True Love

Edward and duck have been hanging around together a lot this year.    Every morning they do the head bobbing conversation thing.  

It makes me dizzy.

Seriously, have you ever seen ducks do that?  One bobs its head down then up, then another will.   They 'talk' back and forth, silently.  Up and down, up and down, up and down.  Bobbing, bobbing, bobbing.  

Then they follow each other all over the yard for the rest of the day. 

It must be love.

Daisies

It's daisy season.    They're everywhere right now.

Fields full of daisies - I love them.  

We'll have them in smaller numbers throughout the summer, but right now they're glorious.

They volunteer all over the place.  I have two big plants that volunteered right in the middle of the veg garden, in the path, at the corner of a bed.  When they bloom, I'll post a pic. 

This field is in Hendricksville, not far from Rosie's Diner.    It slopes from the road down to the big creek that runs along Highway 43.

K2 snapped these pics on our way to town.

Barn

I love this barn.   We pass it every time we go into town.

The bottom is cinder block and my gut says that it was a dairy barn, way back when.     It's very very different from the other barns usually found out here.  

If you've got any information about the style, etc, shout it out.

Thanks to Danille, in the facebook comments, I got this link  (http://www.springriverloghomes.net/timberbarns.html).    It's a barrel vault design, used as a dairy barn.    Their design was from the 1950s.  It certainly is distinctive. 

Salamander

We found this guy up next to the house hiding in a wet spot in the folds of the tarp that covers our emergency generator. 

Look at the length of that tail!

He's a northern two lined salamander, as far as I can tell.

We see these a lot down by the big creek.   All you have to do is turn over a couple of medium sized flat rocks to find them.  

Martha Stewart doesn't live here.

The truth about our place is that generally, it's a mess.   We've always got something going on somewhere and if we manage to get it cleaned up, then the grass is too long or the weeds have grown up where they don't belong.  

That said, we manage to have a few corners tucked here and there that are useful for photo ops to make this place look like it came right out of the pages of Martha Stewart. 

As long as you don't look too closely.  That's the corner of our back patio under the apple tree.   On this particular day, it was the only corner of the property that didn't look like a total and complete disaster.

Most of the time our flower beds are weedy.   The patio has weeds growing between the bricks.   The veg garden is strewn with metal stakes, bricks, trowels and various and sundry other things that I may or may not need up there in the next few weeks.

The studio is a constant disaster.   That's what it's for.  It was clean once, but that was a long time ago.

The house is small.   From it, we run two businesses and homeschool.  Two bedrooms, one bath.  The house is usually clean for approximately 10 minutes late on Friday morning.   Then we're done cleaning and start living again.   

The basement smells like an old basement.   Musty at best.  Mildewy during the monsoon season.   Packed full [and I mean full] of wood and woodworking tools.  Mostly wood.

There is duck poop on the front walk.   The chair on the front porch is dirty with dog sweat.  Really dirty.  It's Tibby's chair. 

I could go on.  

Martha Stewart doesn't live here.  

We live here.  

We LIVE here.  And WORK here. 

Welcome to the country.

New Garden Beds......again.

Just when I think I've finally got enough space in the veg garden, I go and decide that we're never going to be able to find sweet potato starts this year and I plant carrots and basil where the sweet potatoes would have gone.

And then a good friend calls to say that she found some sweet potato starts and hurry over there before they're gone.  

So we had to go get some because last year we didn't get any sweet potatoes and it would have been two whole years in a row without our own sweet potatoes and that wold have been bad.

The girls don't agree.

Whatever. 

So I looked at Eric and said, 'I think we need another bed.' and he didn't even flinch.   He said, 'Let's do it.' 

And I wanted to cry because I'm a little tired of digging and hauling gravel this year already.

Enough already!

So we called Quincy to get more gravel and sand because we had finished the last loads.  

Just FYI, there are over 7 tons of gravel and sand each when he delivers.   That means that we have moved 7 tons of gravel by hand since January.  And 7 tons of sand since last summer.  

By.  Hand. 

As in, one shovel full at a time.

I should be totally buff.

Anyway.  

The story is the same.    This is what it looked like before we started.   I didn't get a Before pic, because I was too busy digging already and I wanted to get it over with. 

First we have to decide where we want it, then we have to dig the grass out.   See all that grass to the front and left of the potato towers?     It had to go. 

I did it all in one 5 hour shift.  

Tip:  Take motrin before you start.   It helps.  

After I dug the grass out, I have to carve the clay down so it's smooth and the water drains right.

The grass in the center rectangle got covered by the sweet potato bed, some more geotextile and 12 inches of sand and chicken dirt.   I didn't bother digging it out. 

After we line the paths with geotextile to keep the weeds down, then we load the paths full of gravel.   Eric did the vast majority of gravel hauling.     Vast majority.  

And he loaded the bed full of sand and chicken dirt.

Then I planted the sweet potatoes.

Then we surrounded the whole blasted garden with deer fence to keep things out.  It works pretty darn well.  Too bad deer fence won't keep the weeds out.  

That pool ladder in the middle of the garden is an extra we had around so I put it to use to hold the sprinkler.    Works like a charm - easy to drag around and keeps the sprinkler high.  

The end.  

Kale

I grew kale this year.   Actually, I planted it in the cold frame in October so we would have kale during the winter.  

It stayed 4 inches high.   Both types - the short stuff and the tall stuff. 

This could have something to do with the fact that I planted  a  LOT of seed and didn't thin it. 

In February, I thinned it out and planted it in the garden.  It loved the cool weather.   It hates the hot weather.  

What a prima donna  [How do you spell that!?]   It faints over 75 degrees.

Anyway.

When I buy kale at the store, it's leathery and sometimes pretty tough.    This homegrown stuff is so not leathery or tough.  It cooks like a dream - quickly, like a manly spinach.   I love it sauteed with butter or olive oil and lots of garlic.   

This is definitely a keeper.   We're going to plant this again in the fall and in the winter cold frame.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cream Cheese Coffeecake

The strawberries, like everything else around here, are early  this year.  

They're beautiful!   And delicious.    We had these in a strawberry rhubarb cream cheese coffecake.  

I'd have taken a pic, but we ate it too fast. 

De. Lish.

Here's the recipe anyway. 



Strawberry Rhubarb Cream Cheese Coffeecake

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups plus 1/4 cup flour [divided for batter and fruit]
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 8oz pkg cream cheese cut into small cubes
• 2 cups rhubarb, washed and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces.
• 2 cups strawberries, washed hulled and sliced.

Topping

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cold butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.   Grease 9x13 pan.

Toss the fruit with 1/4 cup of flour and set aside. 

Cream the butter and sugar.  Beat in the eggs.   

Combine flower baking powder, salt in separate bowl and gradually add to the butter/egg mixture alternating with the milk.  Begin and end with the flour mix.

Fold the fruit and cream cheese into the batter and pour into the greased 9x13 pan.

Topping:  Cut flour, sugar and butter together until crumbly with a pastry blender or in your food processor.      Sprinkle over batter.

Bake for 60 minutes or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.  

Warning:  This is extremely delicious and very addictive.   You can cut the recipe in half.   You can use any kind of fruit you want.   We've tried it with mixed berries, too.   Mmmmm.

Potato Towers

We were at a friend's place a year or so ago and he had two tall boxes in his garden.  I asked him about them and he said they were potato towers and that, in theory, one could grow 100 lbs of potatoes in a 5' tall tower.  

Cool!

We did a bit of research about them and found several sites where people had tried it and had great success.   [And we found one site at the University of Oregon where they said it was a myth and impossible to grow potatoes that way.  Apparently they never even tried it.   Okaaayy.    I'd be peeved if I were an Oregon taxpayer.]  

Eric built two towers, using 2x4s for the posts and 2x6 or 2x8 for the side panels - whatever he had laying around.   

I put the towers over newspapers and lined them with more paper to keep the blasted grass and weeds out of the edges.   

The idea is to start with one level of sides, plant your potatoes, then as the greens grow up, to keep adding dirt/fill so that no more than 4-6 inches of green shows.  

The stems will keep producing potatoes as long as you cover them quickly while they're new.   If they get too long, they won't make potatoes, even if you cover them up later.

Add more wood to the sides to keep the fill in.   Eric is screwing it in so it's easy to take apart for next year.

When you get to the top, let the greens get as big as they want and keep it good and watered.    I'm toying with the idea of putting some soaker hose of some kind in the middle.   Not sure yet. 

Since I took this photo last weekend, we have added two more levels of wood.    I have to check the greens EVERY DAY because they are shooting out of the ground.  You want to cover the stems as new as possible.

One of the sites we saw recommended using late variety potatoes for the tower, so that's what we used.  

What will we fill with?   See those straw bales between the towers?   Those are what we used over the winter for the cold frame.  They're kind of wet and old and clearly are growing fungus in places, but I wanted to see if that would work, so we're using them.    I'll layer with sand, too for good drainage.  

How do you harvest?   Unscrew the wood from one side and empty it out.    We've heard tell that you can undo the bottom and start harvesting from the bottom if you like, but you've got to put the soil back.  We'll be harvesting from the top or near the top anyway. 

So far this is really fun.   We'll keep you posted.

Oil Slick

When we moved here, I dug a fire pit and lined it with creek rock.   Some of the rocks were beautiful blue things.   When we lit the fire, the blue rocks exploded.

Oil shale.

It's all over here.   After a good rain, when the creek bottom is scrubbed clean, it's blue.  It's really pretty.

And when the weather is wet, we get little oil slicks in places where the water collects off a hill or in a bog.

Iris Bog

We have a wet mushy place on our property where the creek comes out from under two ginormous beech trees.   It's a perfect place for siberian iris and mint and a nice swamp rose. 

The iris are blooming now.   It's hard to get a fabulous nature mag type pic because this place has a microclimate all its own.   The iris don't bloom at the same time - even though they're all the same kind.   Weird. 

You can see the clumps of iris and imagine how pretty it would be if they all decided to bloom at one time. 

There are two types of mint growing in the bog - apple mint and peppermint.   I'm betting the bees find it this year.   Mint flowers are lovely.

Things that come down the road

We get all kinds of interesting things on the road.   All kinds.   Once, we were driving through downtown Solsberry, and there was a donkey in the middle of the road, outside Yoho's.    He had wandered away from a neighboring house.    I wish I'd had the camera.









Lately we've been seeing a lot of these.

Box turtles.  Here's a cool page talking about the species and subspecies of Indiana box turtles.  

See if you can figure out which one this is.

Jack in the Pulpit

This is our south woods.  The big creek runs right through it.  It's quiet and peaceful and beautiful and we're always finding cool things there.

Like unusual wildflowers.

And humongous snapping turtles with their babies hanging on to their backs.

And salamanders under the rocks.

And parts of old tractors.

And not too far away from the creek, there's a sinkhole with two washing machines in it.  Weird.  One washing machine I can see, but, really.  Two??

It's our plan to figure out a way to haul out the washing machines.    Eventually.   I shudder to think of what else might be down there.



Anyway.

This isn't about the sinkhole or the creek or the turtles.

It's about Jack in the Pulpit.

Lily found them - just a few. 

They camouflage well, don't you think?

Blackberry Heaven

The first thing to move in after we did was the blackberries.   Our place had been grazed by cattle for over a century.   We did not have a single blooming dogwood or redbud on this place.   We did not have a tractor either, so the big mowing stopped when we moved here.

And the blackberries moved right on in.  These are the classic 'brambles'.   The berries are good, but smaller than commercial blackberries.  The seeds are bitter, so it's best to make jelly and syrup with it and take the seeds out.

I mow around the big patches as closely as I can so that they're easier to get to to pick.   That also helps control them - a bit.

We have a tractor now and as soon as it's up and running and we learn how to drive it, then we have plans for maintaining the blackberries in a more reasonable way.

Here's a pic of some of the berries on the big hill.  Blow it up for a better view.   They're blooming now and the whole hill looks and smells wonderful. 

Here's a pic of just one of the patches.  The canes at the center are around 8 feet tall.   We have other patches where the canes are taller. 

Scary.  

We've got those scheduled for 'maintenance' first. 

Maintenance will consist of mowing off 4' rows. in three sections.  One section will be path [grass].  One section will be mowed right away to let grow up over the year so that we can harvest next year [2013].    In the fall after harvest, we'll mow off what we picked on this year and let it get started growing for the following year [2014].  Then it's just a matter of keeping the paths always mowed and then mowing this year's berries after harvest so they can get going again.

Why 4'?   Because that's what I can lean into to pick through.    And if we lose a year for some reason, a 4' row would be easier for me to take out with the little riding mower.  

Pear Plum Crisp

First of all, let me be clear.   I believe in dessert for breakfast.   Especially fruit stuff.  Fruit desserts are much easier to rationalize for breakfast than, say, chocolate cake.

So we have a lot of pies and crisps for breakfast. 

Crisps are easy because all you have to do is cut up the fruit, sprinkle on some sugar if you need it and toss on a topping.   Easy squeezy.

We had a few plums in the fridge that needed to be eaten, but there were only five of them.   I cut them up anyway but I needed something else to add to it.  A can of pears!

And we have a jar of tapioca granules that I picked up at Freedom Country Store, just north of Worthington.  Tapioca granules make good thickener.

This is what I did:

Pear-Plum Crisp

• 1 can pears [29 oz.] in heavy syrup
• 5 plums, cut up and seeded
• 2 Tablespoons tapioca granules [or flakes]

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease the bottom of an 8x8 pan or casserole dish.   Put plums in the bottom of the dish.    Open the can of pears and removed a few of the pears, leaving the syrup.   Stir the tapioca granules into the syrup and pour over the fruit.    Sprinkle on the crisp topping.  Bake for 1 hour or until bubbling and browned.   Serves 6.

Crisp Topping

• 1/4 C sugar
• 1/2 C flour
• 1/2 C oats
• 1/4 C butter
• dash cinnamon
• dash salt

Mix everything together with a pastry blender or food processor.  I always use the pastry blender.  Eric always uses the food processor.   I told him it's a guy/power tool thing.  He told me it's a 20th century kind of thing and since we're now in the 21st century, I'd better catch up.

Whatever.

If you use the pastry blender, leave the oats out until everything else is chopped up nicely.   Then stir in the oats.   Eric says if you just use the food processor, you don't have to remember to leave the oats out.  You can just toss it all in.

He's got a point. 


Note:  Even with the 2 Tablespoons of tapioca, it could still have been a bit thicker.   If you want thick, then bump up the tapioca to 3 Tablespoons instead of two.

Mystery Chrysalis

Sometimes we find caterpillars and chrysalises around here.

Science is everywhere.  Remember when we did the black swallowtails last fall?    It's fun to be doing it again.

K2 found this chrysalis on an oak leaf in her garden last weekend.

It's kind of distinctive, with the black and the bumps and all.

This could be a Great Spangled Fritillary or a Pipevine.

We think it's a pipevine swallowtail chrysalis because the caterpillars look sort of black with orange bumps.

We get a lot of pipevine swallowtails around here, so it wouldn't be surprising if it were.

But, you know, those caterpillars could surprise us.  You never know what it is until they're done.




So we kept the leaf with the chrysalis and taped the leaf to the inside of a gallon jug.

I heart scotch tape.

And now we'll wait and see what it is when it comes out.

Turns out it was a Great Spangled Fritillary. or an Aphrodite. 

Collecting Cream

Recently, my girls and I and Murphala from Flour, Water, Yeast & Salt took a road trip to the Swiss Connection in Clay City, Indiana.    To buy milk.   And lots of it.  I got 4 gallons of fabulous raw milk.  

It was so worth every mile and every penny.  

This milk comes with a lot of cream.   You can see it more than 1/4 way down in the jugs.  

Mmmm.   I can feel my arteries hardening just thinking about it.

My problem with cream in jugs is that I always poured it all out into a really big bowl so I could skim the cream.    By hand....spoon, rather.   One little spoonful of cream at a time.

It was time consuming.  And the pouring sort of mixed in some of the cream, which defeats the purpose of taking the cream out.

So I was thinking I needed to buy one of those measuring cup thingies with the spout that goes to the bottom so you can put stock or whatever in it and pour off the stuff under the fat, which is floating on top.  

Do you know what I mean?    Eric had no idea what I was talking about.   At all.  

But I forgot to get one of those things.

And we had four gallons of milk whose cream I really wanted to separate out, but not one little spoonful at a time. 

Ya know?

But I was resigned.    And then Lily pulled out the turkey baster.

Because she's a genius.   

And we extracted the cream from the gallon jugs without having to pour it out into a big bowl and scooping the cream out one spoonful at a time.

And then I pasteurized the cream because I knew we'd want to keep it for a while for lots of things.

And we did.

And they were delicious. 

The End.

P.S.  Get a load of how much cream is in those jugs!  The cream is the yellower stuff at the top of the jugs.  Cool, huh!

Flower Lang - Day 26: Comb Issues

It was great to have Lily there to do the camera thing so we could focus on the bees.    Thank you, Lily!

I've divided the inspection into two posts this time -- one post for each hive -- so I can talk about different things without overloading you with bee info.   We'll start with the Flower Lang.

The Flower Lang has comb issues. 

They're the ones who built the extra comb on the side of the hive.   We've had to do a lot of comb repair in this hive.    Mostly because they're building wonky, but once because I broke a comb off.   Last week we repaired 4 combs.

This is what we found when we opened the hive this week.

See how it's bent? 

It's not supposed to be bent like that.

That's one of the combs we repaired last week.  It looks like the comb rolled sideways a bit and crumpled at the bottom.   Soft comb'll do that.

In the meantime, the bees started a new comb from the top.  They'll meet soon.

This is the other [south] side.   I'm pretty sure that's drone comb at the bottom between the rubber bands.   Drone cells have domed caps, they're wonky sizes and irregularly placed. 

We decided to bend that soft comb back straight and cut out the crumpled stuff at the bottom.  

I used a knife to cut out the crumpled stuff at the bottom of the north side.  

Notice that I left the bees on while I worked.  They're much happier that way.

Much.  Happier.  

This is what it looked like when I was done.








 
Last week's repair.  This is a frame that we repaired last week.  I think it's the one I broke.   It stayed put enough for the bees to draw all that new comb above it.   There's lots of capped brood under those bees and eggs in the new edge comb.

That blasted end comb.  Once again, the bees got creative with the end frame.    We cut the little part out and then cut the big comb out and put it between two rubber bands to center it on the frame.   Hopefully they'll get it straight in the frame.   I'm not holding my breath. 

The good news is that we are getting a lot of experience doing cut-outs...sort of.   Only I'd be happier if we weren't cutting them out of their own frames.


Queen.  Here's the queen at the bottom of the comb just getting on the wood frame.  It's easier than I thought to find the queens.  The other bees give the queens some space.  The queens don't hurry, but they're always on the move.

Eggs.   We saw plenty of eggs in the brood comb where the first batch had hatched already and in the new comb.    This is new comb.  Blow up the pic to see eggs and some small larvae.  The eggs look like rice; the larvae look like the letter C.

Here's a better pic of some new eggs.  They really showed up in this piece of comb.








Frozen Brood
At the bottom of the hive we found a little piece of comb that had broken off [sorry no pic!]  In it were two small/medium larvae, dead and black. Way too small to have been capped.  It smelled a bit rotten.   I stuck a twig in it to see if it would string out [like American Foul Brood does], but it didn't much.    I guessed that this bit of comb broke off before the freezes we had early last week and that these poor guys got frozen.   A bit of internet research netted me this fabulous chart which confirmed that it was likely that these guys had indeed died from the cold.  

And now a gratuitous pic of a big pollen basket.  Look at the size of that thing! 

If you're interested in what color pollen comes from what plant, check out this wiki page.  

TARDIS - Day 26: Capped brood.

Just to remind you, we took Lily with us this time to take the pics while we inspected the hives.    It was great to have Lily there to do the camera thing so we could focus on the bees.    Thank you, Lily!

I am happy to report that there was only one little bit of burr comb on this hive and we decided to leave it.   The bees are going to do what the bees are going to do.   We'll make sure it stays straight on the frames, but those little bump outs are not worth messing the comb for.

Unless someone with a lot more experience tells me otherwise.    Then I'll happily reconsider.

This week, this hive was all about capped brood.

Glorious, glorious capped brood.

We could see where the first batch of new bees has hatched out and new eggs have been laid in those cells.    This is great news.   Our blackberries have started blooming and the more bees there are, the better.  This is one of our best nectar flows of the year.    Acres and acres of blackberries.

Hopefully there will be enough new bees fast enough to store a lot up for the winter.  We'll see.

Here's a closer look at what's going on in the frames.    Blow it up for a good look.

The larvae are large and white and curled around in the cell.

The honey is shiny.   The capped honey has a smooth cap - different from the bumpy caps on the capped brood.

If you look closely you can see that the brood is capped with mini hexagons.  [It's easier to see in the second pic at the top]

When we pulled apart some of the frames, the bees festooned in three places.   It doesn't happen all the time and I'm always intrigued when it happens.   I need to find out why they do that.

The very last frame was one we had repaired last week.  The bees are doing their best to join it.

Almost there.  Only a bee width away from joining.

And here's the queen.   It was very cooperative of her to stand right next to that other bee so you can see the difference in appearance. 

We named her Liz X.   You Doctor Who fans can explain why.   

[We need a star whale hive....]