Category Archives: Homestead

Bees and beekeeping, Food, Gardening, Homestead, Life in general

Catching up

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So I let the daily blogging thing go by the wayside. Winters – or, more accurately, waiting for spring to really get rolling – are a bit boring on the ranch. I probably should have been painting more, or working more on the neverending to-do list, but the fatigue factor really got to me. Now that I’m on some supplements to get my B levels back up, I feel a whole lot better, and more like my old self. Still not taking iron supps, though, and I’m definitely not eating any liver, so that’s still a work in progress.

But progress there is: all of the first round of flats, except two, have been transplanted: tomatoes and peppers, mostly. The other two flats have onions (plus one  lonely little datil pepper that isn’t going to make it, like the other dozen that never bothered to germinate) and herbs (plus artichokes to replace the ones zapped by the severe freeze we had). I’ve also sown shelling peas, snap (green) beans, peanuts, three kinds of cucumbers, okra, carrots, spinach, and sweet potatoes, along with various herbs and flowers for the bees. Out back in the chicken yard, where we had composted some things over the past year and where the chickens had scratched around, I put in lima beans (ugh), sunflowers, and corn. Yes, corn. It is my personal windmill here on the ranch, and I have another variety I’d like to put in somewhere, too.

Yesterday we got over an inch and a half of rain, as measured by our very own weather station. Before the rains started, I had transplanted out a flat, and gave it up when the big thunder started rolling across the sky. It was only around 10 AM that it started storming, but it lasted almost all day. Much needed rain, although we’re still very short of normal.

Today, more sweet potatoes put in, the other flats put out, as much newspaper and hay put down as my back could stand, and two more flats started and put under the lights in the barn: paisano tomatoes for sauce, sweet basil, purple basil, and two types of tobacco for mom. Got another canvas started, added to one of the earlier ones that is now dry, dealt with an asshole who thinks we should have known to remove his account when he never bothered to let us know, bitching about the invoice the system generated – hey, my superpower of ESP still has not kicked in from the radiation, and no others have appeared either. That’s a bummer.

Several trees my mom swore were dead were just a little dead, and are now upgraded to alive, leafing and budding out. The peas, cukes, and okra have all started to poke their heads up. The snap beans are probably a week or so away from beginning to flower. We’ve had asparagus spears popping up for the past couple of weeks. It’s time to start prepping the spots the beehives will be in: two in the rear, one up front.

Tonight: seafood feast by request, as my sister is visiting from Illinois. Another attempt to view Jupiter and its moons before it slips away beyond our viewing period as the days get longer. Starting another canvas while the others dry a bit. Starting the reworking of our tutorials for our users, since our control panel has changed since the first round. Doing end of quarter stuff for the business. Relaxing. Maybe.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Homestead

RIP Henrietta

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Once upon a time we had three chicks that grew into happy, fat chickens. One flew the coop, never to be seen again. One was killed by an unknown four-legged assailant. The last one, Henrietta, chattered and ran around the yard, living her carefree life, happy enough to peck and scratch and eat treats we brought out for her. Over the past few days, we noticed a change in her: she wasn’t running for treats, and mostly she was sitting under the palmettos or under the rack in the coop, not wandering the yard. Yesterday, she was panting and not moving much at all. Mom and I were out looking at the girls (since we added more chickens to keep her company the past two years) and a storm blew up. I gathered her up from under the palmettos since she wasn’t moving to get out of the storm and took her into the coop, then out of there to the back porch into a box lined with a towel. We knew she was on the way out, so we made her comfortable and kept an eye on her. Last night, she finally stopped breathing and this morning I buried her out on the edge of the property where I’ve buried two other chickens.

So long, Henrietta. You were definitely the favored one amongst the girls.

Food, Gardening, Homestead

A good tired

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Lately I’ve been feeling pretty tired, all the time. With some B12 supplementing and some working outside in the sun once more, I’m now feeling a lot more like myself. Today I replaced three (of four) boards on various frames that needed to be repaired, fertilized some frames and worked that in to prep them for planting, replaced all my watering timers as the current set froze over the winter and then cracked (didn’t toss them, though – they still work, they just leak like hell which will be fine in areas like the orchard), planted the first round of sweet potatoes, reran some irrigation lines, and cooked some steaks, sauteed squash, and baked some potatoes for our dinner. I even managed to get some steak down, a major accomplishment.

Oh, and I got the first sunburn of the season. Luckily with my heritage, by tomorrow it will be faded and I’ll be back to getting my farmer’s tan on.

Tomorrow: beginning the tomato transplants, as they’re ready to come out of the flats, sunflower sowing, thinning some onion and leeks that were started in the front garden late last year for replanting to give them all some more room, and washing/sanitizing wine bottles and the fill bucket so I can bottle the rissling for storage, then beginning the honey weizen. Always something to be done at the ranch.

Gardening, Homestead

What is this – Saturn?

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I don’t think this wind speed is quite accurate here.

Jax wind speed Mar 10 2012

Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty windy outside. It just isn’t that windy – yours truly would have been blown three states away, were it. Instead I dug out eleven holes, backfilled them a bit with topsoil and cow poop hauled by wheelbarrow, put in two raspberries and nine blackberries, topped them off, ran irrigation to them, and watered them in for half an hour. I also filled four bins with mulch for my sister, who is redoing her firepit area at her new place. For the first real day back at working ranch stuff, not bad, although my back started seizing up at the end and the random throws I was making for the puppy, whose orange ball is his number one prized possession was giving me some fairly savage stabbing pains down my side. But: stuff got done. That’s what matters, in the end. With any luck, my back will loosen up just a bit and I’ll be able to get back outside to do something else as we make steps to ready for spring. One thing at a time.

Bees and beekeeping, Homestead

Lining up the help

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Since I’m partially incapacitated, thanks to whatever the hell I did to my back, I had to turn on the bat signal to get some labor for the ranch. My sister is coming over Friday to haul dirt around to the places I need it to fill in the frames I reconfigured so I can then curse my way through getting the driplines rerun for watering. My brother is coming up for the weekend, so he gets the job of reworking the stone ring around the pine tree in the driveway, which then will need to be filled with soil, which then will need to be seeded with some drought-tolerant flowers.

Speaking of flowers, I’ve decided we’ll have two hives out in the orchard, and one up at the front of the property where we have more fruit trees and of course the front garden. I’m hoping for some good pollination on both gardens, but really need to get out and put down flower seed in various places so it will be up and going by the time the bees arrive in mid-May.

Speaking of bees, I read a lot of news about bees, and there are always a couple of stories (at least) per week about a city/township working up ordinances about keeping bees. What’s amusing – and sad – about this from time to time are the people opposed to any beekeeping in their neighborhoods, citing the possibility of someone who is allergic to bees getting stung. It really makes me wonder just how much these people have thought things through (answer: not much). Hived bees are concerned about gathering what they need to live and protecting their hive. As long as you’re not pounding on the hive with a hammer, they’re very unlikely to do anything to you, preferring to be industrious and go about their business, which does not involve us all that much. I know this probably deals a blow to the human ego, but it’s quite true. Second, how exactly would you know you were stung by a bee from a particular hive and not a feral bee who may be protecting a home you’ve just stumbled into? Time after time in these articles, the point is made that in places where beekeeping is not expressly forbidden (and thus people are already doing it) there are really no complaints related to the safety of having the bees. Complaints raised by jackhole neighbors, however, who simply latch on to this as something to complain about, are a different story, and one article had an officer say the complaint they received was a “neighbor issue” not a “bee issue”.

Fortunately for us, these issues won’t be issues here. There are ordinances in place here, and based on those, we could theoretically have a ton of hives on the property. We also are unlikely to have any “neighbor issues” since the hives will be well away from the property lines, the neighbors to our immediate east are never home, and the rednecks have already been told we’re getting them – and of course, there are those sections of 6′ fence now between us and them, with more to come.

Can’t wait. Can’t wait. We’ll be filming the hiving of the bees when they get here, of course, if I can convince someone to put on a bee suit and do it.

Bees and beekeeping, Gardening, Homestead

It was a dark and stormy night

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And a grey, chilly, rainy day. A break in our streak of springlike weather around here, but this too shall pass. In a few days we’ll have 80 degree temps with showers here and there – perfect time to go start seeding the areas I’ve set aside as forage areas for the bees. By the time they arrive and are ready to get to work, those areas should be in full bloom. I also need to continue my quest to get all the frames ready to go, so we (I) can start planting in a couple of weeks. I may need some farm labor help for that, since my back is still(!) twinging me. Guess it really was pretty bad, whatever I did, although all I was doing at the time was shoveling, something I’ve done a ton of around here. Funny the way things work.

Gardening, Homestead

More enforced idleness

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This weekend’s plan: nothing out in the garden that involves lifting, pulling, or otherwise working the muscles in my back. That essentially means wandering around making mental notes of all the things that still need to be done and what will be going where. And lots and lots of work on the “real” business.

The flats are going strong, except one group of tomatoes that look a little scraggly. I’m not sure if they’re just ugly duckling tomatoes or if there’s something wrong with them, but either way it won’t be a big deal: there are others to replace them.

Now if my back would just finish doing whatever it needs to do for me to get going on the todo list, which grows by the day…

Homestead

Houston, we have fencing

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OK, we’re not in Houston, and it isn’t the full 400′ of fencing along the common boundary between our property and redneck neighbor’s, but the fence is up in the two most vital areas right now: at the far southern back end of the property where he removed his fence, and a section nearer to the cultivated area where his kids and our other neighbor’s kids have tromped down the wire fencing. We’ll work on clearing out the remaining 200′ between the two sections, which includes taking down a massive pine tree that looks to be about 75′ tall (hello, tree service!), as we go along so we can get the guys back and have them construct the remainder of the fence. I walked around quite a bit through the wild part of the property – where most of the fence was being built – with my nephew and did a lot of squatting to talk to him and point things out in the process, and this has turned into a huge mistake on my part: my back is seizing up in an even more painful way than it did the first morning after the original strain, and it’s making for a very uncomfortable evening here, even sitting in my recliner. But, dinner is good – almond crusted, lightly fried chicken tenders, and loaded potato au gratin. Plus a pain pill and a muscle relaxer to try to help my back, neither of which seems to be doing any good but which will hopefully kick in at some point for a little relief.

Gardening, Homestead

Clearance

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Me and my strained back stayed inside, and my brother and his son cut down the couple remaining trees along what will be the new fenceline with redneck neighbor, and removed the posts that remained from the section of fence he had taken down. We’re ready for the fence guys to come and start walling off redneck neighbor’s crap-filled property.

Hopefully my back will get over itself, get back in order, and let me go back to doing what I need to get done as the season is creeping up on us.

 

Homestead

Only you

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can prevent forest fires. Out here, that means keeping track of your kids and not letting them play with lighters and matches in the forest that backs up to all the properties on the south side here, especially during a period of very cool weather and no rain for over a month. A couple of kids – one of whom belongs to redneck neighbor, it seems – did not learn this lesson and yesterday we had a rather large firefighting group out beyond the south fenceline two neighbors down, putting down a fire started by a couple of kids. They pumped from our immediate neighbor’s pond to put out the grass on his side of the fence that had started burning. Fortunately, the are was not densely wooded, and they were able to get in there and take care of it. Also fortunately, the wind had died down from the previous day, as otherwise it could have been a true disaster. As it stands, no one was injured and no buildings or outbuildings were damaged. A lucky day.