insects (including honeybees and bumblebees) going from tassle to tassle collecting the pollen. I have two type of sweet corn growing. One variety is Country Gentleman and the other is Stowell's Evergreen. Both types are shoepegs which means the corn doesn't grow on the ears in straight rows but shows up in a more haphazard pattern. The bumblebees are hitting the sunflowers like crazy. Strange but you often find them spending the night on the blooms. I guess if they work late they just spend the night out and return home in the morning. This year's crop of sunflowers are smaller and shorter than normal but I attribute that to the heat and drought. Still, it's hard to find a cheerier sight in the garden than a stand of sunflowers. The next update will likely be in a week or so as we extract this year's honey crop. Despite the drought it looks like we'll have a pretty good year where honey is concerned.

M

What to do...what to do?

2010-06-14T19:59:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Naragansett turkey hen is glued to her nest. We have about a week until hatch day so things are fast approaching. We also have a cuckoo maran hen (chicken) who has gone broody and should be hatching out a varied clutch of eggs. We value the broody trait since it's so much easier to allow momma to do the work of raising chicks, keeping them warm, showing them what to eat and what to leave alone (bees!).

A very good friend stopped by today and dropped off about 20lbs of fresh-off-the-tree sweet cherries. She and her husband have an 'in' at a local orchard and get access a few days before the general public. I have three trays of pitted cherries in the dehydrator now that will be great in Donielle's homemade granola cereal. What to do with the remainder. Some I'm going to give away but the rest are going into.......what......cherry wine, of course.

I first tried winemaking last year with two Cabernet Sauvignon "kits" from Midwest Supplies. Each kit yielded about 30 bottles of wine which are now aging in the basement. Each year we have an overabundance of blackberries that grow wild in the yard. This year I've decided that I'm going to try some blackberry wine also. I bought 4 gallons of raw apple cider last year from a local orchard to try my hand at making hard cider. The results were amazing. Immediately prior to bottling I added some of our honey to give the surviving yeast a boost. This resulted in sparkling cider that turned out quite dry and very tasty. It turns out, however, that I gave away too many bottles and now I find myself wanting. This year I'll have to buy 8 gallons! Heh Heh.

In other news the garden is coming right along. I harvested nearly 60 garlic bulbs yesterday and our 'monster' cabbage grows by the day. My plan is to allow the cabbage and one zucchini plant to grow to gargantuan size and then let the kids enter them in the Fauquier county fair. The cabbage is known to grow to a 50lb head so I should be able to get a year's worth of sauerkraut out of a single head. We'll see.

Thanks for following our goings on.

Michael

Brooding Turkeys

2010-05-30T20:47:00.009-04:00

Our Naragansett hen has finally gone broody. She's sitting on about 5 eggs which should hatch in a little less than a month. She's been exhibiting some nest building behavior in recent weeks but she finally plopped down and began incubating in earnest about two days ago. If you approach her or the pasture shelter she puffs up like a balloon and hisses at you. I ignored her warnings last year to my peril and tried to reach under her to check on the eggs. I got pecked hard enough that she broke the skin. Dumb me! I've done it so many times with chickens that I was on autopilot and didn't take into account that I was dealing with a bird 4 times the size of a chicken.

If you look carefully in the picture you can just see her eggs beneath her at the right front.

This photo shows our two tom turkeys. Albuquerque (in front) is the older of the two and is the father of the one in the rear of the photo. The younger tom is the product of Albuquerque (a chocolate tom) and the Naragansett hen. It's our hope that he'll pair up with the chocolate hen in the background of the photo and raise some poults of his own.

This final photo is of Albuquerque. I love his blood-red wattles and combs. He's also growing a pretty significant beard. For those who don't know a turkey's beard is the little tuft of hair that grows out of his breast. Usually the older and more mature a tom is the longer the beard.

We'll follow up with the turkeys in a few weeks. Hopefully we'll have some new poults to introduce to you. It's so much easier raising turkeys when momma does all the work. If it's too cold she covers them up. If they need food, she shows them where to find it. Our hens co-mothered the last batch and did a pretty good job of it. Doting mothers!

Enjoy the photos.
Michael

Garden Goodies

2010-05-26T20:23:00.003-04:00

We are now entering the time of year I love most. Things are starting to happen in the garden in earnest. You go out and see what's ripe and ready and plan dinner accordingly. Tonight we had beets and asparagus with our pork chops. I sauteed the beet tops in some bacon fat until they were quite limp. I then sauteed the sliced beets and asparagus in the same and topped them with diced bacon bits. There's one way to get a 5 and 8 year old to eat beets and asparagus and that's to do it with bacon. Mmmmmm.

I also harvested snap peas and a few carrots. The snap peas and the asparagus are two things that have a problem making it from the garden to the house. Many are lost to impulse moments after being picked. The snap peas will likely make to tomorrow's salad but the carrots are doomed once the boys find out they're in the house. We also have lettuce, bok choy, and pak choy coming in. The corn is getting some height to it and the little beans I planted next to each corn stalk are up and looking for support. The sunflowers are all up and tracking their namesake across the sky quite studiously. The sunflowers are mostly for show. I usually leave the heads on them for the goldfinches. You've never seen a happier goldfinch than one perched on a head full of sunflower seeds. By that time the males have lost most of their summer (display) plumage and are starting to look a little drab. Oh well.

We got THREE whole cherries off of one of the trees in the yard. I came home to find the central leader broken and hanging. I assume a bear visited during the day since all of the other cherries had been taken. I pruned the tree below the cut and I think I'm going to need to cull all fruit in the future until the tree is of sufficient size to deal with large mammals leaning against it. I could wrap those trees in electric fencing but the amount of electric fencing I have here is getting excessive. I joke with friends that the only place that has more electric fencing than our place is the Supermax prison at Wallen Ridge.

Speaking of bears I hustled home yesterday to get my oldest boy off of the school bus. I was reading the mail when I heard his bus round the corner and when I looked up the bus was swerving a bit and then stopped. When it finally pulled up to the driveway the driver asked me if I'd seen the bear that had just crossed the road in front of him. He stopped the bus so the kids could watch the bear as it marched up the hill. I hadn't seen anything. After the bus departed my son and I drove up the neighbors driveway to see if we could find it. Sure enough....there was a small bear standing on his hind legs looking at us. When he saw his chance he darted across the driveway and into the woods. I'd have to say that judging by its size that it was a fairly young bear. Perhaps a young male newly away from his mother.

Finally the sweet potato slips arrived and I have them planted in the greenhouse. I got a dozen Beauregard and 6 Vardeman. I have them in the greenhouse because they LOVE heat and the deer can't get to them in there. Last year all of my slips were eaten to the ground. Dang! We'll see how they do.

Enjoy and good gardening.
Michael

In the Bees!

2010-05-21T17:12:00.003-04:00

I got into the bees this afternoon primarily to see if some nucs I had intended to raise for this year's beekeeping students were making progress. Sadly they are not. I haven't gotten a single nuc (out of the 10 or so I started) that's made sufficient progress that I'd be comfortable selling it to someone. Not to worry though. There are other club members who can likely supply bees to the students.

The first photo show me dusting the bees with powdered sugar. You dust the tops of the frames and then brush it gently down between them so as to get onto as many bees as possible. The bees don't like the sugar and begin grooming themselves furiously which knocks loose a lot of varroa mites. They eat the sugar and all is well.

The second photo shows a frame of ripened honey that the bees have begun to cap over. The snow white capping wax you see here is the newest and finest beeswax there is. Just a beautiful sight. The frame full of honey weighs about 4 lbs. When the box is full it'll weigh nearly 45 lbs. A lot of weight and most of it's honey.

Photo number three shows a frame taken from the brood nest where the queen lays eggs and young worker bees are raised by the thousands. Note the ring of uncapped honey around the outer edge. Next closest to the center are cells of pollen. Pollen is the bees source of protein and mixed with honey makes a type of 'bee bread' that's fed to the developing larvae. If you look closely into the individual cells you can see the young worker larva laying in the bottom of the cells in a 'C' shape.

This last photo I included because it just looks cool. Quite often when you pry up the inner cover you find that they bees have built comb between the cover and the tops of the frames below. This wax is usually just scraped off and melted down later for candles, etc. I always take a second to just appreciate the work that the bees have done.

Enjoy the photos.
Michael

Garden, Shrooms, & Turkeys

2010-05-17T17:19:00.008-04:00

As is typical for this time of year things in the garden have already gotten away from me. I can't resist trying new plants (especially tomatoes) and I always find myself trying to find room in the garden for the seeds I've started. For the past couple of years I've been using a soil blocker to create little soil cubes for seed starting. The first blocker I bought was the 2" model which is perfect for almost everything. Later I purchased a 1/2" mini-blocker for starting flower seed.

So far in the garden I have tomatoes (about a dozen different varieties), garlic, 3 kinds of corn, 4 kinds of potatoes, various cabbages, carrots, onions, brussel sprouts, broccoli, zucchini, cukes, lettuces, beans, sunflowers, PEANUTS, peas, asparagus, and various herbs. This is my first year trying peanuts. I bought seed peanuts through another member of SSE (www.seedsavers.org) and planted them. All are up and running.

The fruit trees are doing well this year. I bought 10 M-7 rootstocks from onegreenworld.com and I'm going to grow them out for a year and then graft different varieties of apples onto them. My plan is to bud graft 4 different apples onto each rootstock and then espalier them onto a trellis system. I have 5 rootstocks in the ground and 5 in 'pots'. I hope to get the rootstocks in the pots started and then donate them to my son's Montessori school's garden.

The shiitake mushrooms logs are beginning to fruit. I've been collecting the shrooms and drying them for family and friends. So far I haven't gotten any of the oyster or lion's mane mushrooms I plugged last year. That's ok. Shiitake are good, meaty mushrooms and go great in salads, stir fry, and as a meat substitute. Mmmm good.

The turkeys are laying pretty well. Right now we have a clutch of seven eggs in the pasture shelter that we hope our Naragansett hen will soon begin to set on. Last year she hatched 5 poults but only one of those survived to adulthood. We'll see. Both of our hens co-mothered the poults and the Tom (Albuquerque) was an excellent father. I watched him many times very gently handing freshly plucked grass clippings to his poults. He obviously dwarfed them in size but he was very careful to step around them when they wandered underneath him.

Enjoy and good gardening.
Michael

May Swarms

2010-05-15T19:54:00.009-04:00

Update Spring 2010!

Well I have finally gotten around to updating the blog. We're starting out with photos of our second swarm of the season. The bees exited one of the colonies in the yard and perched on a branch on one of the cherry trees. We came home from Jake's soccer game to find 10,000+ bees hanging out.

Swarms are a colony's way of dividing themselves. Once a colony reaches a certain size the worker bees collectively decide that it's time to split the colony in half. They begin to make queen cells inside the colonies on the bottom of the frames (or combs in a wild colony) and they begin to 'slim down' their queen so that she's able to fly. Once the cells are capped about half of the colony exits the front door in a massive swarm of bees. They usually settle down on a nearby structure (could be a tree branch, fence post, car, etc) and hang out while the scout bees search for a suitable new home. Once a new home is found the swarm lifts off of the temporary perch and heads for their new digs. Although menacing in appearance swarms are usually totally docile. They have no honey stores or brood to defend and they are usually stuffed to the gills on honey. It is this honey that will give them the ability to draw new combs in their new-found home. Swarms are comb drawing machines.

I got a nuc box together with 5 new frames of pure beeswax foundation. Holding the box underneath the swarm I shook the branch sharply and dropped the majority of the bees into the box. You don't necessarily need to get the queen (but it would help). Once you have a 'critical mass' of bees in the box the others will follow. I checked the bees 3 days after shaking them into the new box and found that they had drawn almost all of the foundation into new combs.

After work yesterday I stopped over at a buddy's house to check on the colonies I keep over there. Harvey and his wife Ellen have a very interesting property and what they have going on there is my vision for my retirement (or post lottery winning) days. You can check out their website at www.themodernhomestead.us

It was my intention to substitute the honey super I had placed on the colony over there with a super designed for Ross Round comb sections. When I opened the colony I discovered that they were in post-swarm mode with imminently hatching queen cells everywhere. I removed two cells and could feel and hear the sounds of queen bees that are about to emerge. Then, while I watched one of the queens chewed her way out of the cell I was holding and emerged into a queen cage I held over the end of the cell.

Shiitake Mushrooms

2009-05-20T18:51:00.006-04:00

Last year a buddy and I plugged oak logs with shiitake mushroom spawn. They were so delicious that I decided to do it again myself this year. The process is simple. You take branches or small trees that were felled in winter (Jan/Feb is ideal) and cut them into 3-4' lengths. The logs should be no more than 6-7" in diameter ideally. The following April you drill holes in the logs that are the same depth as the dowel plugs are long. You gently tap the plugs into the holes and seal them over with cheese wax to prevent the spawn-laden dowel from drying out. Then you wait. The logs are 'racked' for a year to allow time for the mycelium to colonize the sapwood to the point that it's ready to bear fruit. The spring rains stimulate the logs to produce mushrooms. You can 'fool' the logs into fruiting by soaking them in cold water. I use a stock tank and soak about 4 logs at a time.

Queen Cells

2009-05-20T18:35:00.004-04:00

I finally went back to my 'old' way of doing things and made my own wax cups, primed them with royal jelly, and grafted the larvae into them. Out of 26 cells I had 20 that were accepted by the bees. The advantage I think to making your own cells are several-fold: Cost...they're free. Freshness...they are brand new and so don't have a chance to build up any wax bloom on them that I think deters the bees from accepting them. "Crispness" By that I mean that the edges of the cells, when properly made, are sharper than those available commercially. Having the thinnest, most pliable edges on the cells I think increases the rate of acceptance. The bees seem to prefer them.

After grafting I wait 24 hours to check to see how many are accepted. If the bees have begun to draw out the cell you can generally assume it has been accepted. You mark the graft date down on the calendar and make a note 10 days later to remove the cells to the mating nucs. I generally place two cells into each nuc (in case one is a dud) and let the queens emerge and take their mating flights.

Raising Queens Part III

2009-05-01T20:11:00.009-04:00

Should have known better than to try dry grafting. The success rate on the initial graft was 0%. Dry grafting means placing larva into queen cells that haven't been 'primed' with royal jelly. I think the larvae dried out and were rejected by the bees.

I tried again tonight. I harvested some royal jelly from damaged queen cells and primed each cup with a small dab. Priming serves several purposes. First and foremost it makes it infinitely easier to float the larva you are grafting off of the grafting tool into the wax cup. It also serves to keep the larva from drying out. Some say it serves as a food source but I've also read that the bees clean out the royal jelly under the larva and replace it with fresh stock. The stuff I used tonight was as fresh as it gets so we'll see.

Grafting is difficult only because it requires a steady hand and keen eyesight. I'm lucky to be able to see the day-old larva in the cells and to be able to move them. I need to invest in a magnifiying headlamp. Holding a flashlight in your mouth while you work is nonsense.

Raising Queens Part II

2009-05-01T07:25:00.004-04:00

Now that the Cloake board is set up and the bees are 'queenless' we can set them up to raise some queens for us. We use a standard medium frame that has been modified to accept cell bars. The cell bars are nothing more than paint stir sticks. Attached to the cell bars will be the wooden cell cups and pure wax cells into which the grafted larva are placed. I couldn't get any photos of the grafting process since it's too hard to hold a camera and graft at the same time. I need an assistant next time.

Today it has been over 24 hours since the introduction of the grafted cells. We'll check them to see how many were accepted. I'm not the most experienced grafter so I usually experience somewhere in the vicinity of 50% acceptance. Amazingly I also couldn't find my typical grafting tool when I needed it most so made use of a 'grafting' tool shown to me by Dr. Rick Fell of Virginia Tech. It consists of a sanded down wooden stick. Being almost paper thin it bends nicely to get underneath the larva.

Let's Raise Some Queens

2009-04-26T18:01:00.004-04:00

This afternoon I put my Cloake Board (CB) onto a good, strong colony of bees. The CB allows you to transform a colony of bees that are queenright (with a queen) into a colony that's queenless simply by sliding in a metal tray.

Once you determine that you have a suitable colony for raising queens you take off a box containing some capped/uncapped brood and shake all the bees off back into the colony. You place the CB onto the colony and put the box with the now empty frames back onto the colony. Then you rotate the colony 180 degrees so that the bottom entrance now faces what used to be the rear of the colony. The entrance to the CB faces in the same direction as the original colony's entrance. A CB has a queen excluder-sized grill for its floor. The nurse bees that were shaken off of the frames of brood are irresistably drawn back to the frames of brood that are now above the CB. What you are trying to do is to get a large amount of nurse bees above the CB that will draw out queen cells when the metal tray is slid into place. The bees above the CB think they are queenless and readily draw queen cells. Once the process of drawing cells has started you return them to a queenright state to finish the cells.

It helps to have a feeder on the colony to provide a source of carbohydrates for the bees that need to draw wax for the cells. Reversing the entrance makes the field bees reorient to the 'new' top entrance above the CB. The bees put their abdomen into the air, bending the last segment of their body to expose the Nasanov gland, and begin fanning their wings. In 24 hours we'll put the slide in to separate the bees above the CB from those below and to make them think they're queenless. In a day or so we'll graft larvae into queen cups and put them into the box above the CB. If we do everything properly we should find the bees drawing queen cells within 24 hours of our graft. Stay tuned.

Mike

Garden, Bees, etc

2009-03-22T20:04:00.003-04:00

I got the boys out in the garden this afternoon to show them how to use a garden rake and to plant carrots, onions, and peas. My oldest son Wade planted several rows of carrots while my youngest Jake planted peas and onion sets in his area. My hope is to foster a love of gardening in them. I turned over the dirt for them but had them use the garden rake to break up the clumps and rake things smooth. Each worm was a real 'find' for them. I encouraged them to cover the worms back up so they don't dry out. Each of them made a sign for their area of the garden with their names on it. After planting I had them each water their gardens. So far we've planted onions, garlic, peas, asparagus (planted an additional 50 plants last year), carrots, and lettuce. I have starts going in the greenhouse for peppers, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, and cukes. Hope it's a good year for the garden!

Brooding Turkeys

2009-03-21T08:08:00.002-04:00

Last year my wife and I took the plunge and ordered some heritage breed turkey poults from Murray McMurray. We lost about half of them during an unexpected cold snap last spring but managed to raise two hens and a tom for the table. The tom was our Thanksgiving Day centerpiece. Delicious! Out of that original order we kept two hens and a tom with the intention of trying to get them to breed. It looks like our chocolate hen is sitting on 5 eggs at the moment. She rarely comes out and hisses like a mother chicken hen when you get too close. We'll see how she does.

More Bee Photos

2009-03-13T21:49:00.004-04:00

Photos showing honeybee eggs in worker cells, worker larvae in cells, capped drone larvae, and a queen cell from a newly emerged queen. Notice the 'hinged' flap at the bottom of the cell that's still hanging on. In the photo showing the eggs in the cells you can also see two drones. These are male bees with their characteristically huge eyes.

Beekeeping Photos

2009-03-13T20:32:00.004-04:00

Over the years I've taken what I consider to be some decent photos in the bee yard. Every year when I teach the beginners class I wish I had some of those photos to show the students an example of some of the things I'm talking about that aren't part of the presentation. Guess I need to update the presentation for next year. Anyway enjoy the photos.

Check out the nice mouse nest I found in a hive that died over the winter. This is what awaits you if you don't get your mouse guards on in time.

The frame covered with bees shows the nice 'pie crust color' of healthy capped worker brood.

Getting Started

2009-03-13T20:06:00.005-04:00

The beekeeping year has started. I'm well along into teaching this year's beginning beekeeper class at the Virginia State Arboretum. Today I spent about 6 hours total scraping very old comb off of very old frames and melting the wax down over a wood fire in the front yard. I also cut down all of my old deep boxes into mediums which left me with a bunch of very useful 'shims' that are very handy to have. I think the wood fire method is a loser when it comes to melting comb. It's hard to beat the solar wax melter for getting really nice-looking purified wax. Unfortunately solar melters don't work too well when it's snowing outside.

While our main sideline, hobby, money-losing business is beekeeping we also dabble with turkeys, chickens, gardening, our orchard, and a myriad of other projects. More on those later. I'll see if I can find a photo of our very fine looking Tom turkey who spends his waking hours wooing the hens. He's quite a sight strutting his stuff.