Morning

St. John's Wort

This is St. John's Wort.   'Wort' is the Old English word for 'plant'.   It has nothing to do with warts.  The traditional pronunciation of St. John's Wort is Sinjun's wort.  

It's Hypericum perforatum.  The 'perforatum' refers to the tiny pores in the plant's leaves.  That's how you can tell for sure that you're dealing with St. John's wort.

If you click the pic, you can better see the pores in the leaves.  The sparkles on the edges are dew.  I'm not sure what the dark spots are  but they seem to be symmetrical, so I'm thinking it's just how the plant grew.

This plant naturalizes beautifully here and a whole colony is lovely.

It is traditionally used to treat all sorts of things, most notably depression.   

Hay Season

The hay fields are beautiful at sunrise.  I love round bales.

Peas

It took forever for the peas to take off this year.   By the middle of June they were producing and now we've got a decent harvest every couple of days.  Not a great one, but a decent one. 

The kids like these raw right off the vine.   I like them in a fast stir fry with carrots, onions and maybe a bit of cabbage.  

Bee Removal

Earlier in June, Eric and I removed a hive of bees from a home in town.

The bees were entering the structure of the house through the gap between the wood siding and the stone.  Once the bees got in, they found a wide channel between the stone and the interior structure [sill plate, etc.] that provided a wide roadway straight to the spaces between all of the joists along the entire length of the house. The pathways had been enlarged by ivy growing on the house.

From the interior of the house, we had to find out exactly where the hive was.   We did a bit of listening in the rooms on this side of the house and narrowed it down to the ceiling area in a basement room.

It did not take a high tech method to find out exactly where the hive was.   All I did was feel the ceiling.   It was much warmer under the hive.  Much warmer.  Here's Eric demonstrating so I could snap the pic.

I drew a circle around the warm area on the ceiling.  We moved all the furniture out of the room, covered one set of windows and papered shut an open closet to keep the bees out of it.  Then we put sheets on the floor to collect debris and made sure that the spaces at the top and bottom of the door were covered and the hallway dark to keep bees out of the rest of the house.

Eric figured out exactly where the joists were and cut out the drywall to expose the hive.

Rumor had it that this was a brand new hive, from a swarm seen near the house two weeks before.    We expected a small hive, a bit of comb and some bees.


The bees had filled this section of joist and were already out of space.  In another few days, they'd have started on the spaces to either side of the first area.

The comb was brand new and very soft.  Full of honey and brood.  It was very difficult to handle and band into frames because it fell apart quickly.    We did the best we could with me doing the removal from the ladder and Eric doing the banding.

Luckily we had this window right next to the ladder to pass comb and frames through.

These bees were very defensive.  They were not mean beforehand, but once we got going, they were very unhappy.  No amount of smoke calmed them down once we started removal. 

9 hours later we had defeated the hive, collected the bees, sealed all of the entrances we could find and cleaned up.   We had gone through several cans of caulk and Great Stuff.

In addition we took a few dozen stings each, through the protective clothing.   It's what bees do.   I'd like to think that I'd defend my home and family as persistently as they did.

What we did well:
1.  Found the entrance and the hive quickly.
2.  Made appropriate cuts to minimize the interior damage to the ceiling of the room.
3.  Kept the bees out of the rest of the house. 
4.  Removed the bees and comb.
5.  Found the queen and caught her.  
6.  Sealed up the entrances outside AND inside.
7.  Stayed calm through the whole process.
8.  Answered the client's questions, explained how bees work, explained the issues with the structure of the house.
9.  Went back the next day to double check that the bees hadn't found another way in and that the holes really were sealed up.  Since Eric is doing the construction repair as well [it's what he does for a living] it was extra important to talk about and fix potential problem areas now because he'll be working with the client on other projects over the next few years and we don't want her to have bees again.


What we'd do better next time:
1.  Make a better bee vac.   DO NOT attempt a removal without a bee vac of some kind.   We want one that'll dump them in a hive box with frames so that all we have to do is drop the hive in place when we get home.  We'll lose fewer bees and then transferring the bees to a more permanent box at the end of a long day just before dusk will be less exhausting.  

2.  The Mann Lake style bee jack with hood, like this one provided good coverage and I highly recommend it.   There are a few different styles and fabrics.   Get one with lots of velcro to cover up holes to the inside of the hood.  I only got one bee in my hood all day.  The prices are all over the place and many bee outfitters sell them, so shop around.     Upset bees will still get you through the suit, but my face and head were protected all day long, even when I put my head up into the joist space to find and caulk the entrance from the inside of the hive when there were still a whole lot of bees in there.  The hat and veil like this one that Eric wore were not nearly adequate in this removal and he took a lot of hits to the head, neck and face.   I got him a jacket with a hood like mine for Father's Day.

3.  Put plastic on the floor first, then sheets.   I spilled a lot of honey on the sheets taking that soft comb out, which soaked into the carpet below.   We gave the client a discount to clean the carpet because that's something that I could have prevented.

4.  Bring 3 times as much caulk and Great Stuff as we think we'll need.


We got the bees relocated at home with a frame of undamaged brood from another hive.  They're still here and doing just fine.

It was a very exciting experience.

Poison Ivy Identification

This is poison ivy.  It is not your friend.

Leaves of three, let it be.

Here's more.  Don't touch it!

Here's more.   And below it on the ground is Virginia creeper.  

Virginia creeper has 5 leaves.  It's annoying, but it's not going to cause blisters. 

That's poison ivy on the far left and Virginia creeper on the ground.  5 leaves.  It creeps.

This often confuses people.  3 leaves....but wait - does that one have a little 4th?  Yes.   It's baby Virginia creeper.   It creeps.  

Baby poison ivy raises its head above the grass to see what's going on. It doesn't creep.  It never has a 4th leaf.

Wild Grape

You may have to click the pic to better see the flowers here, but these are the flowering clusters of our wild grape.   They smell amazing.  If the perfume this year is any indicator, then we should have a bumper crop of these babies this fall, which will make the squirrels and birds very happy.   

Wild grapes are everywhere in our woods.  They are the Tarzan vines that loop and curl and drape over everything.  The vines get pretty big - I see some as big around as my wrist in the oldest parts of our woods. 

Burning bush

This year has been amazing for blooming things.  I've been finding all sorts of cool plants that I didn't know were there.    Like this Euonymus atropurpureus.  The common name is Burning Bush, but it's not the kind that the garden centers sell.  [It's also called Eastern wahoo, which is totally ridiculous, so I've decided not to tell you that.]  This is a native tree.   I saw one in our woods once, and in my neighbor's woods once [I'm assuming it wasn't the same tree.  I don't think they're magic walking trees.]  Turns out we have one near the house, too.   I've only seen them in the fall so I didn't realize they had such great flowers.  Click the pic for a closer look.

Beardtongue

Here's an under-appreciated garden beauty for our area.  It's Penstemon.  The common name is beardtongue.    There are hundreds of varieties and a lot of them are very showy - beautiful perennials for the garden.   They do well with little fuss. 

This colony is native to the area and they pop up all over the place. 

Our native variety is white with a pink blush.  It starts blooming at the beginning of June, but you can still find them blooming in August. 

A large colony is a thing of beauty.  They love roadsides and open fields.  I've seen them in full sun and dappled shade.

Bee - Deformed Wings

Take a good look at the bee on the right.   See how the wings are just not right?   I found this bee in the center hive.   I looked for more, but she was the only one.   Whew.

Deformed wings are a sign of a virus called, appropriately enough, Deformed Wing Virus.

The virus occurs just like head colds and the flu in humans.   It is passed around in many ways, most notably via varroa mites.

So, the first thing I did was put a board under the hive for 24 hours to catch debris.   As bees groom and eat, things fall to the bottom.   In 24 hours, you pull the board and count the number of mites.   That'll give you an idea of the mite load the hive has.   If you count more than 60 mites in 24 hr period, then you need to treat the hive quickly.  Those mites are spreading more than DWV.

After 24 hours I pulled the board and looked for mites.   With my glasses on.  With a magnifying glass.   No mites.

That doesn't mean they don't have any; it just means that the mite load is small.  

So,  one case of DWV is not good, but it doesn't look like it's going to be catastrophically epidemic.

Tobacco Barn

On Highway 157 sits this pair of barns.  It's an unusual pair.  One white, the other unpainted.  One a regular two story with animal addition on the side, the other sort of a lean-to.  One well sided, the other with gaps in the sides.


 

I'm thinking the white barn was the hay/cow barn and the gray one was the tobacco barn.

Tobacco barns are common in this part of Indiana.  Most are disused, now that the tobacco industry has collapsed.   Up through the 1990s, tobacco growing was an important source of income out here.   It was labor intensive, but one acre of tobacco would net you $3000 - as opposed to the $300 an acre of corn would get you.  No wonder people grew tobacco for so long.

Tobacco was tied in bundles and then hung across poles to cure in these barns.  The high humidity of this area allowed for a slow cure.  The barns were covered just enough to keep out the rain, but sided in a way to allow for a lot of air flow.   You can really see through the gaps in this one.  

Do a Google search for 'tobacco barn history' for some fascinating photos of structures like these. 

Strawberry Vanilla Jam

It's finally summer.   I scored these berries a couple of weeks ago, fresh from the field.  I bought a whole flat figuring on making jam and eating as many fresh as we wanted.  

I spent an hour hulling and slicing the berries - 2 gallons in all.

K2 requested a few batches of her favorite Strawberry Vanilla Jam.  It's an easy recipe and makes a delicious jam.  I made two big batches

Strawberry Vanilla Jam
www.rurification.com

5 cups sliced strawberries
1 cup water
5 tablespoons low sugar pectin
3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Crush the berries and put them in a big pot with the water and pectin.   Stir to dissolve the pectin.  Bring to a hard rolling boil.  Boil 1 minute.   Add sugar and vanilla and stir well until dissolved.  Return to hard boil.  Boil hard for 1 minute.  Ladle into jars.

Yield:  3.5 pints

I don't think jam could get much easier than that.  

For more recipes as easy as this one, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.

Barn Across Wheat Field

A lot of farmers here have been growing winter wheat, especially since the big drought last year that left thousands of acres of corn withered and gray in the fields last summer.   The wheat ripens in June and makes a beautiful foil for the old barns. 

UPDATE 10:15am:   A couple of people have mentioned how this photo reminds them of Christina's World - a painting by Andrew Wyeth.   I admit I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up.   Very interesting painting and story.

Carrots

 After last year's attempt at carrots, I swore I was done growing carrots.

Then over the winter, I read The Winter Harvest Handbook, by Eliot Coleman and realized that carrots are a cool weather veg.  As in COOL weather.  Not summer. 

So I picked up some mixed-color carrot seed from Rural King or Menard's or somewhere like that and sowed a row in the hoop house on Valentine's Day.

And look what I grew!    I harvested early this month and was pleasantly surprised at the size of some of them. 

I noticed that the white ones were tiny and not very tasty - but those purple ones!  Mmmm.  

I'll be planting another row of carrots this fall for overwintering.

Potential

A squash start from a couple of weeks ago.  I love this stage of growth.  It's all about potential.

The Old Queen

Both of the queens we got in our packages last year died.  One was a dud layer and I replaced her with this one.  The other one didn't make it through the winter.   They both came from the deep south.  We won't be doing bees that way again if we can help it. 

Here's a pic of the queen in the Tardis hive - red-ish gold and gorgeous.   This is a local queen; we got her from Roger Graham of Graham's Beeworks in Morgantown, Indiana.  This is the queen that survived the winter. 

This is her laying pattern.  Almost solid all over the deep frame.  Calm bees.  Overwinters well.

I split this hive in May and she threw another great calm queen for the other hive.  

This is what we're looking for in queens.

Early Summer Greens

These are some of the greens I planted on Valentine's Day in the hoop house.  When the weather got warm, we took the plastic off the hoop house and set up that trellis to keep shade on the lettuce.

Worked like a charm.  The lettuce has stayed sweet and been a lot slower to bolt.   We're eating a lot of salads and my goal is to eat it up before it gets bitter.

That's a renegade kale plant in the center.   I need to try making kale chips.  I hear they're delicious.

The square metal things are from old political signs that were abandoned after elections.   I put them in to hold up a row cover, but that didn't really work.  They did work brilliantly as a place to grab when I'm leaning over to weed the bed.   I'll use them that way again next year. 

A New Queen!

At the beginning of May, I split our overwintered hive.   I did an equal split, walkaway - which means I divided the hive in half into two new hives [One frame for this, one frame for that - dealing the frames like cards] The Tardis had the old queen, which means the lang had to make a new one.  

The lang started with 3 frames of brood and a lot of field bees.  I checked on things a couple of weeks later and gave them another frame of brood, just in case.

I checked them again last week and lo, and behold, I found a hive with 4 frames of good brood:  eggs and larvae at all stages.  This means a queen!  And then I found her.  Large and very golden. She's in the center of this pic. 

Bonus:  These bees are very calm.  They only got disturbed when I took this frame out of the hive.  The rest of the time they were very calm. 

She's got a good laying pattern for a new queen and here's hoping they make us a lot of honey.

Bagels

K2 decided to try making some bagels for the fun of it.

She used this recipe here.  It's a two day process, but really easy - so if you want to try it plan on an overnight proofing.

She used regular yeast since this was the first time, but now that the weather's hot and the natural yeast start is happy, and she knows how the dough is supposed to feel, we thought we'd try a batch with natural yeast next.  I'll keep you posted.

This batch was especially good with cream cheese and my strawberry vanilla jam.   Recipe for the jam coming soon!

Barn

This lovely barrel vault barn is on one of the back roads near Tulip, Indiana.  It's not often that you see one so thin and tall.  I think it's charming.

Valerian

Another K2 closeup of one of my favorite herbs.  Valeriana officinalis is a lovely old world herb. I think it smells good, but others do not like it at all.  It is said that folks used to cut it and put it in guests' rooms.   After a day or two it starts to smell  'off'  thus encouraging the guests to end their visit.

Ducklings

Our Saxony ducklings are big enough to really enjoy the water. There are 9 of them and they don't like to be separated, so K2 commandeered the wheelbarrow for a pool.

Worked like a charm.   The ducklings adore it.  

It only takes a couple of minutes before they are soaking.  You can see the water really moving in this last pic. 

After bath time, they spend a while preening and when they're all dry again, they're soft and fluffy.

Adorable.

Creeping Charlie

Aside from grass, Creeping Charlie is the most common ground cover around here.  It's also called ground ivy and gill-over-the-ground. 

I have had a love/hate relationship with this plant for a long, long time.  It grows everywhere.   Everywhere.  Every.  Where.

A lot of people want to get rid of it and if you're one of them, then check out this page for ideas.

Generally, I hand pull it out of places I really don't want it - like in the veg gardens.  I just let it be everywhere else because here's the thing - it's not fussy. It tolerates drought and wet.   It blooms from April till November. During the winter, it turns bronzy and is really quite attractive. 

In this part of Indiana, where flowers other than iris and daylilies require a lot of soil amendment, mulch and TLC, it's nice to have a filler that works so hard for so little.   When people ask what it is, just refer to it by the Latin name, Glechoma hederacea, ("Isn't that Glechoma gorgeous!  Just look at how it drapes over that little wall and fills in there!")  and they'll think you've put it there on purpose. 

Peonies

Peonies like it here.

A lot.

Almost every old farmstead has some of these blooming near the house or garage, marching along in a neat line.

It's so southern Indiana. I love it. 

Our house came with a regiment of these pink and white ones.   Palest pink on the outside, white fluff in the center...










...and pink markings in the very center.

They smell strongly - a bit like roses and iris.

The Terrace Gardens

Our lower flower gardens, including this terraced garden, love this time of the year and quite honestly, May is when they look their best.   Things get a bit wild and crazy the rest of the year.   We have a lot of iris, with bunches of the wild daisies [leucanthemum] that volunteered and stayed, plus a few poppies.  I like the dark red Beauty of Livermoor poppies the best.  There are peonies to the left of this shot.  

Later in the year, there will be a cloud of nigella and a lot of daylilies with some monarda.  The past few hot dry summers almost wiped out my monardas.  We'll see how they do this year.  In late summer we'll get some blue asters and black eyed susans.   Things change a bit every year. 

Click the pic to blow it up for a better look.