Productive & Constructive

The summer is whizzing by way too fast! It's mid-August and it finally got hot enough that tomatoes are ripening --these, our very first garden tomatoes, were delectable with garden basil. When/If the crop ever ripens, we will be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes - the plants are so productive, loaded with fruit.

We people are being productive as well, but have MANY projects to complete before fall. Some of our recent accomplishments:
In order to make the clay pizza oven more impervious to rain, Rog decided to cover it with a mosaic. With the design assistance of the chickens, he covered the oven with beach-worn tile shards we gathered years ago on the Amalfi Coast, tile scraps from previous home improvement projects, and boxes and boxes of pretty rocks we have accumulated over the decades.
The mosaic layer seems to have done the trick--and made the oven much more beautiful. Now to build the bigger brick oven...
The small square windows on the old chicken coop were rather decrepit already, but one morning we discovered one of the windows seriously broken. Owl vandalism, perhaps? (A great-horned owl has been feasting on our free-range chickens lately!)
So, this weekend I replaced all four windows and figured out how to make them operable so the chickens can have a breeze on hot, steamy nights. The windows are now installed and primed. I still need to put in the stops and paint the finish coat. It looks so much more civilized.
The granary project is progessing slowly but surely. Cadence decided to build a loft over the future bathroom and part of the kitchen. She and Rog constructed the loft a couple weeks ago. Note the cute row of square windows we found on Craigslist--they have the same character as most of our outbuilding windows (my chicken coop!) but are very energy efficient.
Now Rog is installing tile on the granary kitchen floor (under Nutmeg's supervision). The floor will be a crazy patchwork of architectural tile samples that were discontinued and going to be discarded.
We have mountains of small branches and debris from our recent tree-felling. Rog had created a huge brush pile in the center of the campfire circle which we couldn't burn for weeks because it was too dry. The chickens preferred that brushy nest for their nightly roosting spot. Finally we got some rain and one night last week Rog decided to burn one of the piles in a big bonfire. The chickens gathered around their bonfire nest, perched on the stumps, singing something that sounded sort of like "kum-ba-yah."

Super Beekeeper!

Yesterday was a big beekeeping day. I had been feeling guilty about neglecting my bees the past few weeks--not that they really need me to do their thing, but a beekeeping manual I read emphatically stated that the difference between being a bee-keeper and a "bee-haver" is actually working with the bees. I wouldn't want to just be a "bee-haver."

Recently Rog had to wear a pair of white tyvek coveralls to tour a clean room at Mayo Clinic for work. When he realized they were going to be discarded he asked if he could take them for me--now I have two lightweight (but rather hot and unbreathable, I discovered) beekeeping suits.
My assignment was to install a "Super." My small beekeeping set-up has two boxes where the queen lays eggs, new bees are raised, and honey and pollen are stored to sustain the the hive. Last time I checked the hive, the frames were getting pretty full with honey. It was time to add a "super" - another box for the bees to start storing honey for us. If I didn't add a super, the industrious bees would run out of space and would raise a new queen; then half of the bees would swarm off with her to start a new hive. That would be a serious setback to my hive's production.

Here is my little hive, ready to add the super. The concrete block on top of the hive weights the top down so the wind or some predator (or curious cow) doesn't take it off. The metal grid is the "queen excluder," which allows the worker bees up into the super to store honey but the larger-bodied queen can't get through. You don't really want her laying eggs in the part of the hive you want to harvest. The box with frames inside is the super. Last weekend I assembled and painted the super box, and glued and nailed the ten frames that go inside it. Each frame holds a sheet of wax with a hexagonal honeycomb pattern embossed into it to give the bees a headstart in construction and encouage them to build on the frames in a way to make it easier for me to handle.
I took off the cover and wafted a little smoke from the smoker across to calm and confuse the bees. My photography was done one-handed, viewed through a bee veil and while wearing leather gloves. There are some things I wanted to show you but couldn't take the photos with these constraints.
I took out the first frame, which was heavy with honey and completely capped over with wax. (I learned one reason it is a good idea to check your bees more frequently--the bees create a sticky wax called "propylis" that sort of glues everything together. A lot of propylis had built up and the frames were rather challenging to get out!) I removed and inspected each frame--all ten frames in the top box were full, heavy and capped. The bees really did not have any room left to build!
View into the hive box with the first frame removed. The smoke makes the bees retreat into the hive. The most nerve-wracking part for me is trying not to squish or injure any bees --much harder this time because of how heavy each frame is and how many bees there are now. When I lifted off the top box to inspect the lower compartment it was astoundingly heavy with honey, wax and bees. I am pretty strong but could barely lift it, and sadly, I did squish a few poor bees.
All of the brood cells where young bees were being raised were in the bottom box. For the first time I saw my Queen, busily laying eggs! Then, I took out each of these ten frames and checked their bottom edge for queen cells: Because the hive was so full, it was likely that the bees were raising new queens to split the hive. Indeed, I found several of the long, dark protruding queen cells on the bottom of the frames. There were several queen bee larvae in some of the cells, and some looked fully formed but still colorless. I suspect they were almost ready to emerge! There were swarms of bees gathered around the queen cells --were they just waiting for her to emerge so they could take off with her? I scraped off the queen cells onto the ground in the nick of time, I think. In this photo you can see some of the light-colored queen bee larvae forming in the queen cells.
Now drenched in sweat inside my tyvek suit, I reassembled the hive, adding the queen excluder and the super to the stack. Some of the bees seemed a bit discombobulated, but I checked back an hour later to find what seemd like normal hive activity. In a few days I will open the super to see if new comb is being built. If so, we should have honey this fall!

Garden Bounty

The garden is coming to fruition--We have begun gathering veggies daily and feasting like kings. Vegetarian kings.
Sunday Cadence harvested baskets full of veggies. We have been blessed with plenty of rain the past few days, so everything was muddy.
Fortuitously, a few weeks ago I purchased a big plastic utility/laundry sink on legs ($10) from somebody on Craigslist for just this purpose! Rog set it up with a garden hose and a rack in the bottom of the sink to raise the veggies out of the dirty water. It worked swell.
Cadence removed the beet greens prior to washing the beets - golden, deep red and chioggia. We savor the beet greens as much as the beets.
Rainbow Swiss chard.
Clean carrots. I love the beautiful purple dragon carrots.
We planted mostly German butterball potatoes, with a sampling of other interesting and colorful heritage varities: Cranberry Red, Island Sunshine, Rose Finn, and All-Blue.
Another fine fern of fennel - Rogs' favorite.
We have probably picked over 100 pounds of summer squash already! Cadence has made many loaves of exquisite zucchini bread. Our new squash strategy: we now give bonus zucchinis with every chicken order!

What's Going On

We are currently involved in art shows and music gigs and a burgeoning garden--life is a bit too busy to blog regulary these days. But here is a brief synopsis of a few things going on lately at Squash Blossom Farm:

We had a couple of delightful couch surfers stay with us last week. Sujai and Kristi were traveling from Californina to New York before Sujai moves to France to start a little farm on land her mother owns. Both women are professional chefs--and made us a wonderful breakfast before they resumed their cross-country road trip. Our chickens provided the eggs and our garden the herbs.
After slaughtering a dozen or so chickens ourselves, we took the next 40 to a poultry processor. We delivered chickens to Utica (about 3 mile east)at 7 a,m. and picked them up, finished, at 4 p.m., bagged, USDA inspected, weighed on a certified scale and labeled. Yeah, we agreed it is worth the cost. Most of the chickens the processor gets are the white, slow-moving, fast-growing Cornish Rock breed. When the owner saw our lively, colorful heritage breed roosters he said "These chickens are so beautiful! Are you sure you want to kill them?" I answered yes, we have 150 more at home (that's way too many roosters!) but I admit I had tears in my eyes. I have to remember that they lived a longer-than-usual and very idyllic life for a chicken.
When we got home, the younger batch of roosters had moved into the previously older rooster territory and were acting much more cocky.
Cadence's fancy corn crop was seriously diminished by our free-range chickens, but the plants that did survive are now tasseling. This is the Oaxacan Green corn.
Ed Hayes, a tree specialist, climbed up the huge silver maple growing in the middle of the old silo foundation. This is the tree that lost a huge branch in a big windstorm which landed precariously on our barn roof and had to be removed with a crane. Because the tree is now a bit lopsided after removing the limb,the arborist recommended bracing the remaining branch so if it comes down in a wind, damage will be mitigated. Ed shimmied up the tree and attached a 9,000 lb. test rope between branches. It's a lot higher up than it looks!
Almost every morning I have to power-wash the patio because that is where the geese prefer to sleep at night and geese, well, they are so messy! In my daily power washing I have discovered that a nice big toad is living on the patio in the corner by the steps. I suspect he ventures out at night to feast on insects attracted by the yard light. On another note, today Cadence found a huge garter snake in the veggie garden - about 3 feet long and two inches in diameter. I appreciate that the snake is probably keeping the rabbits at bay, but I am glad to know he is there so I am not startled when I meet him in the tomatoes.

Blue Monk

Rog has been rehearsing lately with a bunch of talented musicians for their debut performance last week at Thursdays on First in downtown Rochester - they were the headline band on the main stage (I don't know how they finagled that, as a new entity!)
Rog played guitar - and clarinet on a few. They had a large and appreciative crowd and sounded awesome!

Green Thumb

My exhibit of farm -life-inspired paintings is now up through August at the Jon Hassler Gallery in Plainview. This show is kind of an eclectic batch of paintings with diverse experimental styles--maybe that parallels our novice farming approach. I titled the show "Green Thumb" because the phrase plays with three key aspects of my life lately--gardening, painting, and trying to live in a more green manner. Here are a few images from the show:
The paintings star many of our farm critters, such as Pink the pig...
Chuck Dickens, the chicken who thinks he is a duck. and his two black runner duck associates...
a chicken brandishing a feather...
a woman who resembles her Toulouse goose....
our three geese singing together (they came over and posed for me as I was painting.)
A wacky take on Botticelli's Birth of Venus--my "Birth of a Farmer." Cadence suggested the farmer tan. This is a rather large piece and I couldn't get a glare-free shot under the gallery lights.

Oh, Chickenfeathers!

It is easiest to catch free-range chickens when they are asleep. Late Monday night, Cadence donned her headlamp and went out to gather up her victims, 20 roosters she intended to harvest the next morning. She nabbed them from their roostes and gently closed them into the rabbit hutch and they barely even stirred.

The next morning she went to work. Cadence is very organized and meticulous. She slaughtered and butchered 4 chickens. She worked steadily but it took 3 hours. Despite using a chicken plucker. And we have 200 roosters to harvest this summer. So now she is reconsidering the idea of having the chickens commercially processed. The other 16 chickens on death row were let free--their time will come.
It is surprising to me how blase' the chickens seem to be about the fate of their compatriots. They would walk over to the harvesting area and didn't seem to have any fear or realization that this could happen to them. They casually picked through the feathers on the ground, sometimes eating one.

The next day I was set up to paint outside the barn, staring at a blank canvas and wondering where to start, when a red rock rooster ran over to me carrying a white feather aloft like a prize. I love when the animals pose for me!