THIS & THAT.
Some random photos from the past week.
Jesse has been finding lots of morels lately! We love mushroom hunting.
A honeybee on an apple tree blossom.
When our milk spoils, we end up baking a lot of corn cakes on the wood stove.
We have been reunited with our chickens - and of course, their delicious eggs!
The black snake that lives in our mulch pile.
Ira and his adopted lambs, Blossom and Bloom.
This little calf is sprouting her horns - and an awesome hairdo along with them.
SHIITAKE LOGGING.
My eyes are almost never bigger than my plate—I may be a skinny dude, but I can eat. However, as a metaphor for farming, sometimes I can indeed bite off more than I can chew. Case and point? Our shiitake logs.Shiitake mushrooms are commonly cultivated on hard woods like White or Red Oak (among others). The idea is you order spawn from a company (like Field & Forest, where we got ours and where they were extremely helpful over the phone), drill a bunch of holes in a bunch of logs you cut at the end of winter, then inoculate them with the spawn. You then wait a few months for the spawn to inhabit the log (6-9), soak them in water and voila!—you have a flush of fresh mushrooms to eat.Reading through the literature I figured I could get about 20 to 30 logs from a 5.5 lbs bag shiitake spawn so, wanting 50 or 60 logs, we ordered 11 lbs. That seemed logical, right? Here is a concise list of everything that went wrong:1) I cut the logs too short.2) I mistook an Ash Tree for a Red Oak (still working on my winter identifications—finding it much harder without leaves as a clue). Not a huge setback, but notable.3) I didn't have the right size drill bit, and immediately regretted not just ordering one from the company when ours moved slow and mockingly into the log with each hole.4) I didn't have the proper drill. We own a cordless power drill which wouldn't last long so we borrowed a neighbors power drill... which didn't last long. Now back to the cordless which, on a good day, can get us three logs before running out of juice.5) I didn't have the time. It's spring. Why I thought we would have time to do 60 shiitake logs during one of the busiest times of the year, while trying to build a cabin? Momentary insanity.The good news is we have over forty (albeit short) logs done, with 15 left to go. The bad news is we have almost an entire bag of spawn left and no idea what to do with it. So, anyone have any clever ideas? Dormant season is over, so we can't really cut more logs. The bag will only be good for 7 months if refrigerated, so probably only a few months with our high-tech cooler and ice jug system, thus not enough time for the next dormant season to come around. I've saved all of the shavings from the holes and have thought about just inoculating those, but would welcome any ideas from experienced shiitake loggers! What does one do with bonus spawn?- Jesse.
THIS & THAT.
Some random photos from the past week.
We get milk from Amish neighbors, and we keep it cold in the creek.
Finding treasures on a walk.
Planting strawberries with the Smiths (and with little monkeys on our backs).
Opal and her dandelion bouquet.
Found along the creek's edge.
We planted our fig trees!
Ira's growing ducklings.
SPRING CLEANING.
And suddenly, it is spring. It came rather explosively and seemingly overnight – one week, snow. The next, dogwood blooms and the bleating of newborn lambs and tick checks and cutting seed potatoes – definitely springtime.I spent Saturday morning bathing in the sun outside, working on cleaning up the old bee hives. The wacky color scheme was out of neccessity – not having enough of any one color to paint the boxes, I found a bag of old film cannisters left over from my art school days, each filled with some color I had mixed long ago and preserved, not wanting it to go to waste. With lots of help from Ira's chickens, I banged off the leftover propolis and wax from the hives and filled the hive body (the bigger, green box) with brand new frames full of fresh beeswax. Jesse had been suspecting a swarm from our one remaining hive, and the plan was to set up the empty hive next to the active one, hoping it would be an appealing home. We really didn’t want to lose a swarm to the woods!
So yesterday morning, we headed up to the cabin. Jesse went to work felling trees and I set up the empty hive in its old spot. Not half an hour later, Jesse and I were standing in front of the hives, talking about swarming and how surely it was too early for the bees to swarm and other such things….when we started to notice the bees becoming louder….and louder….flying in circles and rising higher and higher. The noise was completely unnerving, a sort of swelling, causing us to start backing away from the hive. And then – a literal spilling of bees, pouring out of the front of the hive, joining the heaving mass that filled the sky. It was AMAZING – a swarm! We stood in awe, as the large mass slowly weaved and bobbed in the wind. After a few minutes, there was a calming down, and Jesse was able to spot them a little ways up the path, where they had settled on the branch of a cedar tree, about 20 feet up.Now, I have read many books about bees and about the capturing of swarms. And it seems that every book gives the same anecdote: the bees will swarm, flying a short distance from the hive (as the queen cannot fly for a long distance). They will settle on a nearby, low-lying tree branch. At this point, you can easily cut off the branch and walk it to your bee box, thumping them off and closing the lid. The end. That story is all well and good, but it has been my experience that this never happens, and the bees inevidably fly UP and out of the hive, always out of reach. You end up having to cut off brances that fall heavily to the ground and the bees explode into a bomb of chaos. Nothing quite like the images in the book of a happy man, wearing no protective clothing, calmly carrying a twig-sized branch of smiling bees to his hive.After much deliberation, mosly on my part (remembering Jesse’s reaction to just one sting last time), we decided to go for it. We really didn't want to lose the swarm, and the timing of everything just seemed to fortuitous to pass up. Jesse climbed the cedar and cut the branch holding the mass of bees. It fell only a little ways before resting on lower branches, so Jesse systematically cut off the lower branches, lowering the swarm slowly to the ground. It really couldn’t have worked out better. Once it was on the ground, it was a quick race to carry the branch with the swarm over to the new hive (the one that I had TRULY just set out half an hour before), give the branch a few good thwacks against the top of the hive, and watch the clumps of bees tumble into the hive. At this point, everyone was a tad bit upset, and we backed off and let them settle a bit. We waited and hoped and prayed - that the queen had made it into the box, that the bees would take to their new home, that they wouldn't simply regroup and leave again.
And that is a very long story to say this: Early this morning we stood anxiously in front of the two hives, and finally we saw – bees coming and going from BOTH hives, as casually and naturally as if nothing had ever happened! I am feeling quite blessed, mostly with luck and timing, as we have been hearing that this was a very hard year for Kentucky beekeepers. Although we lost one hive, we realized it in time to harvest some surprise honey. And only a couple weeks later, we were able to replace the lost hive with a new one. A successful capture of a swarm, and a very happy beginning to the spring.- Hannah.