"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon the verdant green hills is the most perfect refreshment."
Beau August 15th, 2010
Well it seems after a week I figured out how to post something from my phone… Silly I know but kind of neat when I’m sitting at a campsite. More importantly however… We’re enjoying the sights and even have clean clothes again! :-)
Beau August 10th, 2010
The vegetables are slowing down and the flowers are too, but a host of yellow daisies still brighten the day. I’m not sure what this flower really is, but yellow daisy seemed fitting. I’m glad they still bloom under the August sun. I haven’t seen any bees or or insects on them. I would love to find something the bees could use in late summer.
As we made the rounds last week with the yellow lab, we found various fungi that popped up rather quickly after the last rainfall. He was a curious pup, yet smart enough not to mess with them.
This one was really cool looking… I love the split edges. Since they are not morels however, I just enjoy them for pictures.
Not to be outdone, this one was reddish colored with yellow patches where the skin was open or perhaps chewed away. Maybe one day I’ll learn more about them.
Beau August 7th, 2010
I think I’m a foodie… not only do I enjoy eating food from around the world, but it’s getting kind of fun making various things too. With all the tomatoes I just made up a new recipe with black beans, corn and jalapeno and green peppers… Really it was pretty simple- just dice and blend up a bunch of veggies and can them. Hardest part is making room for some large pots, and boiling the sealed jars for a while.
Here’s the ingredients for this recipe: Use 20-25 ripe medium tomatoes- blended up, 5 half-ripe red and orange tomatoes- diced, 3 jalapeno peppers and 4 green bell peppers- all diced, one cucumber diced up (without the seeds), one or two diced onions, two cans of corn and two cans of black beans (pour the water off).
Also add a cup of olive oil, a cup of vinegar, a half cup of sugar, up to 1/4 cup of garlic poweder depending on your taste, and then healthy dashes of salt, white and black pepper, cayenne pepper, parsley flakes, sage, oregano, cumin, ancho chili powder, paprika, tumeric, two tablespoons of yellow mustard, a half cup of molasses, two tablespoons of BBQ sauce(!) of your flavor, a quarter cup of soy sauce, and a little extra seasoning or spices of whatever you like to taste.
And what’s a dash anyway?! Maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon, depending upon your taste? I chopped the 25 tomatoes and blended with half the jalapeno, green peppers and onions as a base for the sauce. I don’t peel the tomatoes- some folks might want to. I find that when chopped and blended, there isn’t much skin- and it doesn’t bother me if it’s there. Same with the other veggies.
Bring it nearly to boil and add the remaining spices and diced tomatoes, peppers, onions, beans and corn. Let it simmer for 45-60 minutes and right before canning I added two more diced tomatoes and two more diced green peppers for color, to be a little less cooked and give it a little more texture.
Process for 40 minutes in a water bath or pressure canner for safe long-term storage (or not if you’re going to put in the fridge and eat sooner).
It made 11 pints and came out as a zesty garden soup or salsa… delicious warm or cold and not too spicy. I call it zesty to keep the “taste temperature” down a bit so more folks can enjoy it. Throw some tortilla chips in bowl and pour some over the top… even the 9 year old loved it!
Our tomato plants are on the decline now, but I hope we still have another round of tomatoes for sauce and more cooking adventures. Just what you need to do in the August heat, right?! :)
Speaking of cooking, another blackberry pie made the rounds… This time I used a “pie bird” for the first time. Saw it at a local farm store and thought I’d give it a try. Pretty cool… you just stick it inside the pie when you fill it, and pull the top crust gently down the top. The ceramic bird helps vent the steam and keeps the pie filling from bubbling over.
Have a great week!
Beau August 4th, 2010
The other morning I awoke to a light fog… beautiful and mysterious. My hope soared that it would be a cool, cloudy day… but then I saw the blue sky through the mist- I knew the sun would be blazing.
It was very warm outside, and the humidity has reached so high that you start sweating as you stroll around the yard. Yesterday the temperature pushed a bit over 100 F… but there were cooler refuges in the house or basement thankfully.
Yesterday I finally finished the chicken nest boxes! I was mulling over various options- buying some online, or maybe using milk crates or something. I had this nagging feeling that I really needed to finish them because in a few weeks the chickens would be ready to lay eggs.
So with morning gusto and three cups of coffee I just dove in to what I’d been putting off, and started building something…. anything… boards flying everywhere, the circular saw zipping through wood (carefully!), and hammers sending nails flinging across the garage floor.
The boy helped hold things in place and gave his opinions… He doesn’t think he helps, but he does! He even put a few nails and screws in. I was on a roll, and scraps of osb (along with a few muttering sob’s), pieces of siding and 2×4′s came in handy. Before lunch rolled around we came up with this:
I kind of like how it came out, at least I hope so for a chicken! I’m not sure they’re deep enough, but it stands on four legs and we went out to put it in the coop. Fit pretty well at the height I wanted for the outer door. I fiddled around, moving the feeder to the middle of the coop and tweaking it a bit.
Wouldn’t you know after putting some bedding in the box, our little Brownie hen jumped right in there! She seemed to like it…
I couldn’t resist adding a few golf balls to the nests to help the chickens get the right idea… they seemed quite interested and made funny little clucking sounds. I walked outside to check the fit…
Looked pretty good, if not a bit silly with golf balls! I’m still not sure the inside opening for the hens to get into the box is big enough, or if the nest is “deep” enough for them. Then I thought “What if they don’t even use the nest boxes!” Oh well. Which probably will be true… they’ll lay eggs anywhere at times I’m sure.
It was a busy day though- and after the boy and I weeded the garden for a bit he kept peeking in the nest box door to see what was going on. He found one of the red hybrid hens sitting in a nest and giggled. It looked like another chicken or two had been poking in the boxes but we weren’t sure. Later that afternoon the boy wanted to “go check for eggs” again (for the umpteeth time)… so there we go.
Guess what we found?
The boy opened the nest box door… and his eyes grew wide and we both stared… he was speechless! I was speechless! Then he said, “Daddy look! It’s an egg!”
Yep. Would you believe that in a few hours after I put the nest boxes in that coop that a chicken laid a magical, beautiful, hard little egg right in that middle nest box?!?!?! Our first egg! I couldn’t believe it. And it was a “shack”… bombing lingo for a bullseye. I looked around to see if the Easter Bunny was hiding in the bushes.
We took it in the house and he got to show it to his Mom and Nana… they were just as excited. So then we thought we better look for more… he had to call his Memaw too, and while she was on the phone, lo and behold he found another egg inside the coop on the floor. “Okay ladies, who missed the nest boxes!?”
Well, maybe a good omen that our first egg ended up in the nest box? I hope so… I’d rather not rummage around the coop. The boy loves it for now- and I hope it lasts. I’d sure love to keep watching an automatic-egg-gatherer in action :)
Two eggs on the very day I put the nest boxes in. I love it when a plan comes together, and maybe that nagging feeling paid off… or those golf balls worked really well! Or maybe the girls just humored me. ’Course we haven’t had any other eggs in the past day or so, but the chickens are only going on 17 weeks now. A few weeks more and they should really start laying.
They seem to enjoy their coop and run. I haven’t let them out running around as much lately, but each day we throw in weeds, grass and a mix of scratch with corn and millet. They seem to be just fine- even with the heat. They seek the shade, and stay in the coop until the afternoon shades the front a bit more. After they get in a strong routine of laying eggs, I’ll let them outside more often. We still have that extra rooster if you’re looking for one… :)
Yesterday morning I had the cutest, tiny poached egg… and the boy had one scrambled. Pretty darn good. Not a very good fiscal return on the money invested, but hey it’s a lifetime of lessons, right? I’d say that’s a better return than anything else.
That’s the big news around here… small wonders and big smiles. I need a few more of those in my life :)
*******
After this week’s heat, I’m going to take a blogging break and spend a week or two roaming with the boy, perhaps up north (that’s why we had to get those nest boxes finished!). Maybe we’ll up towards Michigan where the nights are cool… I’ll check in a time or two and wrote a couple posts that will publish automatically, but I hope everyone can find a little cool refuge this month too!
Beau July 29th, 2010
Where has July gone already!? I’m thankful our garden and other activities are coming along nicely, and I hope our harvest keeps on coming. Or at least progressing… like my weekly battle with squash bugs and tomato wilt (I’m losing!).
I will say our tomatoes have produced their largest harvest this summer as compared to others, but the plants look so ragged and are really struggling. Such is life in an organic garden in the midwest. So much still to learn… but we’ve had enough tomatoes to make a good bit of salsa and more coming for sauce.
Each year I want to plant more and more… you can never have enough tomatoes!
And what is the deal with pickles anyway? Why do we like canning them? You can buy a huge jar of pickles at the store for a few bucks. Or you can take time to plant cucumbers, weed the garden, grow and pick them, buy the jars and ingredients, and then take time to can your own… Granted their is some raw satisfaction in doing it yourself.
These are the home-canned variety with dill mix and garden grown dill and other ingredients inside… like garlic and jalapeno peppers. Then processed for 20-30 minutes in boiling water to keep for long-term storage.
They are very different from the fermented pickles I made last year… those were pretty tasty and I still have a few in the fridge that are still really good. But it was hard to achieve consistent, firm pickles when I fermented them naturally.
Mostly I love a good cucumber and tomato salad in summer for dinner… so I think pickles just come from trying to figure out what to do with all the extra cucumbers! I guess it’s fun trying different recipes too… what’s yours?!
I did come up with a natural concoction to help combat tomato wilt/fungus and for discouraging squash bugs and other critters. Here’s my recipe: In a plastic bottle sprayer, combine 1 cup of milk, 1/4 cup hot/spicy sesame oil, 1 tablespoon tea tree oil soap or shampoo, 1/2 teaspoon dishwashing soap, and the rest with water… shake well and spray away!
It seems to work pretty well, although I found if you put the milk and oil in a blender first with a few drops of dishwasing soap it mixes a lot better. When I spray it the bugs skedaddle away quickly. It may or may not kill them, and is probably just a temporary protectant. But hey, it doesn’t cost much! Do you have a special mix or recipe that works?
The carrots are doing pretty well this year, but we came out a few days ago to find a dozen or more caterpillars happily munching away on the leaf tops. These look like the caterpillar larva of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly.
There’s no free lunch in this garden, so out they went! Well okay, there are lots of free lunches… I’m just trying to get the crowd to leave! But I threw the caterpillars up into the grass and weeds at the fenceline, so maybe they’ll still become butterflies.
I did find a really neat plant this month. Kind of funny too because I was the one who planted it. A fellow beekeeper gave me a small mint plant a couple of years go, supposedly as an aid to natural beekeeping. I’m all for that, even though I didn’t know what it was, and planted it at the base of an oak tree near my hives… this year it finally flowered. This is a Pycnanthemum species of some kind… try saying that five times really fast! I love the white bracts that look like leaves at the top of the plant, with a little crown of flowers.
How did I find out what it was? Well, I was enjoying the beautiful sights at Edifice Rex a couple of weeks ago, and Annie shared some photos including a plant called Mountain Mint… I had never heard of it and thought it was neat. Lo and behold when this one bloomed I realized it was the same plant! Pretty neat way to find out something new- thanks Annie! I’m not sure which species of Pycnanthemum it is, but it looks like albescens…
I’ve also found that a particluar species of wasp really loves these little flowers. The Double-Banded Scoliid wasp (Scolia bicincta) has covered this plant over the past week, with as many as 18 wasps on the tiny flower heads. I’ve also seen some tiny flies and other insects, but no other bees, moths or butterflies. It’s fascinating to see how the wasps really love the nectar from these tiny flowers. These are commonly known as digger wasps. They burrow into the ground and parasitize grubs and other insects. I’ve never seen this species except on this plant.
*******
The bees are doing well and still building up their hive populations. About a month ago I took five frames from a really strong hive, and placed them in a small “nuc” hive. Here’s a picture of that little nuc hive sitting on top of an empty full-size hive at right in this picture.
The little old boat with flowers is our “Burt Dow Boat”… do you remember the story? I wrote about it here a few years ago. I love to fill it with petunias each year, and planted a wispy river birch behind it…
Anyway, I checked on that small nuc hive yesterday and it was doing so well that I put those bees right into that full-size hive that it was sitting on! I was excited because the nuc was a “walk-away split” and the bees raised their own queen. When I opened it up they had two full frames of brood and newly capped larvae… cool beans! It looks like they’re in the shade, but the hive gets full sun from the middle of the day until sunset.
I wondered a little about moving their entrance lower from that little nuc to the bigger hive… if you move a bee hive any appreciable distance, the bees don’t know where to find it. Supposedly if you need to, you either move them 6 inches a day, or two miles away! Moving a good distance away is fine, as long as you wait until all the bees get home in the evening, and then close them up. But I only moved my bees down a couple of feet, and they quickly figured out how to get into their new home.
Now that I placed them into a new hive, they have five empty frames to draw out with wax, so I mixed up 10 pounds of cane sugar as a syrup, and put that in a hive-top feeder for them. They won’t draw wax unless their is a good bloom and nectar-flow going on, or if you feed them to stimulate production of wax and additional bees.
With luck that hive population will increase over the next few months and be strong enough to carry right through winter. I’m thankful they’re doing well and keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll have four hives next spring.
Our other visitors lately include a couple of Great Blue Herons who visit the pond a few times each week. I don’t begrudge them a meal or two, but they never tire of an easy catch at the expense of our little fish. When I see them I usually clap my hands or try to sneak up on them… then they “Croawwwk!” loudly and fly away.
July is coming to an end. It has been a really warm and humid month, but we also enjoyed a good bit of rain. Hard to believe how fast summer is going by, but we’re not quite to midsummer’s eve yet! I do love the evenings though, and the other night was a pretty one…
I hope your summer is going well too. What are you thankful for today? See you next time! :)
Beau July 20th, 2010
A few days ago the chickens were hanging out in the shade with temperatures in the coop over 100 degrees. And then rain, sweet rain. And then more rain. Two days ago I began to write, “a passing storm and raging winds, and then a gentle breeze, drizzle and clouds. Just what the garden needs, and a respite from the heat…”
I saw this early before dawn… it was quiet and a beautiful orange light was all around. I just had to walk further.
Then I saw this, slowly building to the southwest…
The clouds billowed upward and outward, forming a classic thunderstorm, with the rumble of thunder in the distance.
Soon it became this…
The barn swallows have another nest full of three more fledglings, and a dry perch to watch the rain pour over the gutters. Methinks there’s a clog somewhere down the line… I cleaned the gutters out not long ago, yet heavy rain pours over.
So yesterday it was another huge storm of wind, rain and hail, and then today more heavy rain! The clouds are nice in terms of cooling things off, but we’ve had quite enough water for the time being thank you very much.
I remember years ago being surprised to realize that a lot of folks have not experienced heavy thunderstorms before. Of course that’s what I’ve always remembered about Missouri summers. Brief storms with thunder, lightning, showers and blessedly cooling weather. Then back to the humid and hot.
With a little cooler daytime temperatures we seized the opportunity to catch up on weeding and pruning.
This was a shrub rose gone wild that I’ve been meaning to cut out for weeks. It had several more branches just like this one, spreading out more than twenty feet in all directions! It’ll come back unless I put something on the stump to kill it. And the flowers? Inconspicuous little white things. I’m not sure where this rose came from, but it doesn’t have a place here anymore.
The young boy is really a great help around the place. Now I understand why farmers of old had such big families…
Later the boy enjoyed a break with his Shiba. Although that little dog likes to think he owns everything around here… he’s a funny little guy, and a good watch dog. He lets us know when anything out of the ordinary happens or someone comes down the gravel drive. They are cute together…
Here’s a picture of the shiba when he was a puppy… A few years ago I described how he adopted us from a little Japanese pet store in 2002. We call him Kuma, which is short for Kuma no nuigurumi or Teddy Bear in Japanese.
*******
This week it was also time to check on the bees. I’ve got just three hives and a small nuc (nucleus hive) going. Earlier in the spring I had a hive with a drone-laying queen, and she eventually disappeared. Before the hive was queenless too long I solved that problem with the help of another local beekeeper.
We combined that hive with a nuc and a new queen, using a screened divider between them for a week. That gave the failing hive time to become acquainted with the new queen and other bees, and then after removing the screened divider, the hive became one, joining forces to work together. Since that time they’ve steadily increased their population and look great now.
Alas I have another hive with a failing queen. This hive started out strong, but then simply languished. I have found no disease or other external problems, but the queen is simply not laying enough eggs to keep the population strong. I will probably order a new queen to replace her soon, and allow the bees to strengthen the hive before winter.
With all the beekeeping challenges this is not a year for gathering much honey. That’s okay because I’m really trying to build them up going into winter. But that middle hive is very strong and may yield a small super of honey, so we’ll see. Here’s a picture of bees fanning at the top opening on the inner cover.
One reason they fan their wings is as a signal for other bees, blowing scent pheromones from a hive entrance or other location so their hive mates know where to go. But they also fan to cool and circulate the air through the hive on hot days . Most importantly, the bees will fan to increase the evaporative cooling effects within the hive to remove moisture from the nectar/honey stored within.
After the bees gather nectar from flowers, it is carried in their honey stomach back to the hive, then often passed to another worker bee to process and store within the hive. During this process the nectar is converted to various sugars by enzymatic action and deposited into the waxy cells within the hive. But it is very runny and full of moisture at this point… not even close to being honey yet. Beekeepers call honey which is too runny green. It doesn’t really become honey until the moisture level is lowered to about 17%-18%. Then the bees put a waxy cap on the cell and the honey is stored until needed as food.
Because the bees have lowered the water content of the honey, it is very hygroscopic, meaning it can absorb water moisture from the air. Good quality honey has a very low water content which is one of the reasons it can be stored almost indefinitely without spoiling. If you’ve ever had honey ferment at home, it’s either because the container wasn’t sealed tightly over time and it absorbed a lot of moisture, or it was too green or allowed to sit open before it was purchased and fermented later. Of course you could always make mead or use it for baking! Runny honey just needs to be used a little more quickly.
Everything else is coming along too. We took around 15 pounds of tomatoes and cucumbers out of the garden this morning. I think pickles are in our future… and tomato sauce! Seems like the tomatoes are ripening all at once, and I need them to keep going.
Last week I found this lucky titmouse enjoying a feast on a ripened sunflower.
We planted more squash, and some beets in the garden- hoping they mature in time for a good harvest. It was the perfect time too with all the rain. I also planted collard greens which supposedly improve in taste after the first frost. I don’t know about that, but I enjoy them when cooked and mixed with seasoning. Does anybody have good ideas for how to use collard greens in the kitchen? Those are going to be a hard sell around here… :)
The sun is back out this afternoon… 96 degrees and hot! Hard to motivate anyone to do anything, even myself it seems. One small step…
