Re-cap fall and winter 2015

Well, obviously, I have been so enthralled with the ease of posting on Instagram that I've ignored my good ol' blog. So, for those of you who don't follow me on Instagram, here's a recap of the last months of 2015.

My time was taken up by continuing the development of the native and edible plant gardens through the rest of the summer. (I enjoyed the "fruits" of my labor A LOT)

Our raspberry hedge was a big producer and picking was enjoyed by all of us.

Aronia berry scones. The Aronia (chokeberry) bushes were also producing in their first year and are super-easy to grow.
We were happy to discover that, when cooked, they taste just like blueberries.

I also expanded the chicken coop to aid in amiable chicken relationships through the winter. Our two roosters and 12 hens seem to be making it work in their new space. But Donny, our head rooster, developed a very protective attitude while we were away on our late summer trip to Italy (yes, it was a blast!).

Construction of the coop addition required a rooster barricade!

Brent devised a portable solar charging station that houses the inverter, charge controller and battery. We are still working on right-sizing our systems. But it will certainly be handy for keeping water thawed in the winter and running the small pumps for the cisterns in the summer.

Portable solar battery charging system. Notice the expanded coop in the background.

The biggest accomplishment: The Greenhouse! It's done :-)

Figuring out the windows/framing walls

Brent on the roof matching up the peaks/creating flashing

All closed up!

Of course, there was a TON more to it than these pictures show. Brent worked every spare minute and even took time off of his full-time day job to make sure the space was done before the cold set in. And I couldn't be more pleased to have this invaluable part of our farm infrastructure functioning. It's been an awesome place to work.

My own big accomplishment last fall was the establishment of the first of our vegetable plots. It's a small space, as market gardens go, but I didn't want to bite off too much more than I could handle for our first year.

Two feet deep mulch to start our no-till garden system. My hands are still recovering from all the raking!

I also readied a space using the same deep mulch system for the 20'X40' high tunnel that we will erect prior to fall 2016.

There's so much more that's happened. Hopefully, this little recap gives you a taste of where we ended the season last year.

Next up, the beginnings of our first season farming!

Bees, bees, bees…and asparagus

A close-up of the bees in their "package"

Well, I'm a beekeeper now. The bees finally arrived on Saturday after a freezing Friday night. The post office called me at 6:18 a.m. and I showed up to get them at 7:15. I had no idea what to expect - except what I had seen on the numerous videos I had watched to learn what the heck I was supposed to do to get them into the hives.

I had taken the day off on Friday because the USPS tracking said my 4 packages (2 for each hive) were expected to arrive that day. So I spent the day making sugar syrups for the new bees to live on until the flowers start blooming. Then I "prepped" the hives by putting beeswax on the top bars and set them up on their benches in the apiary. The post office called Friday at around 3:45 to say they wouldn't be coming until Saturday. And I was a little relieved.

They arrived early in the morning and it was still cold. So I waited until 4:00 p.m. to install them (because the videos said they would be ready to settle down in the late afternoon). But, having watched them for a few days now, I think I should have waited until even later - or installed them in the morning when it was cold.

I didn't do a very good job getting the first batch of bees into their hive. But it helped me learn a lot that was helpful for the second batch. For instance, that can of food, it's hard to get out. You should do that first - to both boxes.

Getting the food can out of the box was incredibly hard.

After the can finally came out, I pulled out the queen cage and saw that she was alive. Her little cage has 2 corks - one in each end. After removing one of those, I placed her cage into the hive. Then it was time to dump in the bees. First, I hit the box on the ground to make bees fall onto the floor of the package. Next, I began shaking them out of the opening, pouring them over the queen cage. And I repeated that a couple of times.

Dumping the bees into their home - and banging the sides to get them to fall.

At that point bees are starting to come out of the box and fly around. It was hard to be focused with all that buzzing. But it seemed like I was about done and I replaced the bars in the top box and started to put the sugar syrup feeder on top. Then I turned and noticed the second box. Darn. So I kinda botched the first install. With all those bees flying out of the hive now, I had to try to get that stubborn can out of the second box. Needless to say, a lot of the first group had to find their own way back into the hive because I didn't get things closed up quickly - at all.

Like I said, I learned a lot. The second hive got a lot more bees into it and I was a lot less nervous. But I did get one bee sting when I installed that second hive. And I learned that with a lot of disoriented bees around, it's smart to stay on your feet. I got stung on my knee when I knelt down and crushed one of the little ladies accidentally.

It's been 3 days now. And, upon checking this evening, it looks like all the bees that were hanging onto the outside of the hive have found their way in. And bees are busily coming and going at the hive entrance - like they work there or something :-)

Whew! that was a big job. My next task is to retrieve that queen cage - maybe on Thursday or Friday.

Asparagus in their cinderblock raised beds.

Meanwhile, Brent spent the day building some super-cool raised beds for the asparagus crowns I bought a couple of weeks ago. He also made 2 trips back to Shawnee to pick up the pulverized topsoil that fills the beds - and shoveled it into the beds. It's really no wonder we are sore and achy on Monday.

The asparagus beds span the entire south side of the house. We planted 50 crowns in over 50 feet of raised beds. It will take a year, but we should have plenty. And the fronds from the spears we don't harvest will make a pretty screen for the ground level windows.

It's all slowly (and sometimes suddenly) coming together…

…and we have BEES!

The definition of friendship

I think I've figured it out. A friend is someone who will spend two afternoons (basically, his whole weekend) in the hot sun pulling weeds with you in your garden and...  make you think he's enjoyed himself.

Here is the vegetable garden after we finished work on Sunday. So it really didn't take two more weeks of frustration to get my grabgrass-overrun vegetable garden back into some semblance of neatness at all. It just took one very nice friend with time to share with me. 

The weather even liked me last weekend. It rained a bunch on Friday night, so the soil was soft but not soaked. Ah, to pull a weed and get the roots, too, on the first try - that makes me happy.

I think pulling weeds is very, very good for me (and friends are even better). 

Growing veggies - still learning

Here's a view of my vegetable garden. I know, it's pretty well covered with crabgrass. But there are some vegetables in there. The beds on the far side of this photo actually produced lettuce and already have bell and hot peppers and tomatoes. As you can see the lettuce has gone to seed. The zucchini and yellow squash in the nearest bed are pretty slow to produce, I think. I'm not sure why. There are a few zucchini already, but no squash at all.

Here is a little bit of a bright spot - collard greens. They are a favorite of mine. These are a little bug-eaten, but still a beautiful and tasty plant. This is growing in the same bed as the lettuce.

This is a view of my tomato plants. They seem to be doing pretty well. They aren't overly productive, but we've already had to give away lots of cherry tomatoes and a couple of slicing tomatoes.

This has to be my favorite plant in the vegetable garden. It's horseradish. I think it's really lovely. I noticed it last year. Then this spring it produced tall stems with many small white flowers that were very, very fragrant. You can see the dead, dried flower stems here among the large shiny basal leaves. I think I'm going to use this plant near the foundation of my house in place of hosta. It is growing here in the shade of an oak tree, so I think it will tolerate a partial sun/shade location.

Next year, I won't have a water garden to build and a muddy front yard to cover with a prairie/meadow garden. I'll just have maintenance there. So maybe my big project will be raised beds for the vegetable garden. Or maybe it will be a grabgrass-free vegetable garden with lots of nice fluffy amended soil :-)

The beginning for the vegetable garden

My previous experience with vegetable gardens has been more fun than productive. Over the years I've incorporated vegetables into my landscape in any space that looked likely to grow them, never knowing anything about what I was doing other then the information that came with the plant. My son, now 13, planted a garden with me in our first home when he was nearly 2 years old. We had a great time growing mint because it smelled good, butternut squash, and tomatoes. The mint spread everywhere. The tomatoes were unremarkable. In fact, I don't remember even one of them. But the squash was a huge success. It was so easy to grow and fun to watch. On top of all that the squash was delicious!

I've tried out a lot of different things just for fun and to find out whether they were easy or tasted good. If they grew, great! If they didn't, that was okay too. If they were pretty, I remembered to try that one again.

Here at my new house I have a real garden space, totally unlike the terraced small spaces I've carved out of my past yards. I haven't measured, but this space seems huge and it has a gentle slope. Neighbors have told me that Bob and Judy, the previous owners, had a great vegetable garden that was very productive while they were both in good health. When I moved in it was just a flat mowed space. It hadn't been planted or tilled in years. Here's a photo from last fall. You can just make out the somewhat square flat space.

Just before our last snowfall I rented a tiller and began thinking about how to make the space into a vegetable garden I can use. I decided to leave a grass path approximately 4 feet wide down the middle with narrow tilled garden plots on either side. Each of the narrow plots is separated by a 1 foot wide path that will be mulched for walking. My intention when I tilled was to roughly turn under the grass before things began growing in earnest, giving the weather some time to work moisture and nutrients into the tilled spaces. Here's how it looked after I tilled.

The day after I did my work we got over 8 inches of snow which was perfect for my plan. The snow melted away in about 3 days, slowly watering in the rough soil. There's a lot to do before I can plant anything and that's a good thing. As I mentioned, I'm not used to so much space. So I'll be working with my step-dad to figure out what to plant. Of course, I will have to plant butternut squash and also the other successes I've encountered over the years like Swiss chard and collard greens, tomatoes, green beans, and peppers. There is also a trellis on the west side of the garden made of two halves of an iron wagon wheel that I think will be perfect for berries. I've already planted two blueberry bushes I brought from my old house. They are just north and west of the trellis. My raspberry canes were too large to move, but I will certainly plant more. Some of my most relaxing times last summer were evenings after work spent picking berries with Skylr and often one of his friends. I loved the quiet time exploring the canes to find the ripest, sweetest ones.

I'm excited to get started breaking up the soil and working in some compost. Since this space is about 3 times as much space as I'm used to, I'll give myself a couple of weekends to ready the space for plants and seeds. I think I have that much time before we are frost-free here.

Maybe I can get my not-so-little-anymore son to help. It'll be a lot different than having a two-year-old help. He's bigger than me now. As much as he complains about being asked to help (he's a teenager, of course he complains), there's no mistaking the pride he takes in letting friends and relatives know what he's done and showing off the "fruits" of his labors. And I think he likes the time with me at least as much as I like the time with him. The truth is there's nothing I'm more thankful for these days than time like that. :-)

Happy Easter!