Busywork

I’ve been away so long, I’m nearly ashamed to show my face around here. Or rather, that would be the case if I worried about stuff like that. But lucky for all of us, I don’t. Let’s just enjoy this me blogging again thing while it lasts, shall we?

Hello Again, Everyone!

Turns out, I’ve been busy. But then, haven’t we all? Actually, that “I’ve been busy” thing bothers me. It comes out too quickly, and sounds a teensy bit as if there’s something wrong with taking it easy. All too often, I toss off “I’ve been awfully busy” as if it’s a good thing, or at least, a useful excuse for my absence. It sounds like I have bought into the factory model of life; must be efficient, make use of every moment, multi-task (even when science tells us that in fact there is no such thing), wear ourselves right to the bone, and get up the next day and do it all over again. But I haven’t. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I aspire to a more premodern pace of life. Sure, I’m rarely idle, but I try to live life, not just do stuff.

Henceforth, I am going to say, um, something other than I’ve been busy. Maybe something along the lines of “I’ve not taken nearly enough time to sit down and contemplate. There’s been not nearly enough tea-drinking, navel-gazing, day-dreaming, nap-taking or chit-chatting in my life. Or blogging.” Okay, that’s not entirely true. There’s p-l-e-n-t-y of chit-chat in my life. I’m with my girls all day. Believe me, there’s plenty of chatter. Also, I seem to consume several pots of tea daily.

Enough about me. What else? Well, the farm is lovely, as always. It’s fall, so the usual things are falling.

One of our maple trees, helpfully displaying all of its colors

Seedpods are bursting.

milkweed

The birds are readying themselves for winter. Our chickens are molting, which they do every fall. They shed their old feathers in September and early October, and spend the next few weeks sprouting new ones from their bald patches. It is a motley process. Indeed, I suspect that “motley” and “molt” are kissing cousins, linguistically speaking. Feathers are everywhere.

Note the drift of feathers in the background....though this particular hen seems to be done with her molt.

I keep forgetting to go in the coop and pick out all of the white feathers to save for the tree swallows next spring. Apparently, the swallows love to use white feathers to line their nests; a naturalist friend of mine told me that she’s had them pluck them out of her fingertips. Wouldn’t that be incredible? Anyhow, I still need to go save some.

Hen illustrating that indeed, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Though in this case, it's true because their pasture, like most, is overgrazed. Makes you wonder about the original meaning of that saying, doesn't it?

The chickens are laying fewer eggs. It doesn’t really make a lot of evolutionary sense for chickens to lay eggs in the fall, since they’d end up trying to raise baby chicks (which, after all, is the real point of egg-laying) in the cold months of late fall and winter. Molting and growing new feathers also takes quite a bit of energy and protein, so it makes sense that their bodies would put the calories toward keeping chickens properly clad, as it were, instead of making babies.

Unlike plenty of chicken keepers, I don’t put electric lights on my chickens in winter. By all reports, it would keep them laying more regularly by “fooling“ their pineal gland, which regulates their egg-laying-cycle, but I’m always reluctant to mess with Mother Nature. If the chickens take a break from laying eggs in the winter, well then, that’s fine by me. I think She knows best. We will just appreciate their eggs all the more come March, when the laying resumes in earnest and we‘re saddled with the problem of what to do with two- dozen eggs a day. (Coincidence that Easter and Easter eggs fall then? I think not). In the meantime, there will probably always be at least a couple of eggs a day, enough for us to have one, and one left over for Jigs, the mouse-hunting and raw-egg-loving cat who lives in the front of the coop!

Jigs, basking.

The wild birds are flocking up. This morning, Paul and I heard a commotion and went outside to see hundreds of Canada geese flying south. We’ve had our first and maybe second or third frosts, though it’s really only the first one that counts.  The only things left in the garden are the hardy greens, like parsley, kale and members of the broccoli family.  I’ve put most of the garden to bed, which involved the shoveling and hauling of many, many loads of used horse bedding (provided free of charge by our neighbors, who seem glad to be rid of it) to the garden beds, where Dad and I carefully pitchforked it over the bare earth (and quite a few weeds, if I’m going to be entirely truthful here). Unlike messing with chicken or pig poop, forking horse manure is a pleasant job, but we both decided that over the course of our lifetimes, we’ve shoveled much more than our share.

Super duper mulch job

Much of the soiled bedding had partially composted, and the freeze and thaw cycles of winter in mid-Michigan will break down most of what’s left. Over the next year, it will feed the earthworms and nematodes and all the rest of the bioherd in the soil.  A garden is only as good as its soil.  Can you tell that I’m already feeling unreasonably optimistic about next year’s garden?

In the meantime, though, I need to finish mulching, and ready myself for the season of frozen water-buckets, bitter winds, and the sweet, sweet solace of our toasty woodstove.

See what I see

This farming gig is a detail game. I’ve got, oh, maybe twenty or thirty different crops going. More if you count all the different varieties within each crop–so, f’rinstance, there are early, determinate tomatoes, sprawling indeterminate beefsteaks, several different cherry tomatoes, and some romas, and they all have subtly different growing (or in this case, staking) requirements. Furthermore, I need to stagger the plantings of many of vegetables and flowers (this is called “succession sowing” in the biz), so that we’ll have lettuce most weeks, beans for many weeks, sunflowers throughout the season, etc. etc.

Keeping it all straight is a challenge. I feel like my brain is on a hamster wheel.

Sometimes, instead of scanning my endless To-Do List for what still needs to be done TODAY! NOW! YESTERDAY!!, checking www.weather.com obsessively, chasing down a particular hoe, shuffling through my interminable boxes of seeds, seeding new flats, weeding, chasing down a different hoe, fixing stuff, planting, irrigating, etc, etc, ETC, I have to remember to call a halt to all the chatter in my head. At least every couple of days, I need to just mosey on back to the field and poke around. And look. And see what I see.

So. Here’s how the farm is faring, this first week of June.

Spring has sprung so hard that it’s nigh on summertime. On the way back to the field, there’s a hillside that’s patchworked with new phlox and last-year’s burdock. Two invasive species that have, um, well, invaded. But they look kinda pretty together, I think.

Weeds At Sunset

The lane also passes this young grove of oaks, descendants from an ancient oak that once shaded the farm pond. Sadly, the mother oak fell in an awful thunderstorm about ten or twelve years ago. The main trunk of the tree was too big and too full of nails to harvest for firewood, so it’s still lying beside the pond where it serves as an important habitat for all sorts of creatures, I’m sure.  Frankly, though, that’s hard to appreciate when you look at it every morning from the breakfast table.  Mostly, it’s a huge eyesore that is only gradually being swallowed up by wild grape vine and scrubby bushes.

After it died, we noticed that this grove of a half-dozen oak trees had taken root right where the crown of the old oak landed. Perhaps the force of the fall drove some acorns deep into the ground when it died. I like knowing that these new oaks will grow up alongside my children and their children, a legacy from the oak that was on the farm when my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents lived here. I noticed that this year, the baby oaks are not so babyish anymore. Just like my kids.

Our grove of young oaks

We like things to be beautiful and functional around here. I guess someone thought the trunk of this particular individual would be a perfect place to hang a temperature gauge.

Seventy degrees. Perfect.

And to your left, the field.

The garlic chives are flowering.

Garlic chives honey, anyone?

The lettuces (letti?) are flourishing.

Lettuce. Black-Seeded Simpson, to be exact. (There's other varieties as well. This was just the prettiest).

This green stuff is arugula, or, if you want to sound terribly fancy and European, you can call it “rocket.” (Mental note: locate the row cover. The arugula needs a little help fending off the flea beetles).

Elsewhere in the garden, things are proceeding apace.

The beans, both bush and pole, are germinating.

This is my nifty little bean tunnel. Pole beans along the netting, and bush beans near the center aisle. Mid-season, it's very cool-looking. And wildly functional.

Someone did a GREAT job weeding and hilling those potatoes. Next step, hand-picking potato beetles and their eggs.

The tomatillos are all of three inches tall and already, they’ve decided to send out a few blossoms. (Please pardon the lousy picture quality). The tomatillos are precocious little things. Reminds me of pre-teens I have known. ;-)

Tomatillo flower

Hmmm. What’s this mess?

Peas. Kale. Weeds.

The peas need irrigating, I think. And weeding. But my benign neglect has allowed last year’s gone-to-seed kale to take off. (The kale is the lacy green plant with faint purple ribs that’s growing all higgledy-piggledy). That’s good to know. Early kale! I may let an bed of kale go to seed on purpose this fall.

Oh, and check out our Irrigation Station. This is my latest kludge. Dad pumps water from the pond to these barrels, and we hand-dip water from the barrels to distribute on the plants. Eventually, we hope to rig these barrels up with spigots and hoses, for a gravity-fed system. Less toting is good. Plenty of rain, however, is even better.

There's a board floating on top for thirsty bees and birds to use as a landing/launching pad, so we aren't drowning them.

And finally, our first vine-ripened strawberries! And not just any strawberries, either. These are Earliglows, the most delicious berries I’ve ever tasted.

No visit would be complete without checking out the wild critters. Wow. Check out this dainty creature.

Check out the moss growing on her shell....

Our old friend, Mama Snapping Turtle. Usually, she likes to lay her eggs right on the north edge of our garden, though this time she’d unwisely selected the actual driveway for her nest. I think we persuaded her that this location was far too heavily trafficked, though, because I noticed she’d lumbered off soon after the farmer’s husband took this photo. (I’m sure she didn’t go far. She seemed pretty intent on laying those eggs). If all goes well, her eggs will hatch sometime in August and we’ll find little snapping turtles roaming the fields.

And that, my friends, is why we climb off the hamster wheel once in a while.

Ticked Off

Ahem. It would appear that someone is Sick and Tired of finding live ticks floating in the toilet when she needs to use it.

(Note:  We are still doing frequent tick checks of people and pets and once in a while, we do find one.  Because I’m not one for squashing, I have been just pitching the ticks in the bowl and letting them wait for the next paying customer. I hate to waste a few gallons of clean, perfectly good water just to get rid of a lousy tick.).

Recently, our youngest daughter posted this request on the bathroom door.

I suspect she has deep feelings on the subject. Whaddya think?

Bees!

I’m almost, but not quite, too tired to write about this day.  Right now, the children are in bed, and I hope, managing to sleep.  It’s humid and hot even with all of the windows open.  (Obviously, we don’t have air conditioning.  That’s another coal-fired appliance we try to live without.).  It’s a beautiful night though.  A slight breeze is coming through the screen door; I can smell earthy pond smells and hear the bullfrogs croaking.  Already, the lightning bugs are flirting with each other.  And there’s a full orangey-yellow moon to the east.  Our neighbor Weez is still rattling up and down our road, bringing in wagon-load after wagon-load of first-cutting hay.  She started hours ago, and now she‘s working by moonlight.  Hey farm folk, did you catch that?  First cutting.  Third week in May.  Zowie.  Talk about an early growing season.  No wonder we all feel behind…

It was an interesting day.

I got outside early this morning.  I was trying to get out to the field before it got too hot to weed.  Turns out, the right time to get back there was Not Today.  It was already blazing at eight a.m.  But I spent an hour and a half weeding anyhow, because it had to be done.

Pretty much as soon as I walked in the door, my mom called to tell me that their “house” bees were swarming.

The swarm. Not very big, is it? It seemed like plenty once I got a closer view, though...

This is what I wanted.   I’d hoped to catch a swarm of wild bees from their house, since it makes sense to me that local wild bees would be well-adapted to our particular little micro-climate, and thus better able to withstand my ham-handed handling this first year.   Also, free swarm has the obvious benefit of being cheaper than buying bees.  More interesting, too, right?

So. This was exactly what I’d been waiting for, except I wasn’t exactly prepared.  I’d done plenty of reading and research, yes. And I had the hive.  Mostly.  It just needed a roof.  (Which Mom made while I suited up.  Thanks, Mom!).  But that was it.  No bee suit.  No smoker.  No nifty swarm-catching tools.  So I improvised.  I knew from my research that swarms were very docile, so I figured I’d be fine if I just suited up in some light-colored clothing and moved slowly and calmly.  Turns out, the only long, white pants I own is part of a pair of snug long-john style jammies with little blue flowers, so that’s what I wore.  I tucked the tops into some white athletic socks and put rubber bands around the wrists, so the bees couldn’t climb up my sleeve and get trapped.

Turns out, I probably should have removed my ring, in case I got stung and swelled up. See how optimistic I was? This didn't even occur to me!

Armed with some soft brushes for dislodging the bees from the side of the house, and a box for transferring them to the hive, I was ready to (1) climb up to the swarm (2) carefully brush the swarm, which is clustered around the queen, into a cardboard box and (3) install the captured swarm into the new hive and wait for them to decide yea or nay.

And you know what? It seems to have worked. I ended up going up the ladder twice because I wasn’t sure I got the queen the first time. But once I dumped and brushed them into the new hive (twice), and let them have the afternoon to settle down, they were fine.

Pretty high-tech operation, eh?

Honestly, it was a little nerve-wracking up on the ladder, with my bare head in a cloud of loud bees, only a couple of feet from three working hives. But even though quite a few bees spent time crawling on my back, my hands and my hair, I didn’t get stung. I remembered my beekeeping friends Chuck and Denise telling me that you need to remain calm when you’re working the bees. Apparently, if you move quickly or if they get a whiff of adrenaline, it’s upsetting. So. We all stayed cool, and it went off without a hitch.

Actually, it was an amazing thing. I get all drunk on wonderment anyhow, whenever any animal decides to trust me.  As soon I was firmly back on the ground, I was elated–just utterly gobsmacked. Hmm, maybe there was a little adrenaline surge after all. :-) It went well! All of these little bees were giving me the benefit of the doubt and going along with my program, so long as I demonstrated that I was friend, not foe.  So awesome.

Home, Sweet Home

Once the little colony was installed in their new home, they got a little more territorial. I kept going back all day to check on them–I was afraid they’d take a disliking to the hive and make for greener pastures, but that never happened They didn’t seem to mind my first few visits, even though I stood right over them, peering into their hive. But by late afternoon, when I peeked inside and saw they’d settled in and started to draw comb, they got a little feisty. One actually chased me clear across the yard. 

Fortunately, I was able to come up with a stop-gap solution until I get a smoker. I borrowed a clean squirt bottle from my Aunt Donna and filled it with a sugar solution. (Are you getting the impression that I rely heavily on family for my escapades? You are so SO right.  It takes a village, you know.  Poor them…).  Thereafter, when I needed to deal with the bees (f’rinstance, I still had to close up the hive before we moved the girls to their new, permanent location), I just misted the guards with sugar water and they simmered right down. I tried not to overdo it. I imagine wet, sticky bees are not exactly healthy bees.

We did get them moved. Nobody got stung or squashed. And I remembered to put some local honey in a ziplock baggie on the bottom of the hive, and sliced a hole in the baggie, to serve as a feeder until they get their act together.

The hive in its permanent location, tucked under the crimson maple.

I’ll keep you posted. I hope this works.

Powering Down

Our beloved clothes washer stopped working last week. It turns out that one of those little wooden ice-cream sundae spoons–the ones that look like a miniature paddle–was stuck in the water pump. I see now that there’s a little door set in the front of the washing machine (though on some machines it’s located in the back) that very much looks like and opens like your car’s gas tank. This is the water pump cleanout.

See? Lower right corner? I give you the not exactly invisible cleanout.

Here’s a helpful little bit of appliance advice from me to you: open this and fish out the garbage before you call your local appliance repair person. Maybe you’ll save yourself some moolah. Either that, or go through everyone‘s clothing much more carefully than I do. Which, frankly, would not be at all difficult. Ahem. Yes, I KNOW Mom. I should empty everyone‘s pockets etc. etc. etc. I think it‘s plenty that I separate the darks from the lights and that I wash everyone‘s stuff for them. I‘m not going to go through all of those pockets. Ack. The tedium.

Alas, I did not know about our little friend the cleanout, and so I got the name of a good repair guy from my friend Shawna, who knows these sorts of things. And after a rousing game of telephone tag, the repair guy came out, stepped over the mountain range of dirty laundry that had accumulated, and said, um, where’s your dryer?

Hmm. Where IS the dryer?

It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was saying. I’d completely forgotten we don’t have a dryer.

I explained that we got rid of it three years ago, and ever since, we’ve managed quite happily with the outdoor clothes line and an indoor drying rack for the winter when we need the extra humidity anyhow.

He didn’t ask why we got rid of the dryer.

Maybe he was respecting our privacy? Or possibly he was little afraid that he had stumbled into a den of weirdos and wanted to keep his head down? Or he was simply incurious? At any rate, we went on instead to talk about the cliff swallows swooping around the front yard (obviously, he was a fan, too, and he appreciated the fact that we have seven different cliff swallow nests going, YAY) and he told me that back in the day, he and his dad used to fix my Uncle Paul’s refrigeration unit in his gigantic apple cooler. He also remembered that there was something weird about my uncle’s death.  So we talked a bit about that. Almost thirty years ago, my uncle was killed in a horrible accident involving a split-rim tire.  Uncle Paul was a really kind man.  And his orchard was just beautiful.  I wish I had pictures to show you.  Now, OF COURSE, it’s mostly been pushed out. Damn the march of time.

Here’s the thing about having roots in a place that run as deep as mine. You don’t have to dig very deep before you discover connections between yourself and perfect strangers who live several towns away. You might have to go back a generation or so, but often the connection is there. And I don’t think that kind of fishing-for-common-ground conversation is a waste of time. In my experience, what my youngest daughter calls “those annoying twenty-minute TALKS you have with people” serve to make moving among strangers more comfortable. (For a fabulous historical examination of the discomfort of people who suddenly found themselves living among strangers during the rapid urbanization of the mid-19th century, I refer you to Confidence Men and Painted Women, a masterful history written by my friend and the most amazing cultural historian, Karen Halttunen).

Chit-chatting and finding common ground reminds us that you and I are not so unlike, that I can feel okay about inviting a strange man into my home with its disorderly laundry room, and he can feel okay about messing about in the bacteria-laden water-pump cleanout of what seems to be, at least initially, a houseful of wackos. (No clothes dryer. School-aged children running around in the middle of the day, so they’re either truants or very relaxed homeschoolers. A piece of old carpet and planks of OSB leading from the driveway to the front door. Etcetera).

Anyhow, what with all the chatting, the repair guy left in a rush for his next appointment and never asked WHY we don’t have a clothes dryer.

In case you are wondering, though, here’s why not:

1) I hate the idea of burning coal, which powers our local electricity, in order to do something as prosaic as dry my laundry. Coal is dirty. It pollutes neighborhoods and makes their most vulnerable residents sick. I don‘t want a coal-fired plant in my backyard and unless you do, please don’t start with the nonsense that coal is just fine. Coal-mining contributes to the destruction of naturally beautiful places like the Appalachians, it contributes to the horrible deaths of miners, and coal-fired power plants emit vast amounts of CO2 which contribute mightily to anthropogenic climate change.  And “clean coal” is proving to be a complete boondoggle.  So far as I know, they’ve not successfully implemented clean coal technology in a power plant anywhere. Furthermore, humans have yet to resolve the problem of how to get coal without ripping off mountain tops and destroying the ecosystem of coal regions, so I’m not buying what they’re selling. Well, I am buying electricity, but as little as possible. (Yes, we have a Kill-A-Watt and No, we aren’t afraid to use it).

2) Happily, it’s economically wise for us to go with passive solar to dry our laundry. Our clothes dryer was old and probably inefficient, so Ta DA, as soon as we got rid of it, our electricity bills dropped thirty-percent. We track that sort of thing around here, (well, the Engineer does), and them’s the numbers, People.

3) It’s good for the clothes. Line-dried clothes smell better, everyone knows that, but arguably, they last longer too. Less wear and tear from tumbling about in super-high heat. And some folks make the argument that line-drying clothes is more hygienic. I’m not actually too worried about my clothes getting cleaner. I’m happy with what the washing machine does for them, but some of you clean freaks might find the baking-in-the-sun aspects of line-drying appealing. I guess it’s nice to think that everyone’s undies are really extra fresh.

4) If you have a big old clothes-line, and I do, you can pack the clothes on the line just as quickly as the washing machine can wash ‘em. And because you know I’m an Energy Star, you already figured out that I use the minimum time setting on my washing machine (25 minutes, start to finish, and cold water ONLY) every time. Right? So I never have to deal with wet clothes stacking up in the laundry room while I wait for the clothes dryer to finish. Which is a good thing because my laundry room is tiny. So I can do four or five loads of laundry in one day, and get it all out on the line at the same time. Ta DA.

5) There’s an aesthetic component to line-drying laundry that I’m not sure I can adequately express. I LOVE how clothes look when they are drying on the line, especially if there’s a bit of a breeze to shift the clothes about on the line. I can see my clothesline from the kitchen table, and I like it that way.

Windless and yet, still, oddly appealing.

6) And last but not least, it’s sure-fire alone time. Privacy is nearly unknown around here. People will barge in on you if you’re trying to sleep (seemingly, especially, if you‘re sleeping) , or holler for help when you’re in the bathroom, or if you are down on your hands and knees scrubbing food off the floor. But only the most careless child or desperate spouse will dare to venture outside to ask me where is my X? because they know that I’ll press them into service on the line before lifting a finger on their behalf. So it’s just you and the birds and the sussuration of trees and traffic. It’s very relaxing. I could hang up clothes all day long.

I still hate folding laundry though.

Weed Smoothies

A couple of years ago, I discovered the joys of green smoothies, which are drinks made of blended raw fruits and greens.  Yes, I know they sound kind of bizarre and hippy-dippy at first blush. The first few times I saw folks drinking them, I took a big, old, not-very-polite pass, but eventually, I caved in and tasted one. And you know what? It tasted a little different, as in, whoa, that’s a lot of chlorophyll, but mostly, it was fruity. Here’s the thing, though. A half-hour after I had my first green smoothie, I WANTED ANOTHER ONE. Right away. And next day I came back for more. It was a definite craving.

my Breakfast of Champions

The only other time I’ve felt such a strong and direct message to EAT THIS from my body was when I was pregnant and I had specific food cravings for Dos Coyotes Adobe Salad. I used to camp out in front of their restaurant, praying for it to open early. (I joke that my oldest child is made of hot chocolate and Dos Coyote salad). I listened to my body then–the alternative was more dry heaves and more misery, wow, how I hated being pregnant, but that’s neither here nor there–and I’m listening to my body now as well. Based on my physical response to them, I’m convinced that green smoothies contain a high percentage of the nutrition my body needs. And believe me, nobody is more surprised than I.

So now I have a smoothie most every day. They are very satisfying and have quieted my cravings for salty and sugary snacks. (And hey, they are a great weight-loss aid, if you’re looking for that sort of thing). I sleep much better when I’ve drunk one that day, and my skin is smoother and more elastic. They straighten my digestive system out very quickly, if you know what I mean. ;-) And I’m convinced that they give me much more energy. For what it’s worth, if I suffered from any kind of chronic illness, I’d definitely give these a whirl. But I think most people would enjoy and profit from them. I give them to my kids because I don’t think they eat nearly enough greens otherwise. I have found, however, that I have to either put their smoothies in an opaque cup (so they can’t see the GREEN which is apparently scary) or add raspberries, which lends the drink a sort of pinkish hue.

If you want to try to make your own, here are a couple of hints. Your first green smoothies probably ought to be heavy on the fruit and light on the greens until you grow accustomed to the taste of chlorophyll. (It probably won’t take long until you’re wanting to put more greens in but let that evolve naturally). Some people like to add frozen fruit or crushed ice to their smoothie. Initially, I think I preferred them this way, too, though now I don’t care. And you can also make savory smoothies, sort of like V-8 juice, except all raw, of course. So instead of apples and berries, use tomatoes, celery and greens, with maybe a little onion and lemon juice? Gazpacho in a cup!

So anyhow, back to the weeds.

There are tons of possibilities for greens, and I like to vary them so I don’t get bored. (Lettuce is lousy in smoothies, by the way). But I really enjoy parsley, Swiss Chard, spinach, and kale, and I’ve started to experiment with weeds like clover, dandelion greens, and lamb’s quarter. Right now, there’s a bumper crop of tender little lamb’s quarter growing along the edges in my hoop house and in my unweeded garden beds, so that’s been my green of choice lately. You can’t get any more fresh, local, or organic than that!

Thriving, edible weeds. Lambsquarter, in this case.

Lamb’s Quarter, or Quarters (Latin name, Chenopodium album, also called, quite charmingly, Fat Hen or quelite de ceniza) is an ancient relative of spinach. It was brought to North America by early European settlers as a pot herb for their table, but based on its nicknames, I suspect plenty of farmers discovered it made a good animal feed as well.  It has colonized very well (I’ve known it to grow four or more feet high in the field, though it’s obviously not tender and delicious at that size) and grows most often in disturbed soil, or even up from cracks in the sidewalk. It’s not only mild-tasting and yummy, it’s also full of all sort of vitamins and minerals. According to this and other websites, lambs quarter is low in saturated fat and cholesterol.  (Obviously).  It is also a great source of “Niacin, Folate, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Potassium, Copper and Manganese.” (www.nutritiondata.com)

You can use lambs quarter anywhere you’d use spinach, such as in quiches, lasagnes, soups, and salads.

And smoothies. So, gather up your washed greens and chunked fruits,

Mise en place

blend really, really well,

Looking down the barrel of the blender, as it were...

and let me know what you think.

Make Your Own

The farmer’s husband is a big fan of Make magazine. (“REMOTE CONTROL EVERYTHING! 9 Great Projects to Automate Your Life.” Etc.) He’s an artist trapped in an engineer’s body, which means he makes beautiful and useful things that have a motor in them. He keeps asking me if there are any electronic farm implements I need.

Nope.

But for some time, I’ve wanted a top-bar beehive. Top-bar beekeeping is an interesting, very old approach to beekeeping that’s coming back into vogue among sustainably-minded folks, as it seems to offer some solutions to the problems of disease currently plaguing honey bees. Plus it’s cheap! In its modern incarnation, however, top-bar beekeeping is pretty new to the U.S. and American beekeepers are still working out the kinks. Even some of its most enthusiastic proponents suggest first-time beekeepers might be better off starting with the traditional stacked-box (“supers”) Langstroth beehive.

But I’m going to swim upstream on this one and try out top-bar. We’ll just see how it goes. And soon, because the farmer’s husband built me a top-bar hive this weekend.

Our top-bar hive

Well, it’s mostly built. He still has to attach some sort of comb guide to the inside of the bars. And drill an entrance, and come up with a roof. But other than that, we’re ready for me to try to catch a swarm.

I’ve been reading up on capturing a swarm, and it doesn’t look too awfully difficult. Swarming bees are reportedly very docile since they don’t have any hive to defend. If you manage to scoop up the queen, who is secreted at the center of the swarm, the rest of the ladies gladly follow. And believe it or not, my Mom and Dad’s bees swarm just about every other year, so I think I’ve got a decent chance at one.

When I say Mom and Dad’s bees, I’m referring to the bees that have lived in the north wall of my Mom and Dad’s house ever since I was in middle school. Their entrance is right outside of the window of my old bedroom, and as a kid, I spent hours lying on my bed, watching them go in and out. It’s kind of fun to think that these bees are the great-great-great, etc.-grandbees of the bees I knew as a child. If these girls don’t swarm, well then, I can always order mail-order bees next spring. Either way, I’m ready for them.

My old window. And some of the bees' outdoor?! comb from last year. Their hive entrance is that darkened corner, right under the shingles. My parents are sooo lucky, eh?

While I wait for my bees, I’ve been doing my own version of Make magazine. Really, it’s more along the lines of a kludge than a make.

My most recent kludge was a rake for marking out the lines in my rows. I found some old crusty soaker hose pieces and duct-taped them onto a big rake, spaced about a foot part. So long as I drag it down the tilled bed in a reasonably straight line, I’ll be able to plant my seeds or seedlings neatly, Then, I can run my beloved wheel hoe between the rows. Ta da! (This idea comes from Eliot Coleman, but the execution is all my own).

The awesomeness of duct tape in action

Just imagine how wiggly the rows would have been *without* the rake!

Another kludge I’m kind of proud of is my homemade potting soil. Through trial and error, I’ve discovered that you can’t just dig up regular old soil and pop it in a pot and expect seedlings to thrive. If there’s any percentage of clay–and there usually is–the soil will eventually harden to cement. Professional potting soil, which is lovely stuff, costs about seven or eight dollars a bag and anyhow, it’s lots more fun to make your own, right? (This make-your-own-potting soil idea comes from all over the Internet as well as common sense, which is not all over the Internet, har har har. Again, however the execution is all my own).

First, I dug up some compost from my ever-so-lovely compost bed and pushed it through a screen of chicken wire to catch the big rocks and whole eggshells and such. Then I wrapped the screened compost in a clear plastic bag, tied the bag shut, and left it in the greenhouse for a week. This was my half-baked attempt to sterilize the compost. I have my doubts about the sterility of the end product, but it did get hot enough to kill one poor worm that somehow escaped my notice. I’m hoping it got hot enough to kill most of the super-duper decomposing kinds of bacteria that were taking on the eggshells and orange peels in the compost pile, while still leaving some of the more benign and growth-promoting bioherd intact. We’ll see.

I set some of this compost aside to make compost tea, which is exactly what it sounds like: compost plus water. It’s a lovely little natural fertilizer that you can use to perk up plants, like my tomato seedlings that are absolutely screaming to go in the ground. (Tomorrow tomatoes! I promise!)

Anyhow, back to the soil. My helpful assistant and I mixed 1 part screened compost with 3 or 4 parts peat. Because I’m lazy, I bought a bag of peat which will last FOREVER but you could use leaf mold instead, or you could go out and dig up some peat moss if you have “muck” native to your area like we do. And I threw in a couple handfuls of sand. The compost provides food (fertilizer, in conventional-farmer-speak) for the seedlings, while the peat moss provides a kind of loft for your seedlings, allowing water and oxygen to percolate easily. The sand was kind of a superstitious addition. Lots of recipes on the Internet called for a few handfuls of the stuff but I’m not exactly sure why. The sand probably promotes drainage, since that’s what it does in the ground.

We stirred and watered it, and stirred and watered it some more, until it was the consistency of moist, um, potting soil. Voila.

Yum.

Everyone who knows me knows that I like to do plenty of reading and research before I leap into something new. But when I finally do leap, I like to slap a little metaphorical duct-tape on stuff and give it my own spin. (Scientific research would suggest that I’m a bit of a dopamine junkie; I like plenty of novelty in my life). So when Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus says, “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!” she’s singing my song.

Flora and Fauna

Violet among the ferns along the Polly Ann Trail

The girls and I have been reading Great Lakes Nature: An Outdoor Year as part of our environmental studies. It’s one of those Plant or Animal of The Day diaries of a naturalist. We’re especially enjoying it since it focuses on our region and thus, actually has plants and animals we have a hope of finding. We spent most of this week reading about our local woodland wildflowers, as many of those pop up in late April and early May.

This morning, we headed out to the Polly Ann Trail to see what we could find, since on our own slightly-less-than eighty acres, there are virtually no woods, and therefore, virtually no woodland wildflowers. (I’m sort of ashamed to confess that I’ve never actually been on the Polly Ann before, even though I’ve driven by it about a zillion times. It’s too bad that our once vibrant railway system has fallen into such disrepair, but I’m glad that the railbed has been turned into a public thoroughfare). Our neighbor and friend, Mrs. Ann S., stopped by Monday morning to pick up some chicken feathers to give to the tree swallows to line their nests. She happened to mention that she’d walked part of the trail that morning and the trillium were out in large numbers.

Heading out on the old P. O. & N. Railway Line

I’m no botanist, but I know trillium. My Grandma Dorothy took me on a walk to see them when I was a small child, and I’ve never forgotten them nor that Grandma was the one who helped me find them. I’m hoping that out of the hazy mists of their own childhood memories, my girls will remember today.

Our first trillium sighting!

We also found lots of wild geranium, wild strawberries, a couple of different kinds of violets, scads of horsetail, and, after a great deal of searching, we were delighted to see a large-flowered bellwort. (Incidentally, it is a pretty darn small and unassuming flower, and only slightly yellow. See if you can see it in the picture, even with me pointing at it). Let me tell you, we all felt like real amateur botanists.

wild strawberries

Flipping off the elusive bellwort. No, just kidding. Awkward finger choice, that's all.

When we got back home, I checked on the cliff swallows. There seem to be three or four pair of them moved into last-year’s nests under the eaves on the west side of the barn. Every time I walk in the west doors, I glance up and see a bunch of little heads peeking out their entrances. Two entirely-different pairs are hard at work building brand new nests on the east side of the barn.

I’m wondering how the swallows decide who gets the old digs and who gets to build a new house. Is it seniority–do the parents get the old homestead and the kids have to build their own? Or is it first-come, first-serve? At any rate, it’s a remarkable process to watch. They build these beautiful, upside-down conical nests out of tiny balls of clay they carry in their beaks. I’ll let you know how long it takes them to complete. They started them yesterday (Tuesday) and seem to have the bases done. I can see that they build a nest first, and the cone forms a sort of antechamber around and under the nest.

Aren't these just the most interesting nests?

A longtime friend of mine told me recently that while my mind and interests appear to range widely (and wildly), I seem to be content to live in a relatively small and circumscribed world. I think this was meant to be a mild rebuke, particularly since it came from someone who’s constantly on the move and obviously likes it that way. And indeed, part of me wishes I was possessed of that romantic wanderlust and that I longed for the unfettered life. It seems so much more Interesting, Cerebral, and Sophisticated to be One Who Travels. You get to complain about airports and sleep in strange beds, eat new delicious things, be bowled over by new faces, smells, foods, flora, and you get to do that thrilling YES!-I-Can-Imagine-Living-Here thing.

The truth is, however, I am deeply attached to this place in the world. The better I have come to know my little patch, the more magical and surprising it is. I hate to leave even for a day because I know I’ll miss something.

Moonrise over the Chicken Coop

So I stick around for the show because it’s usually pretty good. For instance, about five minutes ago, I went outside to track down Jigs, one of our outdoor cats. I lock him up at night to keep him from becoming a coyote’s dinner. After hunting high and low, I found him clambering up a ladder into the hayloft. I grabbed at him half-heartedly, and missed. That turned out to be a good thing, because what I thought was Jigs turned out to be a remarkably tame and fat momma raccoon.

It’s a small life. But it keeps my blood pumping.

Jigs. You can see how his silhouette resembles a momma 'coon's....

The Story of Ping

I got plenty done this week. The crew and I planted all of the trees and bushes and two thousand strawberry plants, and without a particle of my help, my Mom and Dad planted a bunch of black raspberries and rhubarb. And I started a new round of flowers, herbs, more lettuce. Etcetera.

Little baby lettuce, on the way to becoming delish mesclun

It’s been lovely, gorgeous, lush weather, with warm days, lovely rain, and happy children. Basically, we’re living in paradise here.

Except for those darn chickens. Sorry this is turning into the life of Jill and her chickens, but I have to get this off my chest.

First off, we’ve been doctoring the heck out of that rooster but I’m still not sure he’s going to make it. We’re now in the Wait and See phase of the healing process. He eats, he poops, and he still refuses to walk because it hurts, I guess.

Bumblefoot Tending

(I talked to a beekeeper/farmer/neighbor today who has a hen that had some sort of a seizure last September and to this very day, she eats, she poops, she lays an egg once in a while, and she does not walk. ARGGGHHH. Don’t tell me these stories, People. I want to hang onto the hope that the Miracle Salve will deliver).

I also have hen problems. More like hen irritations. But they feel like problems, sometimes. Who remembers The Story of Ping? It’s a story about a little duck that’s always the last on the boat at night. Ring any bells? Honestly, I don’t remember where it is set exactly, though I remember that it’s somewhere in Asia. Partial plot summary: there is a little boy who takes care of a flock of ducks (The duck keeper? Duck master? Ducker?) who sleep on a boat at night, and in order to motivate the ducks to come to bed quickly, he whacks the last duck up the boat ramp with a stick. Yes, this is a child’s story. And it’s a classic story, so I think perhaps it has some wonderful and heartwarming ending, in which the little duck and the duck keeper grow old together and no one is ever whacked, ever again. Or else maybe there’s some great cultural lesson about rivers and boats and Asian duck keeping? Sadly, I don’t remember any of that. I always got hung up on the unfairness and injustice of a great big human whacking a little duck, and to this very day, that‘s all I can remember of Ping.

And thus you learn, if you hadn’t already figured this out, that I was an overly sentimental child who grew up into an overly sentimental adult. I rescue snapping turtles and stray dogs, I adopt pretty much every hard luck cat who crosses my path (DON’T SEND ME ANYMORE though because it’s all of y’alls turn now to adopt some of the thousands of homeless and madly overpopulating domestic animals out there). I have been known to go out of my way, on occasion, to help children, older people, mothers, and even dads who don’t look scary and could use a little help, blah blah blah. And I stand by all of that stuff.

But I was dead wrong to hate the little boy with the stick. I see now, in the nth year of my chicken-keeping, that as a naïve little child, I was just too far removed from our agricultural roots to properly appreciate what was going on. That book is about how incredibly annoying it is to have all of your ducks (or chickens) in the boat (or coop) at night, except one of them who is messing around, and you have to stand out there in the practically pitch-black night. And wait. And wait. And probably, wait a little bit longer. And if like tonight, it’s raining buckets, that doesn’t matter at all to that single foolish chicken, because she’s getting worms and that’s much more important to her than letting the chicken farmer go inside, where it’s warm and dry and there’s perhaps a warm mug of tea and a box of Girl Scout cookies she’s managed to hide from the rest of the ravening horde, and certainly the joys of an evening when the children are in bed and it’s just quiet. But no. Can’t do that yet. Because that one last lousy chicken is messing around.

I’m not going to whack my chicken because it wouldn’t work (she’d just get scared of me and stay away even longer, which I suspect may also be the case with ducks) and also because I don‘t whack people or animals. That’s dead wrong. However, now, at certain moments, I can empathize with the whacking. Yes. I. Do.

Look how sweet. Like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.... Ha.

Good night, Moon

I spent most of the afternoon outside, running the rototiller. (Dad swiped the stakes plus rope contraption we use to guide the tiller in a straight line so I ended up using a length of fire hose. The beds turned out okay. Mostly straight).

It’s time to start transplanting the frost-hardy crops in earnest. I’ve got several trays of beets, Swiss chard, parsley, cabbages, and lettuce that need to go in the ground before the next rain, which is supposed to fall this weekend. (Oh, so SO much to do between now and “this weekend”).

It’s also time to get some of the perennial crops in the ground. Dad has a thousand strawberry plants and five-hundred asparagus roots sitting in boxes in his garage. And tomorrow, UPS is scheduled to deliver forty plum and apricot trees, and twenty-five hazelnut bushes. (The trees were a last-minute purchase but I happened upon a great deal from Oikos Tree Crops. Simply could not pass it up….). So there were conferences this evening about what order to plant things, where to plant them, and pumping up the team (my girls) for the Big Transplant Tomorrow. But it’s spring, the cliff swallows are back, the sky’s was brilliant blue, and nobody’s feeling too far behind. Yet.

So it was a happy, busy day.

Full moon over Full Bloom