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I saw this on someone's site, I wonder if it will work for me...

Rain, rain, come this way!

Well, it looks like it will rain in the next 24 hours! The chance is 89% and the most probable rain amount is 0.63". I love accuweather.com! Hope for that rain, we could defiantly use it...

This weekend was a planting bonanza, and with the rain to set everything in we should be golden for first market, if the weather stays at least reasonably warm. The next couple days of coolness are no problem as nothing will have germinated yet, and everything we put in is tolerant to at least to a light frost...

Both hubby and I got sun burnt this weekend, and I got fried!

I think I know when it happened, when I was mowing the lawn... I have to say, if you ever decide to get a farm get a house with a TINY yard, ours is 2 acres and takes a couple hours to mow, it is so frustrating when you know there is "real" stuff to do, but the lawn needs mowed when it looks as scraggly as ours did, and it looks so much better then it did, but I can never help feeling something else needs done more...

But this was a productive weekend, among other tasks we managed the following: disc and till a couple acres, lay over a mile of hills, plant about half a mile of seeds, weed wack all around the electric fence, remove all the kale from the rows, run to TSC to get some chain for the tractor, do Internet research on sunflowers and sweet corn, create a field map, mow the lawn and around the small field, pull a dozen 5 gallon buckets of rocks from the filed, transplant the last 200 tomato plants to bigger cells, and start a few more trays of seeds... Sometimes I wonder how much we would get done if the farm was our only job, but that is not to be for a couple more years, and for now we just need to put our heads down on weekends like this and work!

The Great Kale Massacre of '08...

I had hoped it would stay cool long enough for my kale to stay nice. Alas, it was not to be. So this morning, after planting a little less then 3,000 feet of various items I took our Stihl weed whacker and started on the kale.

It was quite dramatic, the kale shredding and wet drops being flung back on me... And what had started as two nice double planted 100 foot rows of 12" high kale a week ago was reduced to bits of kale leaf and fallen towers. Why towers? Because the kale had started to bolt, thrown up long shafts topped with flower heads, to reproduce in the way all kale wants to, promoted by the unseasonably warm days. Alas, in my garden un-authorized attempts at reproduction are swiftly and firmly dealt with! Hence the need for the great kale massacre of '08...

So there will be no kale for the CSA until fall...

Oh, and wish for rain everyone! If we do not get the 1/2" Accu-Weather is predicting we will have to irrigate tomorrow! IRRIGATE IN APRIL?!?!? Who heard of such a thing?

Me on a tractor!

You may not believe it, but I never ridden a tractor before today! Ours is pretty old and we are babying it until we can afford a nice new automatic one in a year or two. As there are so many things you can break on it through ignorance (which I as a city girl have in droves when it comes to machinery) I have always preformed non-tractor tasks...

Anyway when I got home from work today I noticed hubby was out on the tractor, so I grabbed a bottle of water and went out to let him know I was home... He was rough tilling one of our new for this year fields. He says "You want to finish tilling this when I pick rocks?"

All new fields have tons of rocks, the larger of which can damage the tiller. I looked at him and said "Sure, but you'll have to show me how."

So up I went on the tractor. This peddle's the break, that peddle's the break (why are there 2 breaks?), that one's the clutch, that lever engages the PTO be sure your foot is pressed all the way on the clutch before you press it!, that lever raises and lowers the tiller, that is the gear stick for high, that is the one for low, and that is throttle... UH? OK...

In all honestly all I had to do was drive in a straight line and raise and lower the tiller, turn around at the ends of the rows, and when I was driving a far distance turn off the PTO. I NEVER took it out of first gear which hubby put me in, and I never adusted the throttle, which hubby had adjusted for me, and I only pressed one of the breaks... Still there was a lot to remember and I was almost paniced at the end of the first two rows, because there is a lot to do even at .8 mph!

And I did not break the tractor and hubby said I did an OK job... Obviously I still need lots of practice because he is doing the final tilling right now himself... So we will get 7 or 8 more hills done tonight, these each 300 feet long.... And those planted will make it the most ahead April we have ever had!

New Bees...

Did I ever tell you I am allergic to bees? Well I am. I was not when we first started keeping bees four years ago, but 18 months or so ago I was out looking at the bees, one stung me and I ended up in the ER with a pretty severe allergic reaction... So no more bee keeping for me (although I did start shots, I had to stop and will not be able to restart them for a couple more years.) So hubby is the beekeeper in the family now, and I get to watch from the safety of the truck, so you will pardon the photos, as I took them through a window...

I thought I would go through the process of putting bees in the hive, step by step... As I do, assure yourself it is as terrifying as it sounds the first time you do it, but by the time you've done it a couple times, it is easy, and you are no longer so scared, and you being calmer actually reduces your chances of being stung! Bees like calm, slow, steady movements.

The first thing you do each year (other then assembling your hives, which we buy pre-made,) is to make sugar water. New bees will have only the little honey you give them, and so will need a lot to eat which amounts to gallons of sugar water. One part water to 2 parts sugar and bring to a boil. So far this year we have made 150 pounds of sugar into sugar water! We will use a similar amount in the fall... We make so much we use a turkey fryer burner so it boils faster (I use the same thing when I can!)

The next thing you do is wait for the phone call to come and pick up your bees! Bees come in two or three pound boxes and in many different types, Italians, Russians, Carolions, New Worlds, Minnesota Hygienic, ect and each has different characteristics. This year we wanted to order two 3 pound boxes of Minnesota Hygienics, but there was a problem with our order, so we ended up with two 2 pound boxes of what we think are Itialians... In any case when that call comes the clock is ticking and you should go get your bees that day!

The bees were shipped from California in the boxes and given a can of sugar water to sustain them through the journey, once that can is gone your bees can start to die! But here is a note to consider, if you are allergic, you should NOT go to bee pickup even if you are going to "wait in the truck" because they have just gotten a semi-truck full of boxes of bees and they will be buzzing every where! I almost had a panic attack sitting there, but no bees got in the truck, so that was good...

Once you get the bees you can spray them with sugar water and they can eat that, that will help sustain them until you can put them in their hives the next evening. When we opened the boxes one of the cans was totally out of sugar water and one only had a little left, this is why feeding is so important. You hive in the evening so they go into the box and learn where their home and don't fly off to a different hive during the day...

So now you have your bees, it's time to go set up your hives, which is a simple matter.

Now comes the fun part! First put your jacket on!

(You can see I was safely inside the truck with my EpiPen!)

Then carry your bees to the hives...

Then you have to try to pry the can out of the top of the box...

Remember this is a box full of bees!

The next step is the most fun to tell people about! You rap the box firmly on the ground a couple times! The goal is to knock all the bees to the bottom. You do this so you can get the queen cage out, she is hanging next to the can of food... Notice in the next photo hubby has removed a glove. It is delicate work to remove the cork from the end of the queen's cage and replace it with a mini-marshmellow. The bees will eat through this and by the time they do they will have accepted the new queen, if you throw her right in without this step the bees will kill her...

Then you carefully hang her into the hive. Notice he has removed some frames to make way for the next step...

Which is to pour the bees into the hive. This involves shaking and tapping and wiggling a box of bees! Many of them will fall to the bottom of the hive, but quite a few end up in the air! (That's why I was in the truck!)

But first the box gets hit against the ground again so any bees who have started to climb fall to the bottom of the box... (Notice you have to hold the can over the hole as you do this...

Then you shake...

Notice the blurs in the photo? Those are the bees... You shake for a while... When you are done you replace the frames, being careful not to crush the bees who are piled on the bottom of the hive.

Then you put all the pieces together, the little box over the main hive is the feeder, which we poured a couple gallons of sugar water into.

You leave the box near the hive entrance, because there are always stragglers who are still in the box and will find their way to the hive...

All done, two hives set up. As we lost one colony over the winter this will bring us to four, but one is really strong and we are going to split it into two which should give us 5 or 6 by the end of the summer (although we will not pull honey from the hives we split this year.)

I hope people enjoyed this, as it took a long time to post! Now you know what it takes to start a hive, not that hard, so if you've ever thought of being a bee keeper you should do it!

Happy Earthday!

On this 38th anniversary of the first Earth Day take a little time to enjoy the wonderful region we live in. The weather is near perfect so why not go for a walk in the Metro-Parks or in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park?


If you do keep your eyes out for all the birds and your ears open, it is amazing! When I was a kid there were next to no hawks around, and many other birds were harder to see.



In the past week I have noticed 4 very cool birds!

• I was driving in the valley and saw a crane gliding gently down, at first I did not know what it was, then I saw the long neck and he flew a bit closer to me and it was clear, and he was so elegant!


• This Saturday we were out in the field and saw two Killdeers in one of our fields, walking around in circles. I know what they were doing! Looking for a place for their nest. We will be tilling that area soon, and that should diswaid them from nesting in our field. We have previously had them lay their eggs right in the middle of a field, so we spent a couple months not touching the area close to the nest, but it is so funny if you get close when they have chicks, because they will flop around on the ground and look hurt. The first time I saw them do that I told hubby (then boyfriend) "Come quick, this bird is hurt, lets try to get it!" He laughed at me for being such a city girl! They like nesting in the fields because the color of the ground helps camouflage them, but I don't think that would be a good place for a nest because of my third bird...
  
  
• There is a large hawk of some kind hanging around. We have seen him a few times, but never close enough to see what he is, except for VERY BIG! Yesterday I heard the chickens squawk and as I turned my head they were all running into the coop... I saw this guy flying away! Thankfully our chickens are to big for a hawk to get, but the new chicks will need a cover when they first go out (note to self!) The chickens kept squawking for a long time, enough that I went inside to make sure no one was hurt, no one was, but they were annoyed that they had to be inside... (It is funny they run inside whenever they see a shadow pass over, like a low flying plane or the Goodyear blimp...)
  
• My final bird story in the past week, not as pleasant, but pretty cool, I saw a group of maybe 10 vultures together on the ground... I did not see (nor did I want to) what they were doing, but I was pretty close, and it was amazing how large they were!

I guess my point is that we have made some progress since the first Earth day. The birds are back, we no longer have silent springs, our water is cleaner (at least the Cuyahoga), and organic farmers are no longer fringy weirdo's but something more respectable (I hope!)

There is so far still to go, but we are making progress, step by step and day by day!

More leeks and the first hotdogs...

All I can say is WOW, are there a lot of leeks in a case! A case is 32 bunches, and a bunch is supposed to have 60 leeks, however, many have many more, even after I thinned out all the really thin ones!

Last night hubby repaired my car (my oil sender went bad - whatever that is!) and I was late getting home. So it was about 6:30 before we were ready to go to the field.

It looked like the sky would open up at any moment and it was occasionally spitting as hubby laid under my car in the driveway. (Hoophouse pieces are taking up our garage!)
The sky was so dark and the wind was picking up.

But as we went into the field it cleared and we got 8 more bunches of leeks in (which were not all our leeks, but all those that had been thinned.) So I sat down by the field and started thinning more leek bunches when hubby went up to the house to get some water and something for us to eat.

I got 4 more bunches done before he got back, bearing hot dogs... I wanted to laugh, hot dogs seem to be our standard "can't stop now!" and "gotta get more done" meal for dinner time in the field. For lunch it is fruit and a wrap with hummus and lettuce... But this was the first time last year for hot dogs in the field, but defiantly not the last!

He said it was after 8, we marveled at the beautiful evening, ate our dinner and then put in the 4 bunches I'd sorted... We were inside by 8:40 or so...

And we are not done with our leeks yet! we still have 6 more bunches if you can believe it!

Let me say that it does make it seem like a pretty long day when you work 9.5 hours and then come home and don't stop until almost bedtime, but it is so worth it and honestly, does not feel like "work." If you did not love farming and enjoy being outside there is no way you could do it!

(This photo is not ours, I just wanted to show everyone what a leek start looks like! Thinning them before not only gets rid of the small ones, but lets you pull the roots apart and separate the plants when you are not bent over in the field!)