Arrival of the Bees

My husband, Mike, has decided that his role on the farm will be as a beekeeper.  Mom and Dad gave him a beekeeping book for Christmas, to get him motivated, and he ordered up all the necessary equipment and gear to get started with 2 hives in the late Winter.  He picked up the bees locally on Tuesday, the 26th.  It was a week later than planned due to weather issues where the bees came from, somewhere in Louisiana. 

Mike has chosen to keep Minnesota Hygienic bees, which are a type of Italian bee bred to deal with the colony collapse disorder because they keep a very clean hive.  The Italians are also known to be of a gentle nature.  Maybe that's why Mom is such a sweetie.  Joking aside, Mike really wanted to start with bees that were less aggressive, for pretty obvious reasons, and I believe it paid off today, as we moved the bees and their respective queens into the hives today.

I think it went quite well, overall.  Neither of us were stung, and we killed very few bees.  I guess we really won't know much about our success or failure for a coupled of weeks, while we wait for the queen to be release from her cage by the sugar plug being chewed through, and find out if the bees accept their queen, and hope that they don't swarm, and just disappear.  After a couple of weeks, we can check to see if the queen is laying eggs properly, and if she is, we will have our first success.

Mike doesn't feel that it went as well as he'd hoped.  He ended up having a different kind of queen cage than he expected, and that threw him for a loop.  We had to stop mid integration while he ran inside to look up the details about that particular cage.  He was expecting wooden, but ended up with plastic, and wasn't sure how to proceed. 

He had planned to introduce the bees to the hive in two different ways, but ended up using the tap and pour technique for both hives.  I'm sure that's not the professional description, but that's what he did.  He tapped the cage on the ground, to knock the bees loose from their organized wad (another professional beekeeping term, I'm sure), then poured them out of the cages, into the hives.

I was standing quite near, taking pictures, and though they buzzed around me and often landed on my head and face, I was never stung.  Gotta love those Italians. 

After they were all set up, there were still quite a few stranglers that were wadding up in the cages again.  We simply left the open cages next to the hive, and hope for the best.  We could see some bees flitting around quite far from the hives, but hope that they're just scoping the area.  We left them alone for a couple of hours, and then I couldn't help but go out and see what was going on.  Most of them seemed to have moved into the hives, and the hives were buzzing loudly.  Oddly, one hive seemed to be much louder than the other, and it was the one that we populated first.  I'm not sure what that means, but I suppose it could be significant.

Following the excitement of the bees, I made a mad dash to re-pot a bunch of straggly, viney tomato plants.  I was working at the kitchen table, and Rosie suddenly startled me with a loud bark.  I turned and saw a large deer walking right into the pond.  The first was quickly followed by two more, smaller and more fidgety youngsters.  They all waded through the flooded west end of the pond, and came to the side nearest the house to graze.  We keep trying to convince the dogs that deer are okay, as we want to be able to watch them, and we don't really want any close encounters between them.  Sam had something of a standoff with a snorting deer last year, and it made me quite uncomfortable.  So we forced the dogs to sit as quietly as possible, and I was able to snap a few pics. 

Late April

April is so unpredictable.  People went crazy planting their gardens as fast as they could in early and mid April during those lovely, dry, warm spells.  However, it’s been raining pretty much constantly since my last post, 8 days ago, and it is currently only 48 degrees Fahrenheit.  I’m certain there will be lots of potatoes and onions rotted in the ground, and a lot of seeds needing to be replanted.

The jury is still out on the portions of my garden that have already been planted.  The sugar snap peas seem to be doing okay.  They’re up a couple of inches.  The Walla Walla onions are iffy.  They’re in a wetter part of the garden, and had barely gotten past their initial planting shock when the rains hit.  I had also gotten some beet, chard, kale, and spinach seeds in the ground right before the rains hit.  It could be a while before I know if I’ll have to replant them.

In the meantime, the asparagus has really gone bonkers.  Here’s my haul from Sunday, along with the lone morel that I found along the driveway.

I think we’ve averaged about an inch a day for the last 8 days at Peace Acres.  The pond has been up as high as it gets, with water rushing in one end and out the other at about an equal pace.  It only gets higher very briefly if the pace of the rain is really intense for a short period of time.

I took the girls out for a romp in the rain after work on Monday, just for some comic relief.  Though Rosie still hasn’t figure out that she can swim, she LOVES the water. 

I keep thinking that one of these days I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get into the pond and teach Rosie that she can swim if she gets in the deeper water.  I haven’t been in the pond for a very long time.  It has a soft, muddy bottom, and that mud stinks when you stir it up.  YUCK!  But when we were kids we got into the pond quite a bit, especially when we first moved in. 

I believe it was the first summer that we moved here when I nearly drowned in the pond for fear of the mucky bottom, not far from where Rose is in the picture above.  I had been swimming along, sort of treading water so I wouldn’t have to touch the bottom, and I suddenly felt that I was too far from the shore, and was losing my ability to stay afloat.  I started burbling, “Help!  Help!” as loudly as I could, but my voice seemed so small and not able to carry, as I was barely able to keep my mouth above the water.  I was completely panicked.

Then I heard a voice very near me yell, “Stand up!”  I turned around as best I could while drowning, and found my face very near the legs of my brother, Dan, who was STANDING right next to me, looking down at me with equal parts humor and disdain.  The water was only about 2 ½ feet deep. And so I stood.  Touching the muddy bottom was preferable to drowning in 2 ½ feet of water! I hadn’t been aware of how shallow most of the pond was because I had refused to touch bottom except right at the shore.  Dan continued to tease me about that right on into adulthood.

Sometimes, you just have to decide to forget about the muck and have a good time.  At certain times of the year, the pond will grow huge forests of algae, or "moss",  that wind up floating all over the surface of the pond.  We have some excellent pictures of Brenda and her friend Holly Gregory splotched with the slimy “moss” that they had been wading into and slinging at one another.  I wonder if they would dare to do that now.  I wonder if I could even swim in the pond.  I might need to borrow some waders to see if I can teach Rosie to swim without having to touch the muck directly.  Or can I behave like a child again, disregard the muck, and have a good time?   

Revival of the Merry Tiller

I’m just going to come right out and say it.  I’ve already experienced Mom’s mirth, so here goes.  I’m falling for the tiller. I had put Mom’s beloved Merry tiller out to pasture (in the barn), with no plans of ever bringing it back into service, but the quickly passing Spring panicked me.  I knew she'd get a kick out of my bowing to her might Merry tiller.

I know, I just stated in a recent post that I like to garden with a spade, not a tiller, but I was making such slow progress against the grass that had taken root all over the garden. I decided to give the tiller another try, at least for the initial turnover.  I was just going to till my planting rows, but when it turned out to do such a nice job, and I looked back at the weeds between the rows, and I realized that the layout of the rows wasn’t exactly as I would like to keep it….well, I just decided to till the whole garden. 

It’s not that I have anything against a tiller, exactly, as long as it doesn’t get overused, and as long as it will start without spending 30 minutes of repair time on it every time. From what I’ve been learning, you can overwork your soil, breaking natural relationships between fungus and microbe and root, taking a loss on the valuable carbon stores that lie beneath by exposing them, and causing compaction.   Thirty-five years of Mom and Dad tilling this garden, with great growing success, have caused the whole 40 x 60 ft. area to sink several inches below the pasture around it.  And though they have constantly amended it with compost and mulched leaves, the rate of compaction has outpaced the rate of additions. 

I believe in the no-till method, but it requires a great quantity of mulch to cover the whole garden in the off season and between growing rows during the growing season.  I didn’t have the luxury of so much mulch and the ability to spread it last Fall. 

I began having some “feminine” issues in the summer, and wound up having a laparoscopic hysterectomy in mid October, knocking me completely out of the gardening game for 8 weeks.  Great timing, if you think only of the growing season, but what about cleanup and mulching?  I wasn't able to put the garden to bed, as they say.  Thus, the weeds grew unchecked all Autumn, and had an early, healthy start this Spring.  Good riddance to the girly problems, though, as well as the monthly blood-letting!  I got to keep my ovaries, so instead of going completely nuts immediately, I am still perfectly capable of PMS, as my husband is well aware.

Tilling is difficult when you first begin.  It probably shouldn’t be attempted while PMS is in progress. It takes a while to get the hang of how to make the tiller work for you, rather than letting the tiller drag you all over the place, or digging one deep hole after another.  This latest tilling experience was the best I’ve ever had, probably just because it did it for hours on end. 

I did have some very specific learning experiences, such as how tilling over chicken wire that is buried in the weeds can really add to the amount of time you spend with the tiller, patiently cutting the wire out of the tines.  I also learned that tilling next to the hog panels that I use for tomatoes and peas and other vining plants can be dangerous, as the tiller can jump and smash your hand into the fence….over and over again. 

In my case, this smashing of the hand can also take up a lot of time, as every time I would smash my hand, I would swear loudly.  And every time I would swear loudly, my empath of a dog, Sam, would begin her nervous dance outside the fence until I couldn’t stand it any more, and had to stop tilling and go and console her, so she could go back to playing with Rosie or digging up moles, and stop staring at me with a look of desperation.  I think she danced nervously for a full 30 minutes the first time I smashed my hand, and the consolation took a good 10 minutes.  The empathy is sweet at first, but it sure can become annoying, especially if you’re still in a ranting mode. And she can tell, even if you’re not actually saying anything.

So, the garden is tilled, lessons have been learned, and the rain that is falling outside right now is soaking in well.  I hope to both use and stockpile a lot of mulch materials over the growing season and avoid surgery this year, and perhaps I won’t need to till at all next Spring.  I’ll probably get most of my mulch from the Fall and Spring mowing of the leaves into the storage bin of the Easy Vac.  The Easy Vac is likely an implement for another posting, as I have long had a love/hate relationship with the Easy Vac.

Many Joys of Spring

The asparagus is coming on strong now.  The patch that Mom put in 35 years ago petered out about five years ago, but thanks to the birds, the ripple effect is going strong.  I have three spots in the front pasture/garden that are producing enough for Mike and me, but the Mother lode comes from a secret location, also planted by the birds, for which we compete with neighbors…I mean share with neighbors.  The fact of the matter is that I can never seem to get too much asparagus.  Don’t like it?  More for me!  I’ve planted an asparagus Bed at three of the homes that I’ve owned, and have never lived in a given location long enough afterward to enjoy it.  I sure hope someone is enjoying the fruits of my labor.

Asparagus is one of my favorite parts of Spring.  Hand in hand with asparagus come the morel mushrooms, none of which have been found on Peace Acres so far this year.  Oddly enough, when we do find them, they are generally right along the driveway, sometime actually in the gravel at the edges of the driveway.  This time of year it can take me 10 minutes to drive up the driveway after work, as I roll the window down, and creep along with my eyes peeled on the grassy edge, too excited to park the car and walk back down the drive.

It is much, much easier to come across a morel mushroom in Iowa.  In fact, Mom and Dad found a few along the walking path where they, and many others, were walking daily last Spring.  Though Dad isn’t in good enough health at the moment to go on those strolls along the path, I hope Mom will find enough for a pan-full, at least for herself, as she loves them so.  They tend to appear around Mother’s Day in Iowa, so that would be a nice gift from the earth for her.

Asparagus, morels, and Mother's Day take me back to 1996 to the best morel Spring ever for my family.  My brother, Dan, struggling with complications from HIV, had been horribly sick, and was very near death at one point in 1995.  His doctor finally discovered the exact illness that was affecting him.  Histoplasmosis—a common airborne fungus that can be fatal in those with suppressed immune systems if left untreated.  After extensive and horrifying treatments with Amphotericin B, known also as AmphoTERRIBLE B due to its extreme side-effects, followed by treatment with the newly-prescribed protease inhibitors, Dan began to spring back.  Fortunately for him, when he regained his health, there were a few months in 1995 that he could never recall.

In a healthy individual, the CD4 helper white blood cell count is between 500 and 1,500.  In an individual with a compromised immune system, the CD4 cell count can drop very low, leaving the individual's immune system unable to fight infections such as histoplasmosis.  Dan’s count in 1995 was very low…somewhere in the low two digits.  In the Spring of 1996, he and the folks came to Iowa for a visit over Mother’s Day.  Sister Brenda and I were both living in the Iowa City area at that time. 

Two wonderful things happened during that visit.  We found the biggest haul of morels in our family history.  It seemed that we couldn’t miss.  They were everywhere we sought them.  We had such a great time, and took many great pictures.  The second wonderful thing was a phone call from Dan’s doctor, letting him know that his last CD4 count had come in at over 700!  That one probably still stands as Mom’s favorite Mother’s Day.  I never eat a morel, or even fresh asparagus, without being reminded of that blessed Spring and its' many joys.

Brush Hog Love and Healing

My mother thinks it is hilarious that I love the brush hog.  Before I lived here as the primary resident responsible for maintenance of the property, I despised the Kubota that my parents own jointly with my aunt and uncle that live across the street.  It seemed the the thing needed constant attention, and the men of the houses insisted on using it for every little thing that I could have easily done manually or with the lawn tractor, requiring far less input.

I like to garden with a spade, not a tiller, and I like to shovel the drive with a snow shovel, not a blade on the tractor.  Couldn't they just turn the compost with a potato fork rather than the bucket on the tractor?  Couldn't they just dig a few holes with manual post hole diggers rather than using (and breaking) the auger on the tractor?  Then they wouldn't have to sharpen and oil and grease and maintain for hours and hours.

Well!  Things seem a bit different to me now.  I fell in love with the mower attachment last summer, when Mike and I were mowing about 7 acres here at Peace Acres, and another 2 at the home we have for sale north of Springfield.  The trusty Cub Cadet shrank considerably in my mind.  The blade became my beloved after a 10 inch snowfall this winter that would have left my Civic stranded for over a week.

But the brush hog!  That baby goes far beyond those other two implements.  My heart soars as I sit in the seat of the tractor and watch multiflora roses shredded to mulch in a single pass.  The brush hog tears asunder cedars and wild cherries that have sprung up all around the lovely white oaks, hiding their stately trunks and providing shelter for poison ivy against the mere mower.


My goal is not simply to rip apart the less savory plant life and create a more park-like or pastoral setting, though I do like that, but to reveal the wreckage of large branches that lie around each tree, creating an unruly island of plant life that cannot be tended by the implements. Then Mike and I can get in there with the chain saw and clean up the mess, and we will be able to brush hog, mow, or hay quite readily once or twice a year.

The wreckage is the result of the ice storm of January 2007, which my heart and mind equate with the beginning of truly horrific times for my family.  I think that if I can finally clean up the mess on the property that has remained a burden and an eyesore since that storm, perhaps I can feel that at least some of the wreckage within my family and my heart has also been tended to and cleared away.