Planting the Garden

    I've had a tough time getting the garden planted this spring, due in large part to a busy spring at the Beez Neez.  I'm feeling like I've caught up, but a few things were planted a bit later than I would have liked. The peas in particular could have been planted in February, but were planted in late April. As a consequence, my peas are not as far along as I would like.

     The portion of the garden on the north side of the duck pen is done.  I'm calling it my "Irish Stew Garden" as I have planted potatoes, peas, carrots, and cabbage there. I planted three varieties of potatoes this year that I purchased from the Snohomish Co-op. I planted Yukon Gold, Red Lasoda, and a white variety whose name escapes me.  I'm trying something different this year with the potatoes.  I heavily mulched the potatoes in wheat straw with the intention that I will be harvesting clean potatoes from the straw. I forget where I read about this, but it seemed like a great idea.  I planted a rainbow blend package of carrots, purchased from Ed Hume Seeds. It included red, yellow, orange, white, and purple varieties of carrots. I also planted Marner Cabbage, and Super Sugar Snap Peas. After planting my main potato crop I received a gift of Banana Fingerling potatoes from my daughter, Rachel. I planted those as well, but in a different part of the garden.

Rhubarb Patch

My Irish Stew Garden

    In addition to stew ingredients, the portion of the garden near the duck pen also includes my rhubarb patch. I've added four new rhubarb plants this spring in an effort to grow redder rhubarb for pies. I have three Victoria Rhubarb plants from last year. I purchased Cherry Red Rhubarb from a local nursery and I purchased Canada Red Rhubarb from McDaniels, our local hardware store. Then a good bee store friend renewed her rhubarb patch and asked me to help her find homes for all of the surplus crowns she dug up.  I think there were about twenty.  I added two of them to my rhubarb patch. She couldn't recall the exact name of her rhubarb, but knew it included the word "Crimson" so that is what I will call it for now.

    The main garden area is in the front yard, our sunniest location.  I've planted two varieties of pole beans.  Fortex, a green pole bean, is supposed to be absolutely stringless. It was strongly endorsed by two serious gardening friends as a significant improvement over Blue Lake or Kentucky Wonder.  I also planted a yellow Romano type of pole bean called Marvel of Venice.  It was probably a little early to plant pole beans, but we are having a warmer year than normal. They came up well although I had to replant a little of it due to slug damage. I reduced the number of bean seeds I'm planting for each pole with the idea that it will end up looking less like a jungle. I also planted more Marner Cabbage and Bull's Blood Beets near the pole beans.

    At this time of year I lose the use of the ducks to keep the slug population in check. If I let them continue to do their slug patrols they trample all of the emerging seedlings.  Thus I am left with either using Deadline or doing some nighttime and early morning slug patrols of my own. Deadline isn't bad as far as garden poisons go.  The active ingredient is metaldehyde and supposedly doesn't leave noxious residues in the soil. I bought some Deadline for Linda to use on her Hostas and flowers, but I've stuck with physically removing slugs from the garden and dumping them into the duck pen. Watching the ducks make short work of the slugs isn't a sight for the squeamish.  While looking for slugs early in the morning I found that I still have some allies in my pest control efforts. I found this little salamander out looking for his breakfast in my vegetable garden.

I'm assuming this salamander is looking for protein and not vegetables

    I planted a lot of onion starts in our front garden. Either McDaniels or the Snohomish Co-op had a package deal of three different kinds of onion starts. The bundle consisted of 1/3 Walla Walla Sweet Onions, 1/3 yellow onions, and 1/3 red onions. Linda loves the red onions so I'm hoping that will keep her well supplied.  I planted the onion starts in late January so at least that part of the garden wasn't planted late. The onions are all doing very well except for a little slug predation. This year I will make a point of removing the seed heads when they start to form.  Next to the onions I also have a small patch of garlic I planted last fall.

Newly emerged Mandan Red Clay Indian Corn

    I planted my indian corn on May 12.  That also was a little early, but I covered the indian corn with  clear plastic for the first week it was planted to insure the soil was warm enough. The soil temperature is supposed to be 65 degrees to plant corn. My garden soil was at 62 degrees before I added the plastic cover. It turned out okay as most of the corn is already up.  The variety I planted this year is Mandan Red Clay Parching Corn. It is actually lavender colored rather than red and all of the kernels on the ears are just the one color. It is a flour corn variety which can be used for both parching and cornbread.

   Parching consists of heating in a skillet without oil. After a few minutes the corn pops, but it doesn't expand as much as popcorn. It merely triples in size.  You end up with a fully cooked corn kernel which has a nice crunchy texture. I've read that any flour corn can be parched if dried properly, but a few of the colors don't taste very good.  Supposedly, the red kernels have the best flavor and the blue and black kernels the worst.  I experimented with some of the Painted Mountain Flour Corn I grew last year.  It parched very easily in the microwave and I found it to be pretty tasty. Parched corn was used by a number of indian tribes as travel food because it was both lightweight and compact.

   I have four hills of winter squash planted on the east side of my indian corn. That will allow the squash to expand through the corn patch. I've also planted a few plants each of zucchini, yellow crookneck, and a yellow pattypan squash called Scallopini, all near the pole beans. The winter squash is called Potimarron and looks like a French version of Red Kuri. I had intended to plant Red Kuri as I had such great luck with it last year.  Territorial Seeds carries it, but I never found it on their seed rack in the Snohomish Co-op. I purchased the winter squash seeds from Uprising Seeds in Bellingham, along with the indian corn and a number of other seeds.  They are my current favorite seed company. They specialize in locally adapted varieties, something I would like to encourage. Everything I have ever purchased through them has done very well.

     Another good bee store friend gave me eight tomato plants last week.  He is a serious tomato expert and gave me eight different varieties that he really likes.  The tomato plants are from his green house.  I've used a homemade hoop house for the tomatoes to keep them warmer and drier.  I reduced the size of the tomato hoop house by a third this year and hope I have a more manageable tomato surplus this summer. I also still need to plant cucumbers, but it is still a bit early for both cucumbers and tomatoes. I starting the cucumber seeds indoors a week ago and they are already up. I won't plant them outside until the weather is more consistently warm.

May the Fourth Be with You

    Our Grandchildren find this pun to be particularly funny, much like Pi Day (March 14).  This is actually going to be another one of those, "A Day in the Life" posts.  Yesterday, May 4th, was a nominal day off. I ended up having to do some bee store work in the early morning, in the middle of the day, and again in the late evening. Linda complained a little about this. I told her that complaining about the bee store is a bit like a farmer's wife complaining about the farm.

   The main occasion for my Monday bee store work was preparation for a mini package bee day later this week.  I am purchasing some Carniolan packages this year from a couple of local Russian beekeepers, Nikolai and Dimitri.  Months ago, they had offered to make up packages from their Carniolan bees. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Now it just extends the busy package bee season by another week when I am a bit tired of doing this much work. The advantages are it gives me the opportunity to sell Carniolan packages, a different variety of honeybee from the Italian packages I offer in our main package bee sales. Also the packages are produced somewhat locally. Their bees are currently doing a pollination job on blueberries in Lynden, Washington, near the Canadian border.  Thus there is no grueling drive to California so I don't have to worry about transportation costs. This allows me to sell a smaller number of packages and still have it be a profitable activity.

    The main down side is yet another week of package bees. I'm a little tired of being so busy and longing to spend more time on my vegetable garden and preparations for cousin camp.  I didn't have to drive to California, but I did have to gather the cages and make up enough sugar syrup to fill 88 quart sized cans.  I was very grateful that my daughter Sarah and grand daughters Hannah and Autumn pitched in and helped me prepare the sugar syrup over the weekend. Nikolai and Dimitri came by at 8:00 am to pick up the shipping cages and the recently refilled syrup cans. Twelve hours later, I received a phone call from Nikolai informing me that they were en route with the packages and expected to arrive at the Beez Neez at about 9:15 pm.  I met them at the store. They unloaded their trailer while I vacuumed off the hitchhikers.  I finished up the job at about 11:00 pm so it really wasn't painful.

    I was very impressed with how healthy the packages looked, not having made a twelve hour trip from California. Now all that remains is for me to put the queens into the packages.  The queens were shipped this morning from Koehnan's, a queen producer in California.  UPS will probably deliver them to me at about 10:00am tomorrow. Then I will have to pull out each of the syrup cans, install the queens, and then replace the cans, without releasing any more bees than necessary. I will probably end up with more loose bees than I would like, but that's why I have a bee vacuum.

    Nikolai was very happy to make up these packages for me.  It isn't just about additional revenue, as it solves a significant hive management problem for him.  When he puts his beehives in a blueberry field there is a considerable amount of drifting from one hive to another as the bees get oriented to their new location.  The drifting bees tend to collect in the hives towards the ends of the rows, causing those hives to have a lot more bees than they should. These overpopulated colonies would quickly start preparing to swarm if the situation was not corrected.  Nikolai simply collected the excess bees from these overpopulated colonies and put them into the packages.  Simple in theory, but a lot of work in practice.   Their work day started at about 7:00 am and ended at about 11:30 pm.

    Sandwiched in between this package bee activity, I was able to make some significant progress on our vegetable garden and thew task of reclaiming our poor neglected orchard.  I planted Potimarron winter squash and Super Sugar Snap peas. I made a trip to the bee store and did the bank deposits. I bought goat, duck, and chicken feed, along with six bales of wheat straw, at the Snohomish co-op.  The main issue with the orchard is that I had an apple tree go over this past winter because I unwisely thought it no longer needed to be staked. The heeled over apple tree made it almost impossible to mow the orchard and the orchard is too large for me to want to do the job with a weed wacker.  I should have fixed the tree right after it happened. The tree has lost some roots in the straightening process and may not survive. On the other hand, I do have replacement apple trees waiting in the wings and this particular tree has scab issues. After making the tree vertical again, I used the weed wacker to bring the grass down to a level the mower could handle.  I wasn't able to finish the job as the battery on the weed wacker gave out on me. I've included a photo of my "wheat crop". I noticed that heads are forming on the wheat that grew up from my straw mulch. My friend Quentin gave me a sythe for my birthday a few years back.  It looks like I'll finally get to use it.

   I also hived a swarm around 2:00 pm.  My modified Warre hive sent a small swarm into the adjacent cherry tree. It was pretty easy squeezy to collect the swarm.  I moved the orchard ladder into position, clipped off the small branch with my hand pruners, carried it over to a waiting nuc box. There are a lot more bees in the box than it appears as I had removed the middle frames before I shook the bees of the branch into the box.  It took me longer to get Linda to come out side and take a picture than it took to hive the swarm.

About a three pound swarm

The swarm's new home

   As I was working outside, I found an interesting artifact one of our grandchildren had left on the teeter-totter.  My daughter Sarah and son James had visited us over the weekend. We had a total of eight grandchildren visiting so I don't know which one deserves the credit for this piece of random cuteness. Note the map is labeled "Grama's Hows" rather than "Grampa's Hows". Linda is a rock star grandma so I don't really mind that she always gets top billing. The map is also a bit dyslexic regarding the relative location of their favorite places at Grama's Hows.

Map of Grama's Hows - author unknown

Family History Friday #14 - Old John Maytham Had a Farm

    In working on the Maytham family I stumbled into something fun the other day. I found John Maytham, my third great grandfather, on the agricultural schedule of the 1850 census.  This is a wonderful feature of the 1850, 1860, and 1870 federal censuses which provides a window into the daily life of our ancestors assuming one is lucky enough to have some farmers on their family tree.  The agricultural schedule not only lists the size and value of the farm, but goes into considerable detail as to the number of various farm animals, the value of their farm implements and machinery, and how much of various commodities was produced on the farm.  I find it fascinating to not just know they were a farmer, but to know exactly what kind of a farmer.

    John Maytham's farm consisted of 90 acres, 60 of which were improved and 30 unimproved.  I'm pretty sure improved means house, barn, orchard, and fenced fields and pastures.  The unimproved acreage was possibly woods, or it may have been land too hilly, too rocky, etc to farm. In that part of Ohio I think it is most likely that the unimproved land was woods.  The estimated cash value of the farm was $1,000 while the value of his farm implements and machinery was $53. Implements would be items like a plow or a wagon.  Most of the farms on John Maytham's page of the agricultural schedule  consisted of 80 acres or less of "improved land".

   John Maytham's live stock consisted of 4 horses, 5 "milch" cows, 2 working oxen, 5 "other" cattle, 100 sheep, and 15 swine, for a total of 131 animals.  The oxen were likely used for plowing and heavy draft work.  The horses were probably more used for transportation, like riding or pulling a wagon. It looks like the sheep were their primary livestock as 100 is a sizeable flock of sheep for a small farm.  That is a lot more sheep than any one family could eat.  The annual production of wool from that flock was 300 pounds, a lot more than would be needed for the personal use of the family.  I wonder if they sold it as raw wool or washed and carded some of the wool for a "value added" product.  It is very likely that the daughters were taught to clean, card, and spin wool. The smaller number of swine were probably raised mainly to feed the family as opposed to a revenue source.  The livestock was valued at a total of $363. That averages out to less than $3 per animal.

   The schedule also provided information about the farm's yearly production of certain crops and commodities. John Maytham primary crop was "Indian Corn" of which he grew 350 bushels.  That is a whole lot of corn shucking and shelling.  I'm guessing his numerous children were very active participants in harvesting the corn. I wonder how old a child had to be to get to drive the wagon. John Maytham may have had a hand crank corn sheller similar to mine.  With that volume of corn, I suspect that his children might have been less enthused about cranking the corn sheller than my grandchildren have been. He also grew 100 bushels of wheat, 50 bushels of oats, and 30 bushels of buckwheat.  I'm not sure how the grain crops were harvested and threshed.  Lesser commodities included 10 tons of hay,  5 bushels of "Irish" potatoes, 500 pounds of butter, orchard products valued at $20, and 60 pounds of maple sugar.  The value of animals slaughtered was $65. That may seem paltry by today's standards, but remember that John Maytham's 131 head of livestock were collectively valued at $363.  The animals slaughtered for food or sale would have a lesser value than his horses, milk cows, and oxen. That $65 could easily represent 50 slaughter lambs, 10 hogs, and a few steers.  I'm sure a great deal of serious labor was involved in harvesting the grain crops and the ten tons of hay.

    The primary orchard product in those days was probably apple cider.  Initially I thought that seemed like a very small orchard, but this was back when a sheep could be purchased for a dollar. I suspect that the orchard would have consisted of at least a dozen apple trees.  The value of homemade manufactures was  $6.  I'm curious what that category might have included. Possibilities I've considered are homespun woolen yarn or carpentry products.  For all I know, they may even have had a bee hive or two.

The Gift of Mushrooms

   Ian. a good bee store friend, has been volunteering at the store one day a week.  He has helped me maintain my sanity by filling in on days when I have insufficient hired help. I have not felt as overwhelmed at work as I had expected, thanks to Ian and good hired help. This past week Ian brought me a wonderful little gift, an oyster mushroom starter kit in a gallon plastic bag. Ian is fairly obsessed with mushrooms and has been culturing several different varieties. According to Ian, the Oyster mushrooms (of the pleurotus genus) are among the easiest to culture because they can outcompete other fungi that may be contaminating the growing medium.  They are supposed  to have wonderful health benefits such as lowering blood cholesterol levels when eaten regularly.  Pleurotus mushrooms are saprophytic, meaning they live on decomposing materials, usually dying or dead hardwood trees. I was amazed to read on wikipedia that pleurotus mushrooms also eat nematodes, immobilizing their prey by emitting a toxin that paralyzes the nematode.  Pleurotus mushrooms have also been used to clean up oil spills. A very versatile fungus.

Oyster mushroom spawn in a bag

   Ian starts his oyster mushroom cultures by pasteurizing straw, then inoculating it with the oyster mushroom mycelium.  He told me that the oyster mushrooms are so vigorous that they can easily take over compost piles.  I found that to be a very intriguing idea. I always accumulate spare pallets at work.  I also have lots of soiled straw bedding from the ducks, chickens and goats. I decided to wire together some wooden pallets, fill the enclosure with spoiled straw, then add Ian's oyster mushroom kit as a starter.  His only warning regarding my plan was that it was very important to keep the pile well watered.  It just so happens that my new mushroom compost pile is located in between the poultry pens and the goat pen.  It's just a new place to dump dirty goat, chicken, and duck water.

Mushrooms are already starting to emerge on Sunday

Two days later on Tuesday morning

    I've already assembled the new compost pile and have started filling it with spoiled straw.  The only problem so far is some free range chickens who likes to scratch in the straw. I spent some time on Monday capturing the free rangers and putting a net cover over the chicken pen in preparation for  my mushroom compost pile scheme. In the mean time I will let the oyster mushrooms grow on the kitchen counter. It already has started to bear fruit. The white stuff growing in the straw is the actual mushroom mycelium or the equivalent of the plant itself. What is growing out the hole in the bag are the fruiting bodies or what we call the mushrooms. The mushroom in this case is analogous to the apple while all of the white mycelium is analogous to the apple tree.

   

   

Quality Time with Grand Children and the Demise of Black Jack

   I had a very enjoyable weekend which involved a lot of quality time with three of my wonderful grand children, Britton, Lucy, and John Tunnell.  I had to travel to Ellensburg on Saturday (March 28) to attend a meeting of the WASBA Master Beekeeper Committee.  After the meeting, I stopped by the Tunnells and brought James' and Beth's three oldest children home with me.  We had a fun ride home which included over an hour of silly songs.  Judging from requests for repeats their current favorites seem to be "The Big Black Hat" and "The Ladies of the Harem of the Court of King Caractacus". I looked up the name to make sure I was spelling it correctly. It appears that King Caractacus fought against the Roman invasion of Britain for about ten years before he was finally defeated and taken to Rome as a captive.  

    I had a nice Sunday with the older three bedlamites. I made biscuits for Sunday breakfast. Since I am no longer serving in the Bishopric I got to sit with my grandchildren for the first hour of church. I enjoyed listening to  Britton and Lucy sing the hymns as they are both enthusiastic singers and can read very well.  The girls were very reverent during church. John was considerably less so.  He may not have been very reverent but at least he wasn't noisily irreverent.  I was a little concerned when I had to leave them for a bit while the ward choir performed "I  Know the My Redeemer Lives".  Happily, John was still there when I returned to my seat in the congregation.  After church we prepared "Stone Soup" for supper, Britton's suggestion.  Everyone got to chose two of the ingredients (besides the stones).  It actually turned out pretty well and I was pleasantly surprised at some of the vegetables they chose.

    We were also treated to a visit from my sister Mendy and her daughter, Melissa. They arrived shortly after we got home from church. In honor of my sister's visit I baked sour dough bread on Sunday evening. She had expressed an interest and I wanted to show her how easy it was using my new cookbook, "The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day."  I tried something new and used a covered baking dish Linda had brought home from France some years back.  We baked two loaves for a comparison.  It seemed that the better loaf was the one baked in the covered dish. It seemed to rise better, owing to the steam trapped by the cover.  I removed the cover for the last ten minutes of baking so the crust could brown appropriately.  She took one of the loaves along with some of my sour dough starter when she left to go home on Tuesday morning.

Britton, Lucy, and John help dig Black Jack's grave

    The only fly in the ointment for a wonderful Sabbath day was the discovery of a dead goat when I had fed the animals earlier in the day.  I broke the news to the kids a little carefully since I wasn't sure how well they would handle it. I needn't have worried. Their main reaction was one of relief that it wasn't Buster (the nice goat).  Black Jack was a bit pushy and intimidating to the kids so they were less sorrowful at his passing.

Britton and John shovel dirt back into the grave

Lucy helps fill in the grave

   Since the goat was already dead, it didn't seem like much of an ox in the mire.  I decided to defer Black Jack's burial to Monday morning.  The kids were very enthusiastic about helping me dig his grave. I expected the level of enthusiasm to diminish as the work of digging commenced, but the kids hung in there.  We got down to a depth of about a foot and a half deep when I had to ask them to take a break so I could finish the deeper portion of the hole.  Britton helped me drag  Black Jack from the goat pen to the grave and all of the kids helped me cover him up.  We sang "Bill Grogan's Goat" as a memorial; a very appropriate choice for a goat as mischievous as Black Jack.

   A good portion of Monday was spent working on a patio for our picnic table. The Bedlamites accompanied me to Home Depot to buy the pavers.  They didn't help much with the actual construction, as the individual pavers were a bit heavy for little hands.  They did provide a lot of encouragement and positive feed back.  We ended the day with a hot dog roast in the back yard and family history stories around the camp fire.  I put the kids to bed and then drove down to SeaTac to pick up Linda, who was due to arrive at about 9:30 pm from Maryland.  As it turned out, she arrived a little early, but her luggage did not. As much as the Romeros were sad to have her leave, it was very nice to have her home again.



 

Fixing the Water Heater and Planting Potatoes

     This is a very busy time of year for me thanks to our ownership of a beekeeping supply store, an extremely seasonal business. One consequence of that is the fact that I drafted several blog posts,  intending to to finish them a day or so later.  I just noticed that my drafts are now several weeks old. In spite of the fact that they now seem a bit stale, I decided I should go ahead and post them.

     On Monday (now two weeks ago) I spent a good portion of my day off messing with our water heater.  It left us in the lurch Saturday evening, leaving us with no hot water for baths or showers on Sunday morning.  The urgency of the problem was heightened by the arrival of my son, daughter-in-law and four little grandchildren on Friday evening.  I invested in a multimeter and was prepared to replace one of the heating elements.  As it turned out, the problem was simply an internal breaker.  The water heater just needed someone to push the red reset button. I could have done that in fifteen minutes on Sunday morning if I had realized the problem was that simple.

     Sadly, I wasn't wise enough to just do that simple task and call it good. I felt obligated to try to flush the water tank and check the elements.  If I had stuck with my usual aversion to preventive maintenance it would have been a fifteen minute job.  Every time I involve myself with anything vaguely related to plumbing it seems to turn into a serious can of worms. Four hours later and after a significant amount of water on the floor, the gift of hot water was returned to us. The upper heating element looked just fine in case anyone is interested and there is now a little less calcium deposited in the bottom of the water tank.

    I had originally intended to use my day off to spend some time with my grandkids and make some progress on my vegetable garden.  I had to settle for a partial on both counts.  I did get to hang out some with grandkids. Little Nora still likes me in spite of the fact that I failed to replenish the bin of ear corn for the corn sheller.  It was one of the first things she went to when they got here and insisted on feeding the corn cobs back through the sheller again and again.  When she tired of that she played in the bin of shelled corn as if it were a sandbox. My son James helped me with the water tank and a few other chores.  I did manage to get my potatoes planted.  I hope to get my peas planted in the next few days and start a few things indoors.

    On another happy note I finished my last beekeeping class tonight. I don't have another bee class scheduled until November.  While I enjoy teaching the classes, I am really ready for a break by the time the last class is done.

Pie Day

    Last Saturday, 3/14/15, was officially Pi Day (in addition to the last day of National Chocolate Chip Cookie Week). We didn't start celebrating Pi Day until fairly recently. I don't know how I ever missed this wonderful opportunity to celebrate something by baking pies.  Some of our wonderfully nerdy grandchildren have help convert us to the joy of Pi Day.  This year the prize for most enthusiastic celebration of Pi Day in our family goes to my grand daughter, Luna Arnett, who memorized Pi to sixty digits.  I consider that a celebration of epic proportions that will be legendary in the Tunnell family history.  My personal celebration consisted of baking two pies; one blackcap raspberry and the other pumpkin-coconut.

BlackCap Raspberry Pi Pie