August Garden Adventures

Yesterday I was overjoyed to discover this monarch caterpillar in the Butterfly/Bee/Hummingbird garden! He was quite big and munching on the butterfly weed. Today he is gone, so I hope that means he is making his chrysalis somewhere.  There have been very few monarch butterflies this year, so I am delighted one chose to raise her offspring in my garden.

This garden is buzzing with  honeybees, bumbles and other native wild bees. The hummingbirds and hummingbird moths make regular visits, too.   It is so rewarding!

Obedient plants.

Phlox up close.

The hens keep pulling out the petunias from the  bottom pot of the tilted tower of flowers and settling in there. I give up.

The turkeys prefer patio furniture.

I had totally forgotten I planted a couple of high bush cranberries on the north side of the garage a few year ago.  This year they are loaded with brilliant berries.

Wild grapes along the driveway are starting to  ripen.

So many more to come.

A cuke growing in a flower bed by the barn, trying to fit in.

The alpin strawberries I started from seed last spring and transplanted into the aquaponics towers a few weeks ago have decided they like it there and are loading up with blossoms and berries! Alpine strawberries are tiny, but so tasty.

Tis weekend we finally hung gutters on the fish gazebo and filled with gravel for another aquaponic growing experiment. (Below the  gutters is a drain-and-fill gravel bed full of tomatoes basil, and other miscellaneous plants. They are thriving on the fish water.)

Last week I found four rather sad strawberry pots on end-of-the-season  clearance.  I pulled out the 28 everbearing strawberry plants, washed the dirt out of their roots, and  set them into the gravel in the gutters. I hope they like aquaponic life and begin producing bountiful berries  like the alpine strawberries.

Summer is winding down, but the show isn’t over yet!

Bee & Butterfly Garden

 It was a very busy and productive weekend with pretty much perfect summer weather.  Rog and I baked for the Farmers Market and sold out every crumb by 11 a.m. (including a few fruit tarts that were too fragile and had broken - we weren't going to sell them but people pleaded for them!) And yesterday a great group of  folks showed up to  hear some of the Nodding Wild Onions perform -- and some even joined in singing onstage at the end. But for me, the best accomplishment of the weekend was getting the  weedy, overgrown, embarrassing Bee & Butterfly Garden presentable.

We weeded at least eight piled-high wheel-barrow loads of weeds and grass from the garden and  along the fence!  I discovered flowers in there so obscured by overgrowth I didn't even know they were blooming.  We added 15 bags of mulch. And still need a few more.

The  south side now. When the sun shines, the fragrance that wafts up from the alyssum, roses and heliotrope is intoxicating!

The north side now.

The center circle. The green is a carpet of mostly plantain and creeping charlie. Tackling that will be next year's  improvement project.

This balancing rabbit that swings around in the breeze was one of my garden purchases at the Gold Rush antique fair last Mother's Day. 

This little sculpture was my other Gold Rush extravagance.

As we worked, I was delighted to  note that there were lots of bees and  even a few butterflies enjoying the garden! 

The catmint was absolutely humming with bees!  This garden is conveniently located about 20 feet from two of my hives.

A goldfinch on a sunflower.  Hummingbirds also zipped by as I weeded.

Turns out that cats also like this garden --Poet sleeping under a shrub.

Ever since we moved to this farm I have been dreaming of a garden view out our dining room window. I didn't realize it would also enhance the view from the kitchen window--this is now what I see while washing dishes. It is still a work in progress, but this little garden is making me very happy.

Honey Harvest Day!

Today my bee mentor Tom came over and we harvested the honey. I am sure I could have done this myself, but I knew I had a problem with one of my Warrre hives and wanted his expertise to help me figure out how to deal with it.  Plus, I always learn so much working bees with Tom.
While we were firing up the smoker and donning our suits, we noticed a huge toad hopping across the patio.  (This is my best toad impression.)

We tackled the Langstroth hive first.  I  am pretty sure this hive swarmed early in the summer, although I didn't see it happen. But the population looked robust and the supers were full of capped honey.

The new trick I learned this time was  to use a leaf blower to blow the bees out of the frames.  tom had also constructed a turntable on an old  hive box,so it was easy to set the super on  the turntable (I refuse to call it a lazy Susan) and swivel it around while blowing bees off toward the hive.  Once the bees were blown out, I quickly carried the  supers into the summer kitchen so the bees wouldn't come back to them. We took two nice supers off this hive.I should have added more early in the summer; I would have had more honey and the bees would have had more room and might not have swarmed.

Next we dealt with the Warre hives.  I  chose Warre hives because they are smaller (much easier to handle when full of honey and bees), aesthetically pleasing with their tall  narrow proportions and peaked roofs, and they allow the bees to build their comb more like they would in the wild. The more common Langstroth hives are filled with precision frames that the bees must build upon in a manner to make it easier for the beekeepers.  The Warre hives just have a set of bars across the top of each box that the bees build upon in the way they prefer, but they are not so convenient for the beekeepers to handle or extract.

It is pretty much impossible to remove a layer from the Warre hive without a bit of damage to the the comb - you can see the shiny liquid honey seeping out of the breaks.  This comb was beautifully constructed.

The problem with my second Warre hive was that I had a total brain drain when I assembled the hive way back early last summer when I added boxes for honey. I am still not sure  how this happened, but I inserted a box with no top bars into the stack. Besides giving the bees a structure to build upon, the bars limit how tall they can build the comb - they have to reserve a bee-height space between each layer so they have room to move and work.  Without the bars, my bees built a 2-story layer of comb, and the only way to dismantle it was to break it.  The comb was constructed in lovely,  straight layers even at the bottom.

The Warre hive on the left was my problem hive, and will only be able to have two boxes to get through the winter, while the other Warre hive  has an extra box of honey-filled comb to help them get through the winter.  There is also a chance that I lost the queen if she was in the third box.  If I am lucky and the queen is still in the short hive, I might use it as an experiment. I am thinking  about moving it into the high tunnel late this fall where it won't be so cold.  I will also have to feed this hive because I took so much of the honey reserves.

Despite my laissez-faire beekeeping style, I was quite pleased with the honey haul.  Tom estimates we  will have  upwards of 90 pounds of honey.  Stay tuned for the  Honey extraction story, coming soon!
Thank you to Cadence, who took all the photos--it was so nice to not have my camera not be all sticky at the end of a bee session! 

Monday Morning

Every morning after feeding the animals and milking the cow, I take a little walk around the farm.  Probably most gardeners and farmers have this habit, to see what's blooming, make sure all the animals and plants are looking healthy, and note what is calling out to be harvested, weeded,  repaired or accomplished.  I usually have camera in hand because I especially like the glowing morning light and vivid colors for photos.

The turkeys are getting quite large and beginning to  develop their snoods and wattles.  The males are just starting to get their fancy tail feathers and often puff up and display.  Even though this batch of turkeys has been handled much less frequently than turkeys in previous years, they are still curious and friendly and come running whenever they see me (the source of all yummy). I love being the pied piper of poultry.

The cows asked to go into the front yard today, so I opened the gates to guide them across the driveway and along the garden (protected by temporary electric fence) to the yard. This takes a while because apparently there is the most irresistible grass growing along this path.

The front yard has large ash trees, good for shade and head-scratching.  Like mother like son: while Lariat scratched her head on the tree, her calf scratched his head on a stick.

Next, check out the gardens.  This is  the chard I planted last September in the high tunnel, harvested all winter, transplanted to the garden last spring, still providing greens for us and the CSA boxes!  I keep beheading them so they don't go to seed.

The Romanesco was attacked by white cabbage butterfly caterpillars. I resorted to sprinkling a bit of bacillus thuringiensis on them and the other cabbage family crops and they are rebounding.

Had to be sure take a photo of an open squash blossom for a farm FB friend who requested an image for a tattoo design.  In the morning, every squash blossom has a honeybee or two working inside it.

Tomatillos are ready to harvest for salsa. I intended to plant some, but got several volunteers which I let grow instead.

So maybe they are a bit tacky, but I just love garden gnomes. I recently found this cute gnome reading about about plants at a thrift store and yesterday I gave him a spot on the little porch of the garden shed.

Chain link fences are not so pretty, but I appreciate how they keep the pests out of the garden and the livestock in the pasture.  And this time of year they do look kind of appealing with grapevines and scarlet runner beans clambering over them.

Cadence planted borage by the granary  several years ago and it self-sows crazily every year.  Th e small blue flowers taste sort of like watermelon and are delightful garnishing iced beverages or salad.

A large magenta spider flower (cleome) in the outside garden...

and a large  Black-and-Yellow Argiope garden spider residing in my tomatoes inside the high tunnel.  I don't mind her in there, but her huge web will make it tricky to harvest some of my tomatoes.

Cocoa relaxing in the roots of  a silver maple.  She is shedding and has oodles of mats from various types of burrs - little does she know that she is destined for a dreaded bath and grooming session later today.

Orange watches lazily as  Poet devours a mouse on the patio. All the cats have already been fed cat food, but this is Poet's  breakfast dessert. She is an amazing mouser, eating at least one per day.

And with that, I better get to work!

Can You Believe It?

Pretty amazing that spring  is in full force in March, here, in zone 4!   The Bloodroot  in the little wildflower garden by the big rock in the woods is in peak bloom.

Red dogwood is leafing out.

I wasn't sure the Virginia Bluebells in the  back yard would even come back after the drought last fall, but they made it and are budded out.

Daffodils are blooming like crazy near the future garden shed. I cannot wait to tackle the garden shed project, but  lots of other things must come first.

Garlic is up - the rows a bit disheveled  from chickens scratching around last fall before I laid the fencing down to deter them.

Sugar Snap Peas have poked through. Ordinarily it would be too early to plant anything in the garden, but the seed packet says "plant in early spring as soon as soil is workable " and it certainly is.

I have also taken a bit of risk and planted various lettuces, which have sprouted,

and purple radishes, which are up.  Spinach, scallions and beets are also sprouting.

In the high tunnel we are still harvesting brilliant yellow-green  biondi di lyon chard, planted last fall, and  further back, baby leeks.

The spinach keeps on giving and giving, and we are devouring it in salads, soups, green smoothies,  colcannon, quiche and on sandwiches, as well as selling some to farm visitors and to the co-op.

Tomatoes and other flower and veggie starts  have been moved out into the high tunnel and seem to be very happy there.

I have begun repotting some into paper containers as they grow too large for the seed blocks.   These are Earliana and Gold Medal tomatoes, Birdhouse and Snake gourds, and  Milkmaid nasturtiums.

Stepping outside the greenhouse, the main pasture is lush and growing fast, but the grass is only a few inches tall.

It simply cannot grow fast enough for the cows, who often gaze longingly at it over the fence.  ("Why won't she let us in there??!")  I have over-seeded it with a pasture mix and want everything to be well-established before the bovines start yanking it out and trampling it with their big hooves.

Not everything about spring is idyllic. Wood-ticks are out.

We already found tent caterpillars in the prairie (I'm hoping they will make an nice spring feast for some birds!)

The long-awaited yellow magnolia blossoms are just barely beginning to open,

while the white magnolia blossoms are already past their peak. They were just buds a few days ago, reminding me how important it is to pay attention and savor every fleeting moment of  spring, my very favorite season!