Family History Friday #5 on Saturday night.

   Its been a very busy week, I taught bee classes two nights, went to a Hawaiian dinner concert on Tuesday night, Mutual on Wednesday night, had other church obligations Sunday night, and stayed up late Thursday night as I picked up Linda from the airport.  What I'm getting to is that I haven't had much time to work on genealogy this past week, much less prepare a blog post.  The main thing I've done in the past week is try to organize information I've found recently.

     As I recently resumed work on my family history, I started by reviewing my previous efforts.  I had my genealogy records divided up into a number of three ring binders, each one designated for a few generations of a particular line.  I like the way it breaks things up into manageable pieces so I don't get overwhelmed by the size of the whole thing. It also makes it more portable. When I want to go down to the Family History Center to work on a particular line, most of what I will need is in just one or two binders.  When that portion of the family outgrows its binder, I simply divide it into two binders.

   I suppose I could have stayed home today and worked on my genealogy, but instead I spent the day hanging out with my brother and sister fruit geeks. I attended the winter field day at the WSU Research Station at Mt Vernon,  It was a good opportunity to buy some root stocks and scion wood so I can graft a few new fruit trees.  Not that I have many places to put new trees, but it is kind of a ritual of spring for me. Besides, I had volunteered the use of my extra cash register for the fruit foundation's scion wood sales.  Its amazing how many bee store friends attended this event. I talked to at least five or six beekeepers during the day. I was also able to pick up a few things I needed from the Raintree Nursery table.

Myco packs,  Doc Farwell's Heal and Seal, grafting rubbers, Felco pruners, and a Lingonberry Rake

This is a very useful device for picking small fruits such as huckleberries, blueberries, etc.

    I attended one lecture about organic management of small fruits (blueberries, raspberries, currants, etc.)  The presenter was one of the WSU scientists that work at the research station.  She was very knowledgeable and had a lot more useful information than she could give us in the hour allotted to her. I did learn a few things that I considered to be very important.  First of all,  I learned that organic pest management often includes substances that are very poisonous to bees. They just happen to be naturally derived plant extracts as opposed to something cooked up by Dupont.  They present the same danger to the bees as regular chemical pesticides. I also saw the normal spray schedule for conventionally raised commercial blueberries.  They are sprayed weekly with some sort of insecticide, up to within three days of being picked. Yum yum! I'm glad we get lots of home grown poison free blueberries. After her lecture I asked a few questions about what sort of bug is troubling my currants.  She was nice enough to copy off three or four relevant extension bulletins for me.

   Next week I'll try to come up with a more substantial family history post. This will have to do for this week, For now, I'm just glad that I'm doing it again.