Bees Love Hostas

The bees loved the hostas this year.   They completely ignored the lavender and hung out all over the hostas instead.    Interesting.

If you blow up the pic you can see her all covered with pollen.

Volunteer Squash #3 and #4

As I've told you before, I left a few volunteer squash in the gardens to see what they would grow up to be.    I had a tiny white pumpkin [which succumbed to the heat and a vine borer, I believe.]  and a bigger white pumpkin.

These are volunteers #3 and #4.

#3 is some sort of warty green pumpkin. 

#4 is some kind of butternut squash. 

Here is what a riper version of #3 looks like [next to the white pumpkin that volunteered.]

The green pumpkin is getting oranger and oranger.   I'm wondering if the green stripes will disappear completely.

I must say that I've had a lot of fun with the volunteer squash and I'm getting things that I probably wouldn't have planted.   I'll definitely be doing this again next year.   I just need to find more room.

Yoho Gets a Makeover

The heart and soul of downtown Solsberry, Indiana is Yoho's store.

It's been there forever.

The second story was the local Mason's meeting place.   You used to be able to see the symbol under the peak of the roof.

Mr. Yoho died last year and the place has been bought by Cook to be restored and reopened this fall as a little grocery just like it's been for decades.    [We hope they add an ice cream parlor!]

This is what it looks like this summer.

They had to rip out the ancient underground gas tanks.   Rumor has it that they're going to put some new tanks in.   That'd be fabulous!

We're impressed that they're doing a restoration rather than a knock down and let's start over from the ground up project.

The foundation had issues.

It was built on limestone blocks.   Big blocks.

Not exactly a continuous foundation.

The crew had to jack up the building and slide a bar under the sill plate to support things while they laid a cinder block foundation between the old foundation blocks.   Then they removed the old blocks.

They're taking their time.

It's so exciting!

Rat Tail Radishes

I like radishes a lot, but I always forget to thin them and they don't grow big.   Which is irritating.  Because then all you have is a long row of leafy tops that aren't good for much. 

Plus, they don't like the heat.   So mostly I grow radishes in the cold frame over the winter.

This year I decided to try the rat tail radishes that I found at Baker Creek.

They're supposed to not mind the heat and you eat the seed pod instead of the root.

I figured they wouldn't be bothered by a little crowding.

And it turns out they have really cute pink flowers.

And after a while those little pink flowers turned into these long green seed pods that look like rat tails.

Hence, the name.  Take a look at the first pic up there.  See the long pods?   That's what I'm talking about.  

They have that classic radish taste and stayed nice and crispy even in the heat.   The heat only encouraged them.

And then all the sudden the plants were loaded with pods.

As in - the pods are taking over the world. 

So we clipped a big bucket full and brought them in to see what we could do with them.

They're good sauteed with butter and garlic.    And curry - I like them with red curry.

They're great raw on sandwiches.

They're great stir fried.

And they're great dehydrated!!

We found that the toughest part of the pod is the pointed tip, so we snapped the ends off like beans, and we dried a bunch.

Dry them until they are crispy and brittle.   They should break apart easily.

Then we broke them up and put them in a jar to pop into soups instead of celery.

They're kind of good just dried - like popcorn.

Only I doubt they'll ever replace popcorn as a snack. 

It'll be interesting to see what else we find to do with them this year.  

Old Signs

In Worthington, Indiana you can still see some of the old signs that were painted on the sides of the brick buildings that make up the downtown.

I love old signs.

They are barely legible and the bright sun didn't help.  I need to go back on a rainy day and take some more pics to see if more words show up. 

This one says 'Meats'.  It's part of a larger sign.

Below the 'Antique Alley' sign, you can barely see another one.   'Green's Fresh Meats and Groceries'.   Meats above that door goes with that sign.

It's clear that the door was added later - it cuts off the bottom part of 'groceries'.  

And in the second window above you can see a coffin standing on end.   Creepy.    The kids check for it every time we drive by.    What will they think when it's missing one day?

New Queen Check

So, you know we had our share of problems with the flower lang hive.

Good. Gravy.

Drama, drama, drama. 

At our last inspection, things looked good in that hive - good laying pattern, calm bees.

And then we put the top box on the bottom box and the bees started roaring.

Roaring is not good.

I feared we killed the queen.    And a couple of days after that, I read Linda's blog, where the same thing happened to her and indeed the queen was dead when next she looked.

Crap.

So I decided not to panic.   [You guys from Beemaster will be so proud of me.]

And we did nothing.  [When in doubt - do NOTHING]

And we waited two weeks for another inspection figuring that if she were really gone, then the bees would make a new one and we'd see ripe queen cells when next we checked.

And when we checked, we found this.  

Beautiful brood comb.  Lots of larvae.

And the queen!

I'm so relieved!

These guys have started taking more syrup and I'm hoping that they'll have a good boom now just before the goldenrod blooms.

We have acres and acres of goldenrod and bees love it, so we might actually get a super of honey this year.   Fingers crossed.

Natural Yeast

A friend of mine has just published a book on making your own natural yeast.    It'll be out soon!

He sent us a start of his to get us started.   Here it is, all bubbly and awesome.  We're playing with now, figuring out how it works - this is NOT the synthetic fast rise yeast that you buy at the store.


We'll keep you posted.

Here's a link to The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast by Caleb Warnock and Melissa Richardson.   You can pre-order it now.  It's due out August 14th.

Bread and Butter Pickles by the Pint

Turns out my kids love bread and butter pickles.    I made them for the first time last year and I didn't make enough so this year I'm making a lot more.

I've been using the recipe from The Joy of Pickling but it calls for more cukes than I ever have at one time.

I hate that.

I can as things come out of the garden, which is a different prospect from buying a bushel of something and canning it all at once.

Not that I'm knocking buying a bushel of something and canning it all at once.   It's the only way we can do peaches.

But that's not how I do cukes.  

I have about this many cukes at a time.  If they go in the fridge, they disappear.

Or get partially frozen.  [It's an ooold fridge.]

I hate that.

So I revised the recipe so I could do it by the jar.

I'll just let you ponder on the genius of that idea.

...

Pickles by the pint. 

As in - you cut the veggies up and figure out how many pint jars they'll make,  then make enough pickle juice for just that many jars.

I know.

I know!

I can now make three jars of pickles.   Or twelve.    How many ever I want!

I had to take a nap from the sheer exhaustion of thinking up such a great idea.

[Please don't feel it incumbent upon yourself to disabuse me of the notion that I am the first person to think this up.   Just let me live in my fantasy for a while.]

Here's how it works. 

1.  Cut up the cukes and onions.   I use about 3 parts of cukes and 1 part onions.   But this is America.  You can use more or fewer onions if you want to.

2.  Measure how many pint jars of veggies you have.  You can pack them into a wide mouth jar and count how many you have or you can guesstimate.  I guesstimated.

[Did you know that the word 'guesstimate' is in the spell check?   It didn't come up as a misspelling like cuke did.   Cuke is not a word according to spell check.  Now you know.] 

3.  Put the veggies in a big bowl with 1 Tablespoon of salt for every pint you're making.   Dump some cold water and ice cubes on the veggies and let them sit for a few hours brining.  [Brining is not a word according to spell check.]   You don't have to use ice.   We never have ice.  I just use cold tap water.    You can put them in the fridge or leave them out.   Whatever.

4.  When you're ready to finish the pickles make this much juice for every pint of bread and butter pickles you want to make. 

Bread and Butter Pickle Juice for 1 Pint

• 1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon vinegar
• 3/8 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp celery seed
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/8 tsp Ball Pickle Crisp [calcium chloride]  optional

Bring the pickle juice to a boil in a big pan.   Add the vegetables and return to boil.   Pack into jars and fill with juice.   Cover and process for canning 10 minutes for pints.

UPDATE:   You don't need that extra 1 Tablespoon of vinegar.  Keep it simple and just use 1/2 cup vinegar per pint.     Also,  you can put the pickle crisp right in the jar if you like, instead of in with the rest of the pickle juice.
5.  Multiply that recipe by the number of pints of pickles you want to do.  This means that you will have to do math.

I'm sorry.

You can do it!

6.  If you have extra juice, then put it in a jar in the fridge.  It'll keep forever and you can use it the next time you make pickles.   Just dump it in with the new stuff.  

Note:   The pickles shrink some and the juice evaporates some when you boil it.   If you have to choose between making a little more or a little less, then I'd go for more, but that's just me.   If you run a bit short, then make sure you have equal amounts in all the jars and then add a bit of water to fill it out.   Not a big deal.    Lots of people cut the vinegar by 1/2 when they're making pickles.   You won't even notice. 

Volunteer Squash #2

I was delighted to find that one of my volunteers was a mini white pumpkin.   It set a dozen or so fruit before the heat got to it and did it in.   The last set of 105 degree days fried the poor thing. 

We were able to get about a dozen of them before it died.   I can't wait to use these for fall decorating. 

Hive Repair - Tardis

Our Tardis hive is a horizontal hive body.    It looks like this.

The frames run the same direction as the bricks on top do.   21 frames fit into this box.   There is a center support on the bottom board and one on the inside of the cover.   The bottom support kept the frame that was in that position a bit high.

Turns out those supports were cramping the bees' style.   They weren't traveling freely through the whole box, just half of it.

And when we opened the hive at the last inspection, we found a lot of burr comb on top of that one side. 

What you see in the pic is only half of the comb.  The rest was attached to the lid.  They were unhappy when we took it away. 

Only honey comb was on the 'wrong side' of the hive.   No brood comb at all.   And the brood frames were getting smaller because they were getting filled with honey instead of brood.

It's a miracle we didn't find a swarm cell started up.   These bees were quickly getting honey bound.

So, we did some remodeling.    We popped the center bar out of the lid so they'd have easy access across the tops.

And Eric chiseled the bottom support waaaay down so they'd have bee space across the bottoms.  We also opened up another entrance right next to the old one that opens toward the 'wrong side'.

We also checkerboarded the 7 empty frames that they just wouldn't fill up by putting an empty after every two full frames.  That spread out the brood into the 'wrong side' and will hopefully get them moving through the whole box where they'll decide to expand the brood.

We love the horizontal hive bodies - so much easier to work than the langs.   Eric built this one and now we know how to tweak the design for the next ones.

Propolis

Propolis is what the bees make to seal up the cracks in the hive.   It's sort of a glue made from bee spit and tree sap. Here's the wiki page.

It's sticky and makes pulling apart the frames difficult, which, of course, is the point.   Look at the length of the pull apart - and it's staying stiff even in the heat.   It's a pretty great adhesive. 

I was told that propolis was greenish black and one of our hives does indeed have greenish black propolis, but the other has screaming orange propolis.

The color has to do with the type of tree they get the sap from. 

Bees will use propolis to seal up anything they don't want in the hive.    They'll even use it to mummify a dead mouse with.  I've seen video of bees sealing off a bunch of Small Hive Beetles with it.

Rumor has it that it's good for you.   If you take it, swallow it whole - don't chew it because it'll get on your teeth and won't want to come off.  Like trying to take pine sap off your hands.   You don't want to go there.

You can even use it for art projects.   Lily made this little rose out of the propolis I was scraping off the frames at the last inspection.   Weird, but cute.

Crockpot Bread

It's been hot this year.

You've probably noticed.

We've been looking for ways to not use the oven.

We hit on the not-so-new-idea to use the crockpot to bake bread in.   A simple Google search will take you to dozens of people who did it before we did.

It's easy.

First, make your favorite bread dough.

While it's rising, find a trivet or some canning lids that will fit in the bottom of your crockpot.

Now find a glass or metal container that will fit inside your crockpot on top of the trivet or lids.

Turn your crockpot on high and pour a cup of water into the bottom of it with the trivet or lids.








Grease the bowl and put it on top of the trivet, inside the crockpot.

Put the dough in the bowl and cover it all.











It took about 4 hours for ours to bake through, but when it was done it was one of the tenderest loaves we've ever made.










It was great with jam.   And it didn't heat the house up.

Next up we're trying it with some homemade yeast.   I'll keep you posted. 

Volunteer Squash #1

I kept four of the volunteer squash that popped up in the garden early this year.    They all grew out of the chicken coop dirt and since we throw all the kitchen veg scraps in there, I had no idea what kind of squash it might turn out to be.

This is one of them.  

It's a medium sized white pumpkin - a little smaller than the size of your head.

We bought a couple of them for Halloween two years ago and tossed the remnants to the chickens.

So far I have 4 pumpkins ripening and the vine is getting longer, so I might have more.

Cucumbers!

I planted two types of cukes in the garden this year from seed I got from Baker Creek.

The smaller ones are De Bourbonne - they were bred for gherkin sized pickles.  They have little bristles on them that are seriously poke-y.  Weird.  But not hard to wash off.

The longer ones are Telegraph.  They are long and smooth and gorgeous.

They both make great pickles and are great for eating fresh.  I recommend them and will be using them again.

One of the questions I had about the bees this year was whether they'd live up to their reputation as curcurbit pollinators.   They totally did!    We have loads more cukes [and squash] than ever before.   I'll be making a lot of pickles.

Recipe coming soon.

Gratuitious Bee Pics

Lily was bored during the last hive inspection so while she was waiting on us she took this pic of a bee on a flower.

And then she made this tiny rose out of some of the propolis I was scraping off the frames.

Propolis is the stuff bees make to seal up the cracks in a hive.   I've got a post on that scheduled for later. 

Flower Lang Update

You might remember that we had a bit of trouble with the queen in our Flower Lang hive and we had to replace her.  

We checked on things again on July 1st and were very pleased to see this frame of capped brood.  

The brood is the stuff under the tan caps.  This is larvae that has been sealed up to metamorphose from a grub into an adult.   You can also see capped honey around the top edge of the frame.    The laying pattern of the capped brood shows a great laying pattern.  This queen is a good queen.    [We never did see her during the inspection.  Perhaps she hides as well as she lays.]

We also found this frame of honey.

The whitish stuff in the middle is capped honey.   Honey has a lower water content than the air, so the bees cap it off to prevent it from pulling moisture out of the air.   Honey's low water content is one of the things that makes it antibiotic and keeps it from spoiling.   Cool, huh!

The two rubber bands on the frame on the right side were used to keep some broken comb in the frame.  The bees built the broken stuff back into the frame and added on.   When they're tired of the rubber bands, they'll chew them off.

This honey probably has a lot of our sugar water in it.   This hive doesn't take nearly as much sugar water as the other one does, only a quart every 6-7 days, but it's still pretty likely that a lot of this honey came from the feeder and not the local flora.    It's a small hive.

Tall Bellflower

This is Tall Bellflower:  Campanula americana.

It's wild around here and pops up everywhere, especially in the shaded edges of the woods and roadsides.  

An interesting thing about this plant is that it is both annual and biennial.   The wiki has details.  [Link above]

Down the way from us is a large stand and it is spectacular when it's all blooming at once. 

It is indeed tall - most of the plants get around 48 inches tall, even when the year is dry.

Queen Bee

Queen getting ready to lay

This is the queen in our Tardis hive.   We call her Liz 10.  

[Whovians get it.]

Queen moving across capped honey comb

The Tardis is a horizontal hive body - as wide as two regular hive bodies side by side.   You take the lid off and can see the entire brood chamber without lifting one box off the other.  We LOVE horizontal hives and from now on, this is the way we're going to go. 

We're feeding this hive 1 quart of sugar syrup every other day.   They're sucking it dry.    I hope that if it ever starts raining here again, that when the goldenrod blooms, this hive will actually make us a few frames of honey.  We'll see.

Queen laying [in center of pic] , surrounded by attendants

We have had no problems with the Tardis hive.  The queen laid gangbusters from the beginning that that hive is constantly crowded at the entrance.   They much prefer the lower entrance, even though they can get out under the telescoping top lid.   I also opened a second lower entrance at the other end of the hive body but at the last inspection discovered a bumble bee in there robbing the honey, so I closed it off.   The bees obviously weren't guarding it. 

Thanks to Lily for the pics.   She does the camera thing while Eric and I are working the hives.  I point and tell her what to shoot and she shoots.  It makes things much easier for us.  

Strawberry Lemon Lavender Honey Jam

Jam and bread are two of my favorite things in the whole world.

Right up there with old barns.

And cemeteries.

And gardens.

Yep. That's where you'll find jam and bread on my list.  Right there at the top.

One thing I don't like in jam is too much sugar.   I like it to be more fruit flavor than sweet flavor.   It's jam, not candy.    I usually use 1/2 as much sugar as fruit in my recipes and I'm working hard on ways to use sweeteners other than sugar.

Like maple syrup.  [Peach Maple Cardamom Jam, Peach Maple Jam, Pear Maple Jam]

And honey.  I've been thinking a lot about honey in jam.

The trick with honey is to not let the flavor of the honey overwhelm the flavor of the fruit.   I decided to play.

While I was playing, I made this jam:  Strawberry Lemon Lavender Honey Jam.

It's beautiful.   And really really good!  The honey deepened the color of the berries into a deep dark red. 

Strawberry Lemon Lavender Honey Jam

• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• 4 cups sliced strawberries
• 3 T Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin
• 12 heads of lavender, tied in a bundle.
• 1 1/2 cups mild honey

Put the lemon juice, lemon zest, berries, lavender and pectin in a pot.  [You can stir with the lavender bundle.]  Bring to hard rolling boil.  Boil for 1 minute.  Remove the lavender bundle.  Add honey.  Bring to rolling boil and boil for 1 minute.  Ladle into jars.  

Notes:  If you don't want the odd lavender flower falling off into the jam, you can strip the flowers off and put them in a tea ball to steep in the jam as it cooks.   I found it easier to just use the bundle to stir with as much as I could, then I switched to a spoon when I needed a stronger stirrer.  

The jam isn't too sweet, especially with all that lemon.   If you want it to be sweeter, you can add more honey, or sugar if you don't want the honey to take over. 

This jam also mellows with time.  What flavor might seem overwhelming when cooking will tone down after the jam sits for a few days.  

Grass

We have a lot of different types of roadside grasses, rushes and sedges.     Here are just a few that I found along our road.

Bottlebrush grass.   It reminds me of fireworks.   That colony in the pic above is the same stuff. 

Foxtail.   Our cats like this stuff better than catnip.  Seriously.

Not a great picture, but you get the idea.  This is oatgrass.   I like the whole 'weeping' grass posture.

This is another one that reminds me of fireworks.  It's a rush, not a grass - soft rush, to be exact.   

Pecan Butter

A few days ago I told you about our experiment with almond butter.   It was so good, so easy and so flexible in recipes that we decided to try it with pecans.

Because we love pecans as much as we love almonds.

Plus, the almondbutter cookies were so incredible, we started thinking about pecanbutter cookies.  

So we dug out the pecans and went to work.

1.  Toast the pecans.    5-10 minutes at 250 in the oven is great.   Don't turn your back on them!  Pecans are full of oil and burn quickly.

2.  Put the warm pecans in your food processor and turn it on high.

3.  Grind it down until the nuts release the oils.   This only takes a few minutes for pecans, unlike the almonds which take for freaking ever.

Store the way you store peanut butter. 

Now here's a little recipe for you to try:  


Pecanbutter Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 pecan butter
• 1 cup sugar  [white or brown]
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt

Cream butters and sugar.  Add everything else and mix well.   Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet and bake 5 minutes at 350.   Don't let them brown - just bake them until they firm up a bit.  Pull them out and let them sit on the hot pan until they finish firming up.   It's ok to let them cool on the pan.    They'll stay soft on the inside, but have a bit of crunch on the outside.

You can also refrigerate the dough and roll it out, then cut it into rounds or shapes or whatever.

Yum.