Tag Archives: bee keeping

March Journals

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Linsey-Woolsey Winter, Dogwood Winter, Redbud Winter or Blackberry Winter: All of these are names for spring cold snaps based on what might be in bloom when the weather turns cold. The first is an exception, the old fashioned name for long-johns. I imagine so called because you had to pull them out of the chest and put them back on when the weather turned cold in spring. Cold snaps are on the mind with the current extended spell entering another week. Not unexpected at this time of year but they leave one yearning for warmer days.

Last year at this time the spring honey flow was in high gear, so high that we had our first swarm on March 27th. So this weekend Cindy repaired and replaced foundations in the hive frames. Late yesterday I got into our four hives and added new supers and frames. Even with the current cold snap the bees were active. The plums and peaches are in bloom, as are the forsythia, spirea, flowering quince, maples and a host of other ornamentals. All of which makes me nervous with one eye on the skies and the other in my journal.

This weekend in 2011 I was putting down a favored sow, Snowflake, on a warm spring day after a failed farrowing that left her unable to stand and suffering. Late March 2010 Cindy and I were building a farrowing hut in a high wind so cold that it brought alternating waves of sleet, snow and cold rain slashing across us as we raced to complete the structure before a sow farrowed.

Looking back through the journals covering thirteen years of this one weekend and I am reminded of Mark Twain. As he said in the preface to one of his novels, “there is a 100% chance of weather in this book”. But sometimes instead of weather I find a bit of snobbery has crept in to those pages. Back around 2006 this entry on the last weekend in March on a BBQ dinner we hosted regarding the now ex-husband of a friend. “….he is such a dreadful bore that he is best tolerated in a larger crowd”. Well at least the weather must have been pleasant.

But hovering over all of these late March entries is the year 2007. April 8th we had a severe cold snap with a low of 19 degrees; so cold that the hardwoods did not leaf out again until late May.  It was a stunning loss of greenery in one night. Our woods had leafed out with that bright green of spring color and the next week they were the brown of early winter.

The nurseries and garden centers loved that year. Everyone lulled into plantings based on an early warm spring had to rush out and replenish all that had been lost. Almost 100% of the Tennessee apple crop was lost. Many orchards had to buy apples from Washington state to meet contracts with area grocery stores.

Who knows what this spring will bring. Tomorrow the forecast is for snow showers.

A Winged Elm Farm Alphabet Book “B”

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“B” is for the bees.

Our smallest livestock, for that is what they are on a farm, are a constant presence whenever the weather allows. Even on a warm January day they congregate on the stoops of the hives and then fly off in search of nectar. The Jessamine growing on the pergola flowers in January. Each time we step off the back porch the hum of the bees greets that step.

The hum that announces their activity is a dramatic note in the sheet music of our farm whether we are harvesting cucumbers or dining at a picnic. The honey harvested at the end of the season from their labor is the coda to the piece.

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Reading this weekend two books, Energy: overdevelopment and the delusion of endless growth by the Post Carbon Institute and Beauty: the invisible embrace by John O’Donohue.

You call this winter?

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January 21, 1985 Knoxville’s temperature dropped to minus 24 degrees, the coldest in the lower 48 states. As a new transplant from southern Louisiana just the month prior I wondered what had motivated me to move to the frozen north (Tennessee). Then just this morning the temperature at 7 am was a balmy 57 degrees, twenty-seven degrees above the normal low for this time of year and a full eighty-one degrees above that historic low.

When not dwelling on the darker aspects and implications of temperature fluctuations my thoughts have been on gardening and pasture renovations. The flood of seed catalogs, the first arriving the week of Thanksgiving, have kept me entertained with grand fantasies of what might be accomplished if only there were a few more hours in the day.

I have my favorites. Some I love for the over the top descriptions: one praising turnips in the fall when “new winds blow into the fields”. Not quite sure what a “new wind” is exactly but I get the spirit of it.  Others are loved for their encyclopedic listings of every variety known. But my favorites are Sand Hill Preservation Center in Calamus, IA, Sow True Seed in Asheville, NC and Horizon Herbs in Williams, OR. These three are work-a-day catalogs with a minimum of the frou-frou dribble that seems to appeal to the …well, you know who you are.

The problem at this time of year, as I see it, is one of restraint, resisting the urge to plant just a little too early. Maybe a few sugar peas in a protected area and we might be blessed with an early crop? Thomas Jefferson held an annual contest among his neighbors. Whoever brought in the earliest crop of peas hosted a dinner for his other neighbors. Think about that for a moment. To succeed in being first in bringing a crop to the table and the reward was to gather and feed your neighbors, not the other way around. There is value in that story and practice.

While waiting and waiting impatiently we will weed and mulch the garlic and onions this weekend. Those two kitchen essentials will be ready to harvest in late June. In the meantime I can gather my seed collection about me and plan to plant in February, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, kale, mustard, peas, radishes and celery (which I have never grown before).

Later this month we can begin to reseed some of the pastures with a rye, clover and fescue mix. Using the tractor and a disc harrow I’ll lightly disc the fields and spread the seed where hopefully it finds purchase to give us a full crop of hay later in the year. Then there are the plans to sow buckwheat in the orchard for the bees. And there are more plans for, well, plans.

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Reading this weekend Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” and “The Saucier’s Apprentice” by Raymond Sokolov a history and guide to the classic French sauces. Do I dare try and master the Sauce Grand Veneur (Master of the Royal Hunt Sauce) for the leg of venison for Saturday’s dinner?

A New Year

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Our limbs may be cold this morning but spring still beats in the heart.

December has been mild, though this morning is the coldest at 25 degrees before sunrise. The now annual too soon bud swell has begun with the plum and peach trees threatening an early bloom disaster. Seed catalogs are stuffed in the mailbox each day and in another few weeks we will begin to disc the pastures and sow with rye and clover for an early start to the grazing season.

Meanwhile the cattle and sheep are eating last year’s forage in the form of square and round bales of hay. Each morning and evening we bring a half square bale to the sheep and every few days a round bale to the cattle. The bees are being fed sugar water to avoid starvation. And we are still getting greens and turnips from the garden, where the garlic and onions for next year are thriving.

So, even though winter is now only nine days old our thoughts are on its end game. New lambs, baby chicks and ducks, gardening, pastures, orchards and grapes, it all begins again in just another 8-10 weeks. Between that new season and today we have cattle and hogs to get to market, orchards to be pruned, seed to be started and a few freezes to be endured.

But for now our old year is limping out the door, battered by unexpected freak weather and the usual predations by our species. Let us raise a glass and pledge to treat the New Year a bit better. I pledge to plant a garden, drive less, recycle more and learn a new skill, save some seed, visit with neighbors (including those I don’t particularly like), write letters (email counts, texting doesn’t) and be a good steward to this patch of land we call home.

Happy New Year!

Homestead Weekend: the productive arts

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Homestead Weekend: a weekend devoted to the productive arts (22 degrees this morning)

1. Squirrel Confit: Every New Year I make confit with the goose legs from our roast goose. It occurred to me that one could make a confit (meat cured in salt and preserved in lard) with anything at hand. What was at hand was a squirrel. Cured in salt, garlic, thyme and basil for 48 hours. Browned in in a skillet with lard. Placed in a pan with enough lard to cover for three hours at 250 degrees in the oven. Pulled out and allowed to cool the squirrel was stored in a mason jar and covered with the lard. Delicious! The remaining meat will be shredded and served over a small portion of pureed split peas as an appetizer.
2. Kimchee: I created a version of kimchee with cabbage, Hungarian and Hatch peppers, ginger, garlic, green onions, fish sauce and salt. Tossing it all together it was packed into a ½ gallon mason jar where it is fermenting nicely. Should be ready in 2-4 weeks.
3. Turnip Kraut: Ten pounds of purple top turnips and greens shredded, salt added and packed into ceramic crock. Fermenting nicely and should be ready in 4-6 weeks.
4. Lard: Five pounds of leaf fat (fat from around the kidneys of a hog) rendered out into beautiful snow white lard. Perfect for baking.
5. Bread: Cindy has been busy baking outstanding bread the past few days.
6. Strawberry Mead: Four pounds of honey, water and a pint of frozen strawberries from our patch, natural yeast and the mix is fermenting quietly in the corner of my study. The mead should be ready in six months.
7. Pork Link Sausage w/figs, brandy and nutmeg: replicating a reference I found to a traditional German Christmas sausage. Four of my favorite food stuffs…how could it go wrong? Making this one later today.
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Reading this weekend two early Christmas presents: The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz (ah, that explains the above) and Faviken by Magnus Nilsson, a great cookbook when you are trying to figure out what to do with your “perfectly shot and mature hazelhen” and that handful of lingonberries, or a backstrap loin of moose.