Saving the bees and other tales of plenty
Obviously in my naivety, I must have thought merely by living on a hobby farm, growing a sustainable crop would just happen naturally, almost automatically. Maybe the farming gods would rain down their good graces upon me and augment my visions of growing glory with soil that didn’t need amending and bestow upon me lush plants with bug free leaves extending upward to the sun like my grateful outstretched arms.
… que the sound of a screeching hard stop and return to reality…
I swallowed a healthy dose of wake-up juice when I fired up the rototiller and realized that our clay soil doesn’t respond well to turning tines. Then I got another hit when I tried the 20-pound, 24-inch manual broad fork that I had to shove into the ground, jump on and then “just” lift the soil, rather than turning it over (marketed to newbies like me as being better for the soil composition or whatever). Then I had to move that beasty tool six inches and do the whole shoving, jumping and lifting process again and again! It was after days of this and noticing that I wasn’t even halfway through what I had planned, that I had to admit I bit off more lettuce than I was ever going to get to chew—or in this case—even get to plant! It was Memorial Day weekend, and it was time to downsize my ambition.
Into the far less than perfectly prepared ground went 20 green bean seeds, five rows of corn seed, 15 tomato plants of various types, 3 pumpkins, 2 squash, red peppers, onions, oregano, basil and sunflowers. Daughter-in-law, Rachel, brought over some cabbage and kohlrabi plants left over from her own garden so they went in as well. And I already had my potatoes in a barrel experiment well underway from earlier in the season.
So far, only six of my bean plants have broken through the unamended soil and my corn will be a far cry from knee high on the 4th of July. I’ll reserve judgement on the rest, but suffice it to say, if my gardening grade was awarded by volume of weeds in my beds, I’d be the class Valedictorian. I guess it was too easy to ignore the fact that I’ve never been known for having a particularly green thumb. Maybe it’s true you can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t make a farmer out of her—or something like that.
In spite of the issues, we’re experiencing some victories or nearly so. The raspberries and blackberries are abundant. Our strawberries were beautiful…for a day at least. I was so hopeful as I took a basket down to the garden expecting to harvest some yummy goodness for our evening salad only to find that the rabbits or other pesky vermin beat me to it and added them to their own salad greens first.
Our asparagus was fabulous and prolific if not short-seasoned. And we have more rhubarb than either of us can come up with recipes for since neither of us are big fans. The grape vines are doing well under Mike’s watchful tending. The pear trees are fruited as well as two of the four apple trees. We’re not quite sure why but two of our apple trees did not produce any fruit even though they flowered and were well pollinated by our resident bees.
Bees, bees a plenty!
And speaking of the bees, our apiary grew from two hives to three since my last update. While Memorial Day weekend may have proven too much for Wanna-Be-Farmer Tami, it was just right for Good-at-Being-Beekeeper Tami. During a fortuitous drop-by visit from some friends we learned they had a swarm of bees move into a tree in their driveway just that morning and they were planning to call someone to get rid of them. Mike suggested that I might be able to help rehome them to an empty hive setup we had on our property. At a retail cost of $140 a colony, capturing a wild swarm represents a good value.
Having never imagined doing such a thing, I did what any novice beekeeper who watched someone do it once on YouTube six month ago would do. I immediately went for my bee suit, smoker, and a box in which to capture that swarm! We drove right over and I was greeted with a furiously buzzing ball of bees hanging in perfect symmetry from a tree limb just high enough for me to reach with the aid of a ladder. It was a beautiful sight for those of us who appreciate the complex social structure of a bee colony. For those who don’t, well…it’s just pretty menacing. And for those like Mike, who have an allergic reaction to bee stings, it’s downright alarming.
Jim, Cory, and Mike stood well off in the distance as I climbed the ladder and positioned the box just below the limb. A few swift whacks on the limb and most of the enormous cone of bees fell into the box with more than a few (thousand) stragglers buzzing around and on me in an expected displaced bee frenzy.
It was nearly dark by the time the stragglers found their way to the box where their queen now temporarily reigned. I brought the rescued bees back to Wittbrich Acres riding with them in the bed of Jim’s pick-up truck since Mike wasn’t about to let me put them (or me!) in our car! Using our headlights to illuminate the bee yard, I set them up in a new home hive alongside our other two colonies. By morning, all the bees had settled into the new hive and I had only suffered a few stings as a cost of the bee relocation adventure.
And BINGO is his name Oh!
While there was joy in being able to rehome displaced bees, there is a sad time ahead as it’s nearing time to bid farewell to three of our four roosters that came to us in our batch of April Barnesvelder chicks. We’re going to keep one, who we’ve named Bingo as perfectly proposed by a client at our June Franksville Beer Garden event. It’ll be hard to let the others go, but we have some comfort in knowing they’ll be going to a large farm where they will free-range and have a much larger hen population to…er…keep them proportionately well satisfied. It was that or a processing farmer, and we definitely didn’t want that option for our little guys.
The first batch of chicks are integrating with the previously existing adult flock and that adoption process is going slowly and carefully. Our second batch of Isa Brown chicks are four weeks younger and aren’t quite ready for that level of introduction yet.
The whole chicken social order has to be rejiggered and it’s downright disruptive. There’s an inordinate amount of pecking and squawking that goes on as part of the getting-to-know-you ritual that doesn’t seem altogether hospitable by human standards. Although, maybe if we humans used a little chicken wisdom we wouldn’t make as many mistakes when discerning friend from foe… it’s something to roost on (using chicken lingo, which is what I seem to do all the time now).
So far, it’s only been daytime play dates; we haven’t gotten to overnight stays yet. Mike is very tender hearted about his baby chicks and I suspect he’ll have some separation anxiety when we have to let nature take over in resetting the pecking order of our growing co-mingled flock. The closest we’ve ever experienced to this was 24 years ago when we blended our family of four sons and none of them had claws, beaks, or brains the size of lima beans (which, by the way, I’m NOT growing in my garden!).
Stay in touch and let me know what you’d like to hear more about!
It was great to see and speak with so many of you at the Franksville Beer Garden gathering. I truly appreciate all your comments and words of encouragement! Keep your questions, suggestions, and ideas coming to Tami@ToYourWealth.com
Living at Wittbrich Acres has definitely taught me many things, but most of all this…the more I learn, the less I feel I know. That’s what makes each new day so darn interesting. Until next month, be well and remember to fill each day with a healthy dose of gratitude.
