Planing Cedar Boards

   For the past eight months I've had a big stack of rough cut cedar boards,stacked and stickered,  drying in our garage.  After the last few weeks of hot weather they were starting to look fairly dry.  I decided it was time to pull some boards off the pile and try planning them. The correct thing to do would have been to break down and buy a moisture meter to insure the boards were sufficiently dry.  Being a little cheap and impatient I opted for the easier way of just running a few boards through the planner.  They actually seemed to turn out pretty well.  The next steps will be to joint the sides, then round the edges on the router table. Then I'll cut out a notch on opposite sides so I can use them as ceiling boards in the toy room. That seemed more simple to do than tongue and groove.

Cedar board coming out of the planer

Cedar board feeding into the planer

       I only ran twelve boards through the planer, but I generated multiple wheelbarrow loads of shavings for the duck pen.  Between a bountiful supply of cedar shavings and the big load of sand delivered by the Everett Water people, I think I am in pretty good shape for keeping the duck pen sanitary.  The duck pen is as clean as it has ever been. I also generated a little harassment from Linda who thought I should have been working on something else.
  

Camping with Family

  I just got back yesterday evening from a camping trip with the Kangs, Arnetts, and Veatches.  We stayed at the Gales Creek Campground in the Tillamook National Forest. The kids spent a lot of time playing in the creek and had a great time together. It was fun just watching the grandkids enjoy each other's company.  Unfortunately Gales Creek is seriously lacking in agates and other interesting rocks. Therefore the kids spent a lot of time building dams and moving the rocks around.

This little rock dam is about three inches higher than it was when we arrived.

Luna was able to find a cool heart shaped rock

Autumn, Anthony, and Oreo enjoy time at the creek

   We took a nice day hike on Tuesday morning.  The smaller children hiked about 4 miles on Gales Creek Trail while Aunt Rachel led the older children on a longer 6 mile hike. They were pretty good little hikers for the most part. There were a relatively small number of "Can we go back now?" comments which surprisingly did not come from the smallest children.

Natalie, Rachel, and Sarah on Gales Creek Trail. 

   We enjoyed lots of quality time around the campfire, sang songs, and ate well.  We listened to Sofie play her fiddle, Uncle Mike on his penny whistle, and lots of picking away on Grandma Linda's new Ukelele. It was fun when I was hiking on Tuesday morning to hear little Lilly singing a song she had learned at the Monday evening camp fire. The older children prepared some lovely blueberry dutch oven desserts each evening.  Aunt Rachel got fancy for breakfast one morning and poached some eggs in a half bell pepper. Note in the photo below that it is rosemary on the poached egg and not the usual "scout pepper" sort of debris that often ends up seasoning food when camping with children. Uncle Mike gave rides on a little trailer contraption he had made to pull behind his mountain bike.  He got a serious workout by the time all of the younger kids had been given multiple rides around the campground.

Natalie is obviously enjoying the ride. 

Luna with a big helping of Dutch Oven Blueberry Delight

Poached Egg  ala Rachel.

    We finished off our outing with a trip to Tillamook on Wednesday. We had a great time on the tour of the cheese factory, bought some cheese, ate some wonderful ice cream, and then headed for the beach at Oceanside. Among other wonders, the beach had what Gales Creek lacked, namely lots of agates. The beach also had some nasty little transparent arthropods that Sofie aptly dubbed "annoying little bitey things". I'm curious as to what they are as I'd not noticed them before. In spite of the little biters a great time was had by all.

From left to right, Lilly the Cow, Madelynn, Chloe, Anthony the Farmer, Elise, and Hannah

Cooling Off at the Pilchuck River

     Saturday was blistering hot by Western Washington standards. We broke into the 90s.  I know that will not get us any sympathy from most people throughout the nation who have had to deal with a brutally hot summer and drought. However, residents of the Puget Sound region are not used to anything resembling normal summer temperatures.  It doesn't take much summer heat for us to be suffering.  A good solution to summer heat in the little town of Snohomish is to head for Pilchuck Park and cool off in the river.

Anthony and Sofia Romero enjoying the river

Linda enjoying quality time with her Kindle

    Linda took our visiting grandkids down to the Pilchuck River. After I had cleared a few things off my to do list I was able to join them for a bit.  I spent some time wading in the river looking for agates. Just wading in the cold water was sufficient to cool me off.  I guess the mere proximity to cold water was good enough for Linda.

Honeybee gathering nectar from Japanese Knotweed

     While wading in the river I couldn't help but notice that the Japanese Knotweed was breaking into bloom.  That is about two weeks earlier than normal. The knotweed blooms were attracting attention from a lot of honeybees, unfortunately, none of them mine.  My bees don't gather much knotweed honey because we live a good mile from the river and more than three miles from Pilchuck Park.  My friend Quentin's hives gather a lot of knotweed honey as their property backs up to the Pilchuck.  Japanese Knotweed is an ornamental that escaped to the wild and is now quite a nuisance.  Like a number of invasive species it happens to be a pretty good honey plant.  Knotweed honey is quite dark and strongly flavored, but lacks the nasty aftertastes of many dark honeys.  It actually tastes very close to sorghum molasses.

The "Joy" of Cat Ownership

    When I got up this morning I was first greeted by a pile of cat throw up on the carpet.  After I cleaned that mess up I let Mr. Buttercup outside and failed to close the door.  A short time later he brought a live bird into the house.  I'm not sure what kind of bird it was. It looked like a young bird that wasn't yet able to fly, but it was pretty good sized. Possibly it was a young robin.  The cats were taking turns playing with it as it fluttered all through the hallway and living room. I finally managed to get the bird away from the cats and back outside.  I wasn't optimistic that it would survive. I just didn't want any more feathers strewn all over the house than we already had.

Mr. Buttercup's handiwork

    Later in the morning as I was preparing a garden bed, the cats were both trying to use the freshly raked soil as a litter box.   As I fed and watered the young ducks and chicken Mr. Buttercup was stalking them.  Obviously, he hadn't reached his full quota of small helpless creatures killed.

Tired cats relax after a hard day's mischief

     I pulled up the last of my onions yesterday.  It looked like they had transplanted well when I had initially moved them. Now it is obvious that it was too late. Very few of them made a useable sized bulb.  I weeded out the beds and replanted them with this morning with beets. I'm trying an open pollinated heirloom variety called "Bull's Blood".  We'll see how it turns out. I'd like to grow enough beets to do pickled beets and a few batches of borscht.

   Linda left this morning to drive to the Tri-Cities in order to attend the 50th wedding anniversary celebration of her aunt Ann and uncle Dave. That means I have no adult supervision over the weekend.  

     

Picking Raspberries with the Bedlamites

    I went this morning with Beth and the little Bedlamites to pick raspberries at the Raising Cain upick raspberry farm.  It was a fun time and we left with four half flats or about 18 pounds of raspberries. The raspberries were huge and very tasty. At first the kids did most of their picking out of either Beth's or my box. I made several attempt to encourage them to pick their own berries. John acted very offended and flat told me no.  I later told Lucy to not be a lazy slug and pick her own berries. She then started to cry and told her mom "Grandpa called me a lazy slug!" It wasn't exactly my best moment as a grandpa. The kids mostly played between the rows, but at some point Lucy and Britton seemed to catch on and were actually adding berries to my flat. I think we can count ourselves lucky that they didn't weigh each of the kids before and after berry picking. I probably would have been on the hook for a few more pounds of raspberries.

Britton picking raspberries while John and Lucy play on the grass

    Beth would be my favorite daughter-in-law even if she wasn't my only daughter-in-law. I don't say that just because she likes to can, although that does score points with me. She even offered to make all of the raspberry jam.  The main thing I admire in her is how very patient and kind she is with her children.  The little Bedlamites certainly do their best to test her patience. That is probably one of my few regrets from the time when our own children were small. I wish I had been more patient and kindly. I feel that I owe a lot to Linda's influence and example in helping me to learn patience and to become a better father. I can only imagine how messed up my kids would have been without Linda's influence in my life.

Beautiful large raspberries

    They had some baby ducks in a pen and some loose ducks wandering around at the farm.  In a separate pen they had some chickens and a turkey.  John was really interested in the turkey until it bit him on the finger. I imagine that a little kid's finger looks way too much like the kind of little wiggly edibles that a free range turkey might find in the grass. Assuming turkeys are sentient beings (a big stretch of the imagination in my opinion) possibly the turkey thought as follows: "It moves and it will fit in my mouth, ergo it must be turkey food."

Double Yolker and Plum Wonderful

Normal egg on the left, double yolked egg on the right

   Britton's pet chicken Rose gave us a double yolked egg this morning. Rose is a Rhode Island Red and thus lays light brown eggs.  The other hen who is currently laying is a Dominique and lays dark brown eggs with little speckles. When our Ameracauna hens start to lay we will get green or blue eggs from them. Its kind of fun to know which eggs come from which chickens.

Shiro Plums almost ripe

Santa Rosa plum still hard and green

Obilnaya plums starting to change color

    Our raspberries are peaking and the plums are starting to ripen. The Shiro plums are just starting to turn yellow and the Obilnaya plums will be ripe soon after the Shiro plums.  The Santa Rosa plums will be several weeks behind the others. I love eating plums fresh but I don't much care for them canned. I'm thinking we will be making plum jam when we get more than we can eat fresh.

    I spent Monday morning weeding our blueberries and getting them back into good shape. After my sweet family had worked so hard earlier in the year to weed them out I couldn't stand to have them looking seedy again. It had rained during the night and most of the day was overcast.  The moist ground made the weeding easier and besides, the lawns didn't dry out enough for me to start mowing until mid afternoon.  I went over and visited the Tunnells in Monroe in the evening. The original purpose of my visit was to retrieve my orchard ladder.  I ended up staying for family home evening. It brought back memories of Linda and I struggling with family night when we had small children. Britton, Lucy, and John were all quite wiggly.  Beth gave a nice lesson on the importance of the Temple, we played a rousing game of "Duck Duck Goose", and had banana boats for treats. A good time was had by all.  It makes me happy to see my children being diligent in teaching their children the gospel. John is still my good buddy. He sat on my lap for a bit and had me read him one of his favorite books.

    On Tuesday morning I'm going with Beth and the little Bedlamites to pick raspberries at a friend's upick farm. Yet another wonderful bee store contact. I'd like to get enough raspberries to do at least a couple batches of jam.  Raspberry is my favorite jam and we are currently out. I've frozen some raspberries from our little patch but I haven't accumulated near enough to make as much raspberry jam as I would like to have.

Cabbage White Butterflies

    I have often been heard to make disparaging comments about the cute little Cabbage White butterflies(Pieris rapae). The reason I dislike them so is for the damage they do to vegetables in the cabbage family.  I was out looking at my broccoli the other day and noticed these holes in the leaves.  As I looked closer I noticed all of the little green caterpillars that were the causing the damage. This is the dark side of the pretty white butterflies.  As adults they simply look pretty as they go about sowing seeds of destruction, laying their eggs on my cabbages and broccoli.

    I looked them up in my copy of "Garden Insects of North America" and found a two page entry with lots of color photographs.  I learned that they are also known as the Imported Cabbageworm or the Cabbage Butterfly and that they are common throughout North America.  Under the category of Life History and Habits I found the following:

    "In the northern U.S. and Canada they spend the winter as a pupa among plant debris in the vicinity of previously infested plants. The adult butterflies become active in mid-spring, and the females lay yellow, bullet-shaped eggs on leaves. (The appearance of this insect in spring, coincident with when the cows would again begin to produce milk, is the source of the English term "butterfly.")"

Little green caterpillars  leaving big holes in the broccoli leaves

Notice how the caterpillar in the center of the photo is well camouflaged

    My organic solution to the problem of cabbage whites is to hand pick the caterpillars from the plants. Yes this is somewhat of a tedious chore, but I'd rather not poison the broccoli and risk poisoning my honeybees in order to get rid of the caterpillars.  Its not as difficult to pick the caterpillars off the broccoli, but it can be a serious chore with cabbage.  There are just a lot more crevices where the caterpillars can hide on the cabbages. I think an easier solution would be to issue butterfly nets to the grandkids and then put a bounty on little white butterflies.

Tasty treats for the chickens

   As noted in my previous post on chicken and dumplings, I don't like to waste meat, including insect protein.  Like any good recycler I took these caterpillars to a place where they could be recycled into something useful, namely chicken eggs.  I do the same thing with drone larvae from my bee hives. I sometimes do drone trapping as a way to monitor the level of varroa infestation in my beehives. This requires the removing capped drone brood to determine if there are a lot of varroa mites on the pupating drones.  After I'm done with this process, I simply throw the drone brood into the chicken pen. As a general rule, the hens seem to catch on a little quicker to the fact that I may be bringing a treat when I toss stuff into their pen.

Rose the chicken enthusiastically gobbles up the caterpillars