As the activities of beekeeping wind down for the year the educational aspects begin to gear up. The season of Fall Festivals and Fairs is a great time to get out and educate the general public about the importance of bees in food production and to recruit new bee keepers. I am looking forward to being an active participant in this year’s educational process since last year I was one of the unsuspecting masses. It will all start the weekend after next at the Kanawha County State Fair September 9-12th in Sissonville where the Kanawha Valley Beekeepers Association will set up an educational booth fully equipped with a demonstration hive.
If you have ever had any interest in beekeeping this is a great place to come and check it out. You can get lots of free and useful information about how to get started and why beekeeping is so important. In fact, this is where Fred and I got our first symptoms of beekeeping fever almost a year ago. We were trying to decide how to spend a lazy weekend and I had been debating entering some baking contests so we agreed that the fair was close and I could check out some of the possible competition. I was still in a medicated flux at the time, on leave from the FD, fighting depression and just generally at loose ends, desperate for something to give me a little direction.
I wandered around the fairgrounds in a medicated hazy when I happened upon the beekeeping demo. I had actually gone over there to look at the bunnies, goats and other 4-H displays as a way to waste time while Sarah rode the dangerous fair contraptions sure to induce a seizure in my already muddled state. I like to wander around and fantasize about farm life. Little did I know, a year from that fair visit Fred and I would be deeply immersed in the push towards green. The bees would merely be the tip of our iceberg.
It was while staring, transfixed, at the bees swarming about the comb through their Plexiglas walls that I was approached by the president of the KVBA. He asked me if I had any interest in keeping bees and on a pure whim I said yes. Sure I loved honey, and Fred and I had talked since we met about self-sufficiency, I found bees naturally fascinating but becoming a beekeeper had only ever been a fleeting fancy of my imagination. He told me how they could really use some young beekeepers in the association (and since Fred and I are both solidly in our thirties this should indicate to you the general age of the association) and provided me with lots of pamphlets, cookbooks and additional literature on bees. I thanked him and meandered away from the stall in search of Fred and Sarah.
When I found them the bees were already half forgotten in my dazed condition. When Fred asked me why I had all those papers, I told him about the beekeepers and the live bees and that piqued his interest enough that we turned around and headed back to the booth. Fred and the association president became instant cohorts and he promptly invited us to the next KVBA meeting. Fred and I went to the meeting I do not exactly remember when it was but it was sometime later that fall. Although we still had not acquired any bees at that point we were interested enough to pay the ten dollar fee and join the association for one year. This entitled us, also, to a membership in the state association as well as put us on the mailing list and updated us with any special information that may be made available.
We still were not entirely sure that we had the time or money to invest in beekeeping. Often setting up an initial hive or two from scratch can be very expensive. The bees themselves are relatively inexpensive but by the time you have built the hives and bought the necessary protective equipment you have made quite the initial investment. As we calculated we assumed just to get started with two hives (which is the minimum recommended in case of loss or disease) that we would have to invest between eight hundred and a thousand dollars.
Remember, I was out of work and unsure at that point if I would be able to return. Money was tight and that was a lot to invest in the potential failure of what we still deemed a hobby, however, while we were at the meeting we met the elderly gentleman who in due course would sell us his bees and hives and ultimately allow us to get into bee keeping at a much more affordable price. (If you are interested in the drama of how we came about actually acquiring our bees you can go back to the April entries of this blog and check out the details.)
Now, almost a year later, here we are, full-fledged beekeeper with three hives (no honey to speak of) out corrupting the youth of America, petitioning the local government and participating in all aspects of the social beekeepers network. I hope to see some of you at the fair, if not at Kanawha County’s fair then later on at some of the other fairs and festivals in which we will participate. I will try to update the blog as we nail down other dates. Please, if you read this blog and are at a fair, come introduce yourself. I would really love to meet you.
~
If you had asked me last September what my life would look like a year from that date I would never have guessed it would involve bees and chickens and homemade laundry detergent, green living or staying at home. I would have probably told you that I would be back to work at the FD within a matter of weeks if not months. God’s plans are not always the same as ours. I spent a good part of last year in a serious state of depression questioning every aspect of my life. Ir really never occurred to me, on any serious level, that I could be happy living a much simpler existence.
One thing I have come to realize is that I must be able to define myself outside of what I do to make money. I think this was one of the hardest things I had to come to grips with. I had a lot of pride in my career, I had accomplished something that few women before me had accomplished and I relished in the pride that went with that. This year has been humbling for me. It has been a year struggling to redefine our lives and our priorities. We have made lots of material sacrifices but we have gained a wealth of strength and knowledge and the contentment of knowing that we have struggled together and with God’s ever present guidance we have persevered.
Life is not easy. Life is not predictable, you can set a course and be blown off it in a heartbeat by death or illness or loss of a job or a car accident or anything. These worldly possessions that we put so much stock in can fall by the wayside in an instant. What do you have when they are gone?
In our family we had built a false sense of security with our things buying more stuff, going more places as filler, lacking any real satisfaction or contentment. I am not saying it was not tough. It was a serious lifestyle adjustment going from two salaries to one, having medical bill stream in and realizing that eating every meal out became a luxury instead of an everyday option. Being forced to budget when I went to the grocery store was especially humbling. We did not do it without heartache, arguments or tears but we did do it. Yes, we have fought, said mean things, questioned ourselves and God’s plan but ultimately we have grown. We have grown closer as a family and we have grown in our spiritual lives too.
As I have said before, this is a process for us, we are learning. We still hit stumbling blocks we still make mistakes ( I still can only remember my recycled grocery bags about fifty percent of the time) sometimes we still fight or argue but we have seen how small changes, baby steps, can make huge leaps in improving our quality of life. By slowly paring down our existence we have gained immeasurable wealth in our satisfaction with life and our general happiness. We take joy in the quiet moments and the little victories: fresh eggs from our hens, a successful hive split, clean clothes off the line.
I consider the words of Paul as he wrote to the Philippians about considering everything of this world a loss to gain Christ and I think about Christ talking to potential disciples and telling them to leave their worldly possessions behind and follow him. No, we have not given up all our worldly possession, but we have significantly reduced them and our gluttonous consumerism. Some of our reduction was by choice some by necessity, some of it was willfully and some of it was by painful pruning but ultimately the result has improved us as individuals and as a family and for the most part we are happier and healthier for it.
These are just some of the things that have been on my mind as we approach the first anniversary of the birth of our greener lifestyle. We are still in transition and in all actuality it will probably be a lifelong process. I want to thank everyone who has encouraged us with thoughtful reflection, as silent prayer warriors, with a kind word or a helpful piece of advice. I also want to thank everyone who takes a minute out of their own busy lives to immerse themselves in this blog and spend a few moments empathizing with us. Thank you for celebrating in our victories and mourning with us in our trials. We appreciate you.
Thank you for reading,
Much love on this journey to greener life,
Autumn
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Harvest: DENIED
Well yesterday evening we got in the hives. Let me start by saying this blog is not entirely negative just severely disappointing. We went through all three hives and we found all three queens (first time ever), workers, a few drones (summer is winding down so drones are being eliminated), capped brood, larva, some pollen and some capped honey. We saw no evidence of mites, brood foul or other disease. Now would be the time that most beekeepers have begun to medicate. Fred and I are choosing not to medicate our hives and I guess this time next year we will know if that was a wise avant-garde decision or a foolish novice mistake. Time will tell.
That is the good news. Here is the bad: the super/shallow that we placed on top of our most active hive had no more honey in it than it did at last inspection. This is really, really disappointing. When we placed that shallow above the queen excluder it was in hopes of harvesting our first honey crop of the year. The bees of that hive were very active and abounding in stored honey, pollen and babies in their brood box and shallows. We actually thought they were beginning to get crowded and running out of room for their own stores so we placed the shallow above the queen excluder in hopes of giving them more room and of harvesting a little honey this year.
We were denied and we still are not sure exactly why. Now granted, our goal this year was not to harvest honey but to raise healthy bees for a bountiful crop next year. On the premise that last year was a bad year for bees in general our goals were simply to sustain and thrive a generation of bees that would raise strong producers next year. We gained a hive this spring during swarm season when we split the larger of our two hives. We requeened our hateful hive with a pure bred, mated Italian queen (after believing the hive to have lost their queen and in need of a gentler temperament anyway) and we have since located all three queens and appear to have a healthy generation of bees.
So why do we not have any honey? I do not know and frankly I am really frustrated. There has been a second late summer bloom which means the bees would have plenty of pollen and nectar to gather. I’ve let the yard go to clover on several occasions to keep them happy at home. They have a source of fresh water in the creek that runs past the house and the weather has been fairly cooperative, if not somewhat too hot, with only intermittent rain showers which should allow the bees plenty of harvest time. So what did we do wrong?
Again, my answer is I just do not know. Yesterday when Fred and I went out to the hives I fully expected to be harvesting an entire super. We dragged a large Tupperware container out to the apiary, stoked the smoker and prepared a heavy concentration of sugar syrup to engage the bee’s attention while we pilfered their hive. We decided to start with the hive whose super we intended to harvest.
We smoked the entrance and popped the outer lid, smoked them a little more, waited a few seconds then popped the top. This is our most docile hive and the one from which we had made the split. These are gentle bees that will curiously crawl around your veil without even attempting to sting. So we can move through this hive and their stores in a relatively slow pace without fear of angering them to attack. We popped the inner lid, sprayed them with a little sugar water and disappointingly gazed into a practically empty super. Virtually no different than when we placed it a month ago.
We fully expected to harvest this entire super but it was just not meant to be. We sat it off to the side and moved down into the lower two shallows and the brood box. We found plenty of late summer stores, lots of bees, substantial brood, lots of workers and the queen. Everything a beekeeper could want, except our own honey to harvest. This hive consists of one brood box, two shallows, a queen excluder and another shallow on top which in theory would be ours to harvest. I have come up with two theories as to why our bees did not make enough honey for us to steal a little.
The first theory is this: we have given them entirely too much room. If you remember back this would have happened when I botched the placement of the queen excluder and inadvertently trapped her majesty above in a shallow for approximately a week. You see the bees should have the brood box (or deep) and one super (or shallow) which belongs exclusively to them. This allows the queen plenty of room to raise new bees and the workers plenty of room to put up stores to feed the hive. I had intended to add a harvest shallow and had put down a queen excluder towards this goal, somehow trapping the queen above it when I could not locate her. This allowed her a week or more to lay several frame of brood in the shallow which basically means it now belongs to the bees (no one wants honey with little bee eyeballs and body parts floating about in it).
So we gave that shallow up for naught and placed the queen excluder above it and added a third shallow. This seemed like a fine idea at the time considering the bees were actively filling up every available inch of space. We figured it would be no time at all before they had completely filled their own stores and begun working in ours. We were wrong.
The other theory is this: The main complaint people have with Italian bees (which all of ours now are since we requeened the mongrel hive) is that the queen never cycles dormant. Regardless of food stores, or lack thereof, an Italian queen will continuously lay brood all summer long. If food starts to become scarce she will continue to make babies, which means more mouths to feed from the stores since nothing new is coming about. So the other option is that they bees hit a dry spell where there was not enough bloom to sustain the new bees that the queen was making so they robbed their own store (or our super) to feed this new influx of mouths.
Although they had drawn out the wax in our harvest shallow (this means they built it up from flat to comb shaped to store honey) I still tend to go with the first theory. I just do not think they had enough time to fill and then eat that entire shallow. I think they simply had too much room and just did not bother with it as they continued to store honey in the brood box an two shallows which belonged to them. Still, regardless of the reason they did not fill it or robbed it, whichever, it was tremendously disappointing to see almost nothing in that shallow.
After we had moved through the bottom of the hive we put the lids back on and moved over into our hateful hive. I think after this we will save the hateful hive till last from now on when we do our inspections. After aggravating them they tend to stay angry for a while and disrupt our ability to move through the last hive which also tends to be fairly docile until annoyed by their more temperamental sisters. The nasty hive seemed to be thriving; we located their new queen easily due to the blue dot on her thorax. I got stung twice as we examined this hive. No amount of smoke or sugar water ever seems to dull their temper. We had hoped after requeening that they would become more pleasant but it seems their new monarch is equally as volatile as her predecessor. They too had all the necessary components to be pronounced healthy and we quickly put them back together to let them calm down.
As we moved into our last hive, this was the split we made earlier in the season, we located their queen almost immediately. She and her subjects all seemed in good condition although they were notably agitated as their neighbors continued to attack me due to the release of potent pheromones from the last two stings. We moved quickly through this hive with smoke and sugar water in attempts to keep them mostly calm and do a baseline check since we had already located the queen and could see she was in good condition. If you remember this was the hive I was sure I had completely annihilated with my beginner‘s fumblings when we attempted the split. Much to my joy they have thrived in spite of my clumsy and inept attempts to manage their existence.
Their stores seemed a little puny compared to the others and after much debate we decided to give them the shallow from the first hive that we had intended to keep for ourselves. Because, ultimately, it is our primary goal this year to keep all three hives in healthy robust condition. Harvesting a crop of honey would simply have been an added boon and apparently it was just not fated for this year. We are trying diligently not to be too disheartened after all they are still alive and we have one more hive than we started out with. This is more than we had hoped.
We will get back in them next week and decide how and when we will begin feeding for the fall and winter. We will probably have to feed at least the smaller of the three and we will probably feed all three just to keep them even and to prevent robbing. For all of you who were expecting a jar of honey for Christmas, I am sorry, maybe next year.
Please keep us and our endeavors in your prayers. Disappointments, even small ones, can sometimes weigh heavily on our motivation. We are not giving up, we know that we have to press forward and that every time cannot be a success but we just want to see a little fruit for what we are doing. We want to know that it is worth it and that we are making a difference, not just wasting time and money.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
That is the good news. Here is the bad: the super/shallow that we placed on top of our most active hive had no more honey in it than it did at last inspection. This is really, really disappointing. When we placed that shallow above the queen excluder it was in hopes of harvesting our first honey crop of the year. The bees of that hive were very active and abounding in stored honey, pollen and babies in their brood box and shallows. We actually thought they were beginning to get crowded and running out of room for their own stores so we placed the shallow above the queen excluder in hopes of giving them more room and of harvesting a little honey this year.
We were denied and we still are not sure exactly why. Now granted, our goal this year was not to harvest honey but to raise healthy bees for a bountiful crop next year. On the premise that last year was a bad year for bees in general our goals were simply to sustain and thrive a generation of bees that would raise strong producers next year. We gained a hive this spring during swarm season when we split the larger of our two hives. We requeened our hateful hive with a pure bred, mated Italian queen (after believing the hive to have lost their queen and in need of a gentler temperament anyway) and we have since located all three queens and appear to have a healthy generation of bees.
So why do we not have any honey? I do not know and frankly I am really frustrated. There has been a second late summer bloom which means the bees would have plenty of pollen and nectar to gather. I’ve let the yard go to clover on several occasions to keep them happy at home. They have a source of fresh water in the creek that runs past the house and the weather has been fairly cooperative, if not somewhat too hot, with only intermittent rain showers which should allow the bees plenty of harvest time. So what did we do wrong?
Again, my answer is I just do not know. Yesterday when Fred and I went out to the hives I fully expected to be harvesting an entire super. We dragged a large Tupperware container out to the apiary, stoked the smoker and prepared a heavy concentration of sugar syrup to engage the bee’s attention while we pilfered their hive. We decided to start with the hive whose super we intended to harvest.
We smoked the entrance and popped the outer lid, smoked them a little more, waited a few seconds then popped the top. This is our most docile hive and the one from which we had made the split. These are gentle bees that will curiously crawl around your veil without even attempting to sting. So we can move through this hive and their stores in a relatively slow pace without fear of angering them to attack. We popped the inner lid, sprayed them with a little sugar water and disappointingly gazed into a practically empty super. Virtually no different than when we placed it a month ago.
We fully expected to harvest this entire super but it was just not meant to be. We sat it off to the side and moved down into the lower two shallows and the brood box. We found plenty of late summer stores, lots of bees, substantial brood, lots of workers and the queen. Everything a beekeeper could want, except our own honey to harvest. This hive consists of one brood box, two shallows, a queen excluder and another shallow on top which in theory would be ours to harvest. I have come up with two theories as to why our bees did not make enough honey for us to steal a little.
The first theory is this: we have given them entirely too much room. If you remember back this would have happened when I botched the placement of the queen excluder and inadvertently trapped her majesty above in a shallow for approximately a week. You see the bees should have the brood box (or deep) and one super (or shallow) which belongs exclusively to them. This allows the queen plenty of room to raise new bees and the workers plenty of room to put up stores to feed the hive. I had intended to add a harvest shallow and had put down a queen excluder towards this goal, somehow trapping the queen above it when I could not locate her. This allowed her a week or more to lay several frame of brood in the shallow which basically means it now belongs to the bees (no one wants honey with little bee eyeballs and body parts floating about in it).
So we gave that shallow up for naught and placed the queen excluder above it and added a third shallow. This seemed like a fine idea at the time considering the bees were actively filling up every available inch of space. We figured it would be no time at all before they had completely filled their own stores and begun working in ours. We were wrong.
The other theory is this: The main complaint people have with Italian bees (which all of ours now are since we requeened the mongrel hive) is that the queen never cycles dormant. Regardless of food stores, or lack thereof, an Italian queen will continuously lay brood all summer long. If food starts to become scarce she will continue to make babies, which means more mouths to feed from the stores since nothing new is coming about. So the other option is that they bees hit a dry spell where there was not enough bloom to sustain the new bees that the queen was making so they robbed their own store (or our super) to feed this new influx of mouths.
Although they had drawn out the wax in our harvest shallow (this means they built it up from flat to comb shaped to store honey) I still tend to go with the first theory. I just do not think they had enough time to fill and then eat that entire shallow. I think they simply had too much room and just did not bother with it as they continued to store honey in the brood box an two shallows which belonged to them. Still, regardless of the reason they did not fill it or robbed it, whichever, it was tremendously disappointing to see almost nothing in that shallow.
After we had moved through the bottom of the hive we put the lids back on and moved over into our hateful hive. I think after this we will save the hateful hive till last from now on when we do our inspections. After aggravating them they tend to stay angry for a while and disrupt our ability to move through the last hive which also tends to be fairly docile until annoyed by their more temperamental sisters. The nasty hive seemed to be thriving; we located their new queen easily due to the blue dot on her thorax. I got stung twice as we examined this hive. No amount of smoke or sugar water ever seems to dull their temper. We had hoped after requeening that they would become more pleasant but it seems their new monarch is equally as volatile as her predecessor. They too had all the necessary components to be pronounced healthy and we quickly put them back together to let them calm down.
As we moved into our last hive, this was the split we made earlier in the season, we located their queen almost immediately. She and her subjects all seemed in good condition although they were notably agitated as their neighbors continued to attack me due to the release of potent pheromones from the last two stings. We moved quickly through this hive with smoke and sugar water in attempts to keep them mostly calm and do a baseline check since we had already located the queen and could see she was in good condition. If you remember this was the hive I was sure I had completely annihilated with my beginner‘s fumblings when we attempted the split. Much to my joy they have thrived in spite of my clumsy and inept attempts to manage their existence.
Their stores seemed a little puny compared to the others and after much debate we decided to give them the shallow from the first hive that we had intended to keep for ourselves. Because, ultimately, it is our primary goal this year to keep all three hives in healthy robust condition. Harvesting a crop of honey would simply have been an added boon and apparently it was just not fated for this year. We are trying diligently not to be too disheartened after all they are still alive and we have one more hive than we started out with. This is more than we had hoped.
We will get back in them next week and decide how and when we will begin feeding for the fall and winter. We will probably have to feed at least the smaller of the three and we will probably feed all three just to keep them even and to prevent robbing. For all of you who were expecting a jar of honey for Christmas, I am sorry, maybe next year.
Please keep us and our endeavors in your prayers. Disappointments, even small ones, can sometimes weigh heavily on our motivation. We are not giving up, we know that we have to press forward and that every time cannot be a success but we just want to see a little fruit for what we are doing. We want to know that it is worth it and that we are making a difference, not just wasting time and money.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Seasons Change
Today has been like a little preview of fall, a cool gentle breeze, an overcast sky, long sleeves and that delicious desire to hibernate on the couch with a warm cup of tea and a good book. I know it is only late August but as I walked through the stalls of the ever shrinking Farmer’s Market this morning I could not help but smell the slightly acrid bottom notes of burning leaves, if only in my imagination, as I bit into what will surely be one of summer’s last peaches. And what a peach it was. This has been a wonderful year for nature’s bounty. Fresh and affordable local produce has been abundant in the market and in our yard.
We have eaten peaches so sweet they could rival candy, dined on fresh corn and tomatoes bursting with flavor and eaten our weight in mouth watering juicy strawberries gathered at the peak of freshness. As I perused the stalls today I saw the fall’s first pumpkins and gourds on one farmer’s small back table. They were squat and round, small and colorfully warty. I was tempted. I really was. Last year was a rotten year for pumpkin and its kin and there was very little to be had at the market or even on the grocer’s shelves via cans. I could taste that warm crust and smell the spicy sweet nutmeg and cinnamon as I thought of all the baking denied to me during last fall’s shortage.
Pumpkins were so scarce last year that I barely had enough to compete in the annual pumpkin festival bake off. I made far fewer loaves of pumpkin bread than I would have liked and did not bake a single pumpkin pie, let alone a savory dish of pumpkin ravioli or curry. No my obsession with the gourd was mostly denied in 2009 as even in our on demand world we cannot produce a pumpkin, out of season or otherwise, if mother nature decides to put us in our place. It is kind of nice to see the corporate manipulation of nature thwarted occasionally, however, it is still not fun to be denied a pumpkin pie.
These were the kind of things going through my mind as I eyed the meager too-early fall offerings of our local WV farmers. I was tempted but I managed to refrain. I hate to go into department and grocery stores and see Halloween and Christmas décor pushed earlier and earlier every year. I hate to be begged by my daughter to look at Halloween costumes when we have yet to buy notebooks for school and I detest being waylaid by Christmas ornaments and cards while still wearing shorts and t-shirts and putting away Fourth of July flags. I hate the rush and push of the all mighty consumer dollar bullying through every season and losing some of the more precious, less commercially viable holidays along the way. I hate the way Thanksgiving is all but lost as it is crammed into the backside of Halloween rolled into one ubiquitous mess of orange and brown.
So I chose no. I wanted to say yes I really did, I fondled the little knobby gourds and thought of all the clever meals and cute decorations I could have but in the end I knew that buying even one little gourd was a vote against nature and her graceful dance through life’s seasons. I knew that to purchase the early veggie would be silently saying to the farmer, “Yes, this is what I want, and this is when I want it, give me fall’s bounty and give it to me now.” And ultimately that is not what I want. I want to treasure each season and enjoy the nuances and gifts that make each one unique.
I want to eat spring greens and tender peas in the spring. I want to enjoy berries and peaches, tomatoes and peppers in the summer. I want to eat gourds and grain in the fall and I want to reminisce over canned soups and stored potatoes in the winter. I want to feel and savor and enjoy the seasons as we move through them. I do not wish to ski all year round or to swim in the dead of winter. Do not misunderstand me, yes, I enjoy modern conveniences as much as anyone else but I want to be more a part of the nature that surrounds me and less of an intruder. I do not wish to conquer but to live in harmony.
So with all that in mind I turned away from the early birds and their tempting bulbous flesh and back to the magnificent peaches who, like an opera singer trilling an aria on the very cusp of her prime, were beautiful and beckoning in their almost faded glory. Their smell and plump juiciness more than made up for leaving without a pumpkin in tow. I bought a few of the straggling ends of the summer squash and zucchini harvest and intend to make a squash casserole tonight and serve some of this summer’s last peaches as desert.
In this there is a lesson for all of us. It is something that is often lost in our instant gratification culture. We live to constantly fulfill new desires and we often lose sight of the little daily pleasures made available through God’s generosity in our every day existence. In a few months, we will be longing for those summer peaches we snubbed after our gluttony was sated in the August heat, as we reached our sticky fingers forward into the next season’s bounty without even a sigh of gratefulness passing through our juice drenched mouths. It is a shame we rarely take a moment to be thankful, to enjoy to live in this seasons glory without straining towards the next. But I guess that is life, always grasping in the pursuit of more, rarely stopping to smell the peaches.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
We have eaten peaches so sweet they could rival candy, dined on fresh corn and tomatoes bursting with flavor and eaten our weight in mouth watering juicy strawberries gathered at the peak of freshness. As I perused the stalls today I saw the fall’s first pumpkins and gourds on one farmer’s small back table. They were squat and round, small and colorfully warty. I was tempted. I really was. Last year was a rotten year for pumpkin and its kin and there was very little to be had at the market or even on the grocer’s shelves via cans. I could taste that warm crust and smell the spicy sweet nutmeg and cinnamon as I thought of all the baking denied to me during last fall’s shortage.
Pumpkins were so scarce last year that I barely had enough to compete in the annual pumpkin festival bake off. I made far fewer loaves of pumpkin bread than I would have liked and did not bake a single pumpkin pie, let alone a savory dish of pumpkin ravioli or curry. No my obsession with the gourd was mostly denied in 2009 as even in our on demand world we cannot produce a pumpkin, out of season or otherwise, if mother nature decides to put us in our place. It is kind of nice to see the corporate manipulation of nature thwarted occasionally, however, it is still not fun to be denied a pumpkin pie.
These were the kind of things going through my mind as I eyed the meager too-early fall offerings of our local WV farmers. I was tempted but I managed to refrain. I hate to go into department and grocery stores and see Halloween and Christmas décor pushed earlier and earlier every year. I hate to be begged by my daughter to look at Halloween costumes when we have yet to buy notebooks for school and I detest being waylaid by Christmas ornaments and cards while still wearing shorts and t-shirts and putting away Fourth of July flags. I hate the rush and push of the all mighty consumer dollar bullying through every season and losing some of the more precious, less commercially viable holidays along the way. I hate the way Thanksgiving is all but lost as it is crammed into the backside of Halloween rolled into one ubiquitous mess of orange and brown.
So I chose no. I wanted to say yes I really did, I fondled the little knobby gourds and thought of all the clever meals and cute decorations I could have but in the end I knew that buying even one little gourd was a vote against nature and her graceful dance through life’s seasons. I knew that to purchase the early veggie would be silently saying to the farmer, “Yes, this is what I want, and this is when I want it, give me fall’s bounty and give it to me now.” And ultimately that is not what I want. I want to treasure each season and enjoy the nuances and gifts that make each one unique.
I want to eat spring greens and tender peas in the spring. I want to enjoy berries and peaches, tomatoes and peppers in the summer. I want to eat gourds and grain in the fall and I want to reminisce over canned soups and stored potatoes in the winter. I want to feel and savor and enjoy the seasons as we move through them. I do not wish to ski all year round or to swim in the dead of winter. Do not misunderstand me, yes, I enjoy modern conveniences as much as anyone else but I want to be more a part of the nature that surrounds me and less of an intruder. I do not wish to conquer but to live in harmony.
So with all that in mind I turned away from the early birds and their tempting bulbous flesh and back to the magnificent peaches who, like an opera singer trilling an aria on the very cusp of her prime, were beautiful and beckoning in their almost faded glory. Their smell and plump juiciness more than made up for leaving without a pumpkin in tow. I bought a few of the straggling ends of the summer squash and zucchini harvest and intend to make a squash casserole tonight and serve some of this summer’s last peaches as desert.
In this there is a lesson for all of us. It is something that is often lost in our instant gratification culture. We live to constantly fulfill new desires and we often lose sight of the little daily pleasures made available through God’s generosity in our every day existence. In a few months, we will be longing for those summer peaches we snubbed after our gluttony was sated in the August heat, as we reached our sticky fingers forward into the next season’s bounty without even a sigh of gratefulness passing through our juice drenched mouths. It is a shame we rarely take a moment to be thankful, to enjoy to live in this seasons glory without straining towards the next. But I guess that is life, always grasping in the pursuit of more, rarely stopping to smell the peaches.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Clandestine Meetings of Beekeepers
Yesterday was the regular meeting of the Kanawha Valley Beekeepers’ Association. There were more people in attendance than I have seen in a meeting before but as usual there was a huge gap in the age range. Fred and I, generally, are the youngest people in attendance, however, yesterday was an anomaly. Fred and I are normally on time for most things but I have felt bad for the last several days, staving off a rotten head ache that has spread down my neck and into my shoulders so we were late for the meeting by about thirty minutes.
The meetings always start with a little meet and greet and socializing. Beekeepers, like the insects we tend, are social creatures and enjoy interacting with like kind. People bring snacks and coffee and chit chat, for the first thirty minutes or so of the meeting, about their hives and any news of local interest regarding bees. Fred and I arrived right as the social aspect of the meeting was winding down and everyone was beginning to take their seats.
We quickly took our customary seats on the back row and I did a quick glance around as the treasure read his report. I was surprised to see a young woman approximately my age, sharply dressed and sitting on the back row several seats to my right. She had the look of a quirky professional about her dressed neatly in pressed shorts and a blouse. She had a large sleeve tattoo of a gothic looking doll down her right arm which kind of threw off the whole young republican thing she had going on but gave her a much more someone-I-might-talk-to look. I made note to speak to her after the meeting was over.
She had a small notebook on her lap and it looked to already be filled with copious notes. I thought that was a little strange since we were only minutes into the treasurer’s report and frankly, I never find the seven dollars or so he has spent on stamps to be terribly interesting, but whatever. As the meeting progressed the state inspector gave a talk about fall maintenance and medication.
Now Fred and I are not of the same school of thought as a lot of the old time beekeeper. There is this mentality among them that bees must be medicated at regular intervals in case they may be affected with mites or brood foul or some other bee malady. We are of the opinion that this is the same school of thought as giving your children antibiotics twice a year whether they need them or not. All that does is build up better more antibiotic resistance bacteria it does not do much to prevent illness in the first place. Although the state inspector momentarily touched on this theory the general consensus overall is that bees need some kind of treatment every year. So mostly I just sit quietly through these lectures. As the saying goes; as 5 beekeepers a question and you will get 10 different answers.
Our new beekeeping compatriot was not nearly as mum, although her questions leaned more towards the conspiracy theories of Monsanto research and less towards the technical aspects of beekeeping. I have never, in the year of beekeeping meetings we have attended, seen anyone take so many notes through a meeting. It was like she was writing her dissertation on the practices of a beekeeping meeting.
After the meeting we once again indulge our beekeeper tendencies towards social interaction and stand around chatting about how we all disagree with everything the speaker said and with each other. (Note: if you have a grumpy disposition or lean towards being a curmudgeon beekeeping & beekeeper’s meetings are for you!) I spoke to several of the old gents who have been great if not grouchy resources for our beekeeping endeavors and as I was making my way across the room I saw the furious note taker slip out the door.
I could not help but let my imagination wander down my favorite conspiracy paths. I think maybe she was a student writing a paper about beekeeping, or maybe a reporter working on an article about chemicals in agriculture or maybe, even more nefarious, a Monsanto spy, ready to sue us all for misusing their patented soybeans. Obviously, I spend too much time alone in my head with my overactive imagination. I would have liked to talk to her, especially if she really is interested in beekeeping. It would be nice to have some peers our own age take an interest in something that is so vital to our food source. Oh well, if she comes back in November I will make it a point to speak to her (if we are on time).
As for our bees we intend to get in our hives today if the rain holds off. If not I will get in them later in the week. We are considering another hive split before fall and we need to check for mites. We hope to harvest our first super of honey this week but we will need to call the department of agriculture to rent the extractor. All in all the bees are still very much alive and seem to be thriving in spite of or because of our best efforts. Who knows?
Thanks for reading,
Much Love,
Autumn
The meetings always start with a little meet and greet and socializing. Beekeepers, like the insects we tend, are social creatures and enjoy interacting with like kind. People bring snacks and coffee and chit chat, for the first thirty minutes or so of the meeting, about their hives and any news of local interest regarding bees. Fred and I arrived right as the social aspect of the meeting was winding down and everyone was beginning to take their seats.
We quickly took our customary seats on the back row and I did a quick glance around as the treasure read his report. I was surprised to see a young woman approximately my age, sharply dressed and sitting on the back row several seats to my right. She had the look of a quirky professional about her dressed neatly in pressed shorts and a blouse. She had a large sleeve tattoo of a gothic looking doll down her right arm which kind of threw off the whole young republican thing she had going on but gave her a much more someone-I-might-talk-to look. I made note to speak to her after the meeting was over.
She had a small notebook on her lap and it looked to already be filled with copious notes. I thought that was a little strange since we were only minutes into the treasurer’s report and frankly, I never find the seven dollars or so he has spent on stamps to be terribly interesting, but whatever. As the meeting progressed the state inspector gave a talk about fall maintenance and medication.
Now Fred and I are not of the same school of thought as a lot of the old time beekeeper. There is this mentality among them that bees must be medicated at regular intervals in case they may be affected with mites or brood foul or some other bee malady. We are of the opinion that this is the same school of thought as giving your children antibiotics twice a year whether they need them or not. All that does is build up better more antibiotic resistance bacteria it does not do much to prevent illness in the first place. Although the state inspector momentarily touched on this theory the general consensus overall is that bees need some kind of treatment every year. So mostly I just sit quietly through these lectures. As the saying goes; as 5 beekeepers a question and you will get 10 different answers.
Our new beekeeping compatriot was not nearly as mum, although her questions leaned more towards the conspiracy theories of Monsanto research and less towards the technical aspects of beekeeping. I have never, in the year of beekeeping meetings we have attended, seen anyone take so many notes through a meeting. It was like she was writing her dissertation on the practices of a beekeeping meeting.
After the meeting we once again indulge our beekeeper tendencies towards social interaction and stand around chatting about how we all disagree with everything the speaker said and with each other. (Note: if you have a grumpy disposition or lean towards being a curmudgeon beekeeping & beekeeper’s meetings are for you!) I spoke to several of the old gents who have been great if not grouchy resources for our beekeeping endeavors and as I was making my way across the room I saw the furious note taker slip out the door.
I could not help but let my imagination wander down my favorite conspiracy paths. I think maybe she was a student writing a paper about beekeeping, or maybe a reporter working on an article about chemicals in agriculture or maybe, even more nefarious, a Monsanto spy, ready to sue us all for misusing their patented soybeans. Obviously, I spend too much time alone in my head with my overactive imagination. I would have liked to talk to her, especially if she really is interested in beekeeping. It would be nice to have some peers our own age take an interest in something that is so vital to our food source. Oh well, if she comes back in November I will make it a point to speak to her (if we are on time).
As for our bees we intend to get in our hives today if the rain holds off. If not I will get in them later in the week. We are considering another hive split before fall and we need to check for mites. We hope to harvest our first super of honey this week but we will need to call the department of agriculture to rent the extractor. All in all the bees are still very much alive and seem to be thriving in spite of or because of our best efforts. Who knows?
Thanks for reading,
Much Love,
Autumn
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Let's take this show on the road
Well here is the downside to collecting more and more animals and doing more and more self-sustaining stuff; it does not sustain itself! The “self” of self-sustaining is really referring to the person caring for the land/animal/project etc not the item itself. About the only remotely self-sustaining animals we have in our menagerie are the bees, and they are not really self-sustaining they are more like temporarily-able-to-be-left-to-their-own-devices-sustaining.
The least self-sustaining, and most high-maintenance, of our brood are the chickens, they must be cared for (at the very minimum) at least twice a day. This twice a day bare bones minimum maintenance includes letting them out around dawn with feeding and watering and then a return trip at dusk to close up the coop, this is really stretching it. In all actuality their water should be changed several times a day (especially in this heat), and the nest box should be checked with regularity.
Like any other social creature they enjoy your time and attention like to be talked to and especially want to befriend anyone bearing a treat so only interacting with them twice a day also leaves them unhappy and unsettled. I will tell you from firsthand experience; grouchy chickens can and will withhold/impede egg production. Happy chickens are much better layers and pets, however, they can be taken care of with the bare bones twice a day routine. If you add to the bees and chickens one dog and five inside cats you can see how going out of town becomes more and more challenging for our family the “greener” we become.
This past weekend my best friend got married in Gatlinburg, TN. Gatlinburg is about a six hour drive from here and we made plans well in advance. Originally we had intended to take Louie with us but our pet friendly cabin fell through and we ended up renting a condo. So Louie got farmed out to Fred’s mom. That left the care of the cats and chickens to my mom. The bees would be fine on their own for a few days. Luckily for us we live within a five mile radius of lots of friends and family and luckily for us my mom still enjoys the chickens as a novelty.
Our “going green” is quite the amusing joke of our family. Everyone wants to know what we are cooking up next so they can point and laugh and talk about us doing things the hard way and at this point everyone still finds it charming enough to indulge us our quirkiness by, for example, tending our chickens while we are gone for several days. So twice a day my mom schlepped up here to have her toes pecked and listen to a list of clucking complaints, for her trouble she was treated to one single egg by Mama who apparently was so put out with us for leaving she went on a laying strike.
This is really the only true “downside” we have reached in our push towards green. In our drive to wrest back our lives from corporate management we have taken on more work, more responsibility and more dependents in the form of animal life. Generally, this is a good thing. It is rewarding to be closer to our food source, to have a product for our labor at the end of each day, to accomplish things, to make things and to realize that everything does not stem from the ground clean and shrink wrapped in plastic but specifically it binds you to the land with an invisible and tenacious umbilical cord of responsibility. That nurturing connection goes both directions and can only be stretched so thin and cannot be completely broken lest one party starve from a lack of attention or nutrition.
Farming, which is what we quaintly call our endeavors, is not easily abandoned and is not something from which you get two weeks paid vacation a year. To leave the land and the animals, and expect them to carry on in our absence, careful preparation must be made. I think this is the only real draw back Fred and I have stumbled on so far. We never did so much “vacation” in the traditional sense, a week spent somewhere eating in restaurants we could eat in at home and sleeping in motels with skeevy beds and noisy ice machines, as we spontaneously camp. We love to just pick a state park or some out of the way campground or hike part of the Greenbrier trail or whatever. That is a little more difficult now. We can no longer just throw down enough cat food for several days grab Louie and take off.
Next year as we grow our endeavors and hopefully get a nanny goat (which will require twice a day milking all year long) I am not sure how we will manage to leave the homestead at all. While my mom finds the chickens amusing and enjoys watching them peck around for treats and what not, I do not think she would be equally charmed by an ill-tempered nanny goat more likely to head butt someone while they were not looking than to sweetly peck raisins from your palm. Who knows, she might surprise me and really enjoy milking a goat, but I doubt it.
So this time next year if Fred and I want to vacation anywhere we maybe in the market for a farm sitter. Is there such a thing? Maybe I have just stumbled upon a new career. If you live within a thirty mile radius of me and are also homesteading maybe we could work up a trade system? You tend my farm for a week or two a year while my family takes a break and we will do the same for you. This could work.
In all reality I think this is what we really need anyway and that is one of the goals of writing this blog; to reach out to other like-minded people and to create a support system. I know there are other people out there doing the same things we are doing, people who are fed up with having mass-produced everything shoved down their throats twenty-four hours a day. Some of these people are doing it on a larger scale than us, some are taking even smaller baby steps but I think, no matter where you are on this journey we all need each other. We need to support like minded people because, in reality, that is the only way we are ever going to effect change on a larger scale. Banded together we can bring the farm subsidies back where they belong and make a difference not only in our corner but in our country and ultimately in the world.
Ok, I will fold up my soap-box, it snuck out on me for a second. But I am serious about the trade everyone needs a break from routine sometimes. So think about it.
Much love,
Thank you for reading,
Autumn
The least self-sustaining, and most high-maintenance, of our brood are the chickens, they must be cared for (at the very minimum) at least twice a day. This twice a day bare bones minimum maintenance includes letting them out around dawn with feeding and watering and then a return trip at dusk to close up the coop, this is really stretching it. In all actuality their water should be changed several times a day (especially in this heat), and the nest box should be checked with regularity.
Like any other social creature they enjoy your time and attention like to be talked to and especially want to befriend anyone bearing a treat so only interacting with them twice a day also leaves them unhappy and unsettled. I will tell you from firsthand experience; grouchy chickens can and will withhold/impede egg production. Happy chickens are much better layers and pets, however, they can be taken care of with the bare bones twice a day routine. If you add to the bees and chickens one dog and five inside cats you can see how going out of town becomes more and more challenging for our family the “greener” we become.
This past weekend my best friend got married in Gatlinburg, TN. Gatlinburg is about a six hour drive from here and we made plans well in advance. Originally we had intended to take Louie with us but our pet friendly cabin fell through and we ended up renting a condo. So Louie got farmed out to Fred’s mom. That left the care of the cats and chickens to my mom. The bees would be fine on their own for a few days. Luckily for us we live within a five mile radius of lots of friends and family and luckily for us my mom still enjoys the chickens as a novelty.
Our “going green” is quite the amusing joke of our family. Everyone wants to know what we are cooking up next so they can point and laugh and talk about us doing things the hard way and at this point everyone still finds it charming enough to indulge us our quirkiness by, for example, tending our chickens while we are gone for several days. So twice a day my mom schlepped up here to have her toes pecked and listen to a list of clucking complaints, for her trouble she was treated to one single egg by Mama who apparently was so put out with us for leaving she went on a laying strike.
This is really the only true “downside” we have reached in our push towards green. In our drive to wrest back our lives from corporate management we have taken on more work, more responsibility and more dependents in the form of animal life. Generally, this is a good thing. It is rewarding to be closer to our food source, to have a product for our labor at the end of each day, to accomplish things, to make things and to realize that everything does not stem from the ground clean and shrink wrapped in plastic but specifically it binds you to the land with an invisible and tenacious umbilical cord of responsibility. That nurturing connection goes both directions and can only be stretched so thin and cannot be completely broken lest one party starve from a lack of attention or nutrition.
Farming, which is what we quaintly call our endeavors, is not easily abandoned and is not something from which you get two weeks paid vacation a year. To leave the land and the animals, and expect them to carry on in our absence, careful preparation must be made. I think this is the only real draw back Fred and I have stumbled on so far. We never did so much “vacation” in the traditional sense, a week spent somewhere eating in restaurants we could eat in at home and sleeping in motels with skeevy beds and noisy ice machines, as we spontaneously camp. We love to just pick a state park or some out of the way campground or hike part of the Greenbrier trail or whatever. That is a little more difficult now. We can no longer just throw down enough cat food for several days grab Louie and take off.
Next year as we grow our endeavors and hopefully get a nanny goat (which will require twice a day milking all year long) I am not sure how we will manage to leave the homestead at all. While my mom finds the chickens amusing and enjoys watching them peck around for treats and what not, I do not think she would be equally charmed by an ill-tempered nanny goat more likely to head butt someone while they were not looking than to sweetly peck raisins from your palm. Who knows, she might surprise me and really enjoy milking a goat, but I doubt it.
So this time next year if Fred and I want to vacation anywhere we maybe in the market for a farm sitter. Is there such a thing? Maybe I have just stumbled upon a new career. If you live within a thirty mile radius of me and are also homesteading maybe we could work up a trade system? You tend my farm for a week or two a year while my family takes a break and we will do the same for you. This could work.
In all reality I think this is what we really need anyway and that is one of the goals of writing this blog; to reach out to other like-minded people and to create a support system. I know there are other people out there doing the same things we are doing, people who are fed up with having mass-produced everything shoved down their throats twenty-four hours a day. Some of these people are doing it on a larger scale than us, some are taking even smaller baby steps but I think, no matter where you are on this journey we all need each other. We need to support like minded people because, in reality, that is the only way we are ever going to effect change on a larger scale. Banded together we can bring the farm subsidies back where they belong and make a difference not only in our corner but in our country and ultimately in the world.
Ok, I will fold up my soap-box, it snuck out on me for a second. But I am serious about the trade everyone needs a break from routine sometimes. So think about it.
Much love,
Thank you for reading,
Autumn
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Pecking Order & The Politics of Being a Chicken
If you have never owned chickens you are missing a critical lesson in animal behavior and an interesting and amusing pet. We were thoroughly discouraged by almost everyone we knew when we decide to invest in a flock of laying hens. We were told chickens were dirty, smelly, stupid and generally just more trouble than they are worth. I am here to tell you that those things (excluding the dirty, they do not control where they relieve themselves) are untrue.
I think the smelly/dirty part comes from people who grew up keeping too many chickens in too close of quarters. We have six chickens in a large coop with a sizable roosting area and yard. During the day the chickens free range in our back yard. The smell although somewhat barn like inside the coop is neither offensive nor atrocious. They just smell like animals. I can tell you this they smell a site better than our dog (or us) after four days on the trail.
As for stupid they most certainly are not. I am not nominating them for awards in science or literature anytime soon but they are definitely smart enough to figure out who likes them, from where their food comes, where they go to sleep at night, who is in charge and, most importantly, that cute behavior will get you rewarded with special treats from the kitchen! They also establish a distinct, but fluctuating, social hierarchy that is not unlike junior high school girls and includes not only other chickens but family pets of other species and human family members also.
When we began our chicken keeping endeavor, you probably remember, we started out with four Black Jersey Giant hatchlings. Now I will admit those poor little peeps were dumb. They were terrified of everything and adorably clumsy to boot. They grew into gangly pre-teens that awkwardly tripped over each other and their own feet. They would flap their way out of the box only to find themselves lost somewhere in the nether world between the box and the bathtub wall, peeping their little hearts out in pure terror.
They did not seem to gain much intelligence as we moved them from the bathtub to the coop. In fact they seemed to get slightly dumber as it took days on end to teach them how to use the ramp to get up into their sleeping area every night. We would have to climb into the pen and chase them round and round until we caught them and put them one by one up the ramp and into the coop. This was an especially comical routine because for every two chicks we put up one would fall back through the hole only to be chased all over again. After several nights of this they finally realized they could move up and down between the upstairs and yard of the coop, then their new sisters moved in.
My four little petrified BJGs were immediately cowed by their bigger (fully grown) Rhode Island Red sisters that moved in. Mama and Helga, the two RIRs Fred and I adopted from my aunt, immediately ruled the roost. Mama as the oldest and most established laying hen was large and in charge. Helga deferred only to Mama and Stacy-chicken, Miranda-chicken, Gina-chicken and Autumn-chicken lived in abject terror of both of them and pretty much everything else that went bump in the night (or day).
The BJGs had been relegated to the upstairs of the coop where temperatures reached well above one-hundred degrees, I am sure. I was forced to make multiple trips out every day to switch their water for cooler and to make sure that none of their little panting selves had killed over from heat stroke. They would only come down into the yard for brief moments and then only coaxed by me climbing in the coop and sitting in a chair hand feeding them raisins while they huddled underneath my seat like some kind of giant plastic mother hen. As soon as I left the yard they rushed back into the upstairs to pant and huddle some more.
Mama and Helga for their part were mad as, pardon the expression, old wet hens and meaner than rattle snakes. They did not like me, they hated the dog and they terrorized the little half grown pullets, pecking them and pulling their feathers out as they ran past in heart stopping horror. I was about half sick to my stomach and considered returning my aunt’s two birds on several occasions. But we stuck it out and my how the worm has turned.
Eventually, after keeping them in the coop all together for about a week, we decided that it was time to let them out to free-range. We had not planned on letting our original four out for another several weeks but the RIRs my aunt gave us had been used to foraging and were doubly unhappy to find themselves prisoners in a strange land with four unpleasantly nervous new compatriots. We figured if we were going to have any success at all it would hinge on the chicken’s happiness.
We let them all out and that seemed to ease tensions enormously. They only exception to this was bed time. We placed two large roosts inside the coop but only Helga would perch. Mama slept in the nesting box (and still does) and the four BJGs slept huddled in fright by the door to the yard. Every time they would get up and cross the coop Mama or Helga would give them a sound pecking and send them scurrying back to the pile. There was plenty of room on the roost and frankly even half grown they were of equal stature to their new sisters, it was just their own cowardly natures that kept them from claiming a spot on the perch. But nature has a way of working things out; they do not call it a “pecking order” without reason.
I knew that chickens had to establish this chain of command and so I sat back and tried to relax. We are diligent chicken keepers and I knew no one would starve or not have enough to drink so I tried to stay calm as Mama and Helga basically bullied and tormented Stacy-chicken, Miranda-chicken, Gina-chicken and Autumn-chicken. I would give them pep talks as I sat on the porch telling them that they were big girls and to stand up for themselves. Well I must have been a little too convincing.
They BJGs are now much larger than the RIRs and as the weeks progressed they seemed to begin to realize this, at least as it pertained to Helga. Fred and I began to notice at first that Helga no longer chased them around the yard squawking at the top of her lungs. Then one day, as I was standing on the porch throwing stale bread crumbs to the girls I watched as Gina-chicken (the smallest of the BJGs) ran up and snatched a piece of bread from Helga’s mouth. I looked on, mouth agape, expecting a trip to the emergency vet when Helga pecked her eyes out. Instead Helga put her head down and scratched away looking for some other snack.
I thought it had to be a fluke, Helga was my back yard bully. She was the kid who waited in the playground after school to shake down the others for their lunch money! But it was not. As time wore on I watched Helga slip from high and mighty (second in command only to Mama) to low man on the totem pole. All of the BJGs would take her snacks or run at her like they wanted to flog her. Poor Helga. As I went out, to shut them in the coop one night, I shone the flashlight in only to discover all of the BJGs on the high roost, Mama in the nest box and poor Helga relegated to the low roost all alone.
Ok, I am always going to root for the underdog. I do not know why, something in my DNA is hardwired to go straight for the most pitiful rescue in the bunch. Helga has quickly moved into first place in my heart. I sit on the porch and talk to her and hand feed her special treats I sneak out in my pockets. In return she sits beside me and croons and clucks and generally seems pretty content to eat from my hand where the others cannot steal her goodies.
Mama, mysteriously, has remained in her queenly domain as head of household. This is so strange to me because she is the smallest of all six, even smaller than Helga. But old girl is in charge and don’t you forget it. They are all terrified of her and I really do not know why. I guess it just goes to prove attitude can carry you far in this world. If you believe it you can make it happen. Mama believes she is in charge, she carries herself like she is in charge and so therefore she is in charge. Women with low self-esteem could learn a lot from a chicken coop.
Although at the moment Helga gets special treatment because she has slipped to the bottom of the pecking order you should not feel too sorry for her. Remember, although she may at the bottom of the chicken list they all still consider themselves to be far above our dog Louie on the food chain. Not one of them is afraid now to walk up to him and peck him on the toes or steal bites of his food. Poor Louie, sixty pound sissy!
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
I think the smelly/dirty part comes from people who grew up keeping too many chickens in too close of quarters. We have six chickens in a large coop with a sizable roosting area and yard. During the day the chickens free range in our back yard. The smell although somewhat barn like inside the coop is neither offensive nor atrocious. They just smell like animals. I can tell you this they smell a site better than our dog (or us) after four days on the trail.
As for stupid they most certainly are not. I am not nominating them for awards in science or literature anytime soon but they are definitely smart enough to figure out who likes them, from where their food comes, where they go to sleep at night, who is in charge and, most importantly, that cute behavior will get you rewarded with special treats from the kitchen! They also establish a distinct, but fluctuating, social hierarchy that is not unlike junior high school girls and includes not only other chickens but family pets of other species and human family members also.
When we began our chicken keeping endeavor, you probably remember, we started out with four Black Jersey Giant hatchlings. Now I will admit those poor little peeps were dumb. They were terrified of everything and adorably clumsy to boot. They grew into gangly pre-teens that awkwardly tripped over each other and their own feet. They would flap their way out of the box only to find themselves lost somewhere in the nether world between the box and the bathtub wall, peeping their little hearts out in pure terror.
They did not seem to gain much intelligence as we moved them from the bathtub to the coop. In fact they seemed to get slightly dumber as it took days on end to teach them how to use the ramp to get up into their sleeping area every night. We would have to climb into the pen and chase them round and round until we caught them and put them one by one up the ramp and into the coop. This was an especially comical routine because for every two chicks we put up one would fall back through the hole only to be chased all over again. After several nights of this they finally realized they could move up and down between the upstairs and yard of the coop, then their new sisters moved in.
My four little petrified BJGs were immediately cowed by their bigger (fully grown) Rhode Island Red sisters that moved in. Mama and Helga, the two RIRs Fred and I adopted from my aunt, immediately ruled the roost. Mama as the oldest and most established laying hen was large and in charge. Helga deferred only to Mama and Stacy-chicken, Miranda-chicken, Gina-chicken and Autumn-chicken lived in abject terror of both of them and pretty much everything else that went bump in the night (or day).
The BJGs had been relegated to the upstairs of the coop where temperatures reached well above one-hundred degrees, I am sure. I was forced to make multiple trips out every day to switch their water for cooler and to make sure that none of their little panting selves had killed over from heat stroke. They would only come down into the yard for brief moments and then only coaxed by me climbing in the coop and sitting in a chair hand feeding them raisins while they huddled underneath my seat like some kind of giant plastic mother hen. As soon as I left the yard they rushed back into the upstairs to pant and huddle some more.
Mama and Helga for their part were mad as, pardon the expression, old wet hens and meaner than rattle snakes. They did not like me, they hated the dog and they terrorized the little half grown pullets, pecking them and pulling their feathers out as they ran past in heart stopping horror. I was about half sick to my stomach and considered returning my aunt’s two birds on several occasions. But we stuck it out and my how the worm has turned.
Eventually, after keeping them in the coop all together for about a week, we decided that it was time to let them out to free-range. We had not planned on letting our original four out for another several weeks but the RIRs my aunt gave us had been used to foraging and were doubly unhappy to find themselves prisoners in a strange land with four unpleasantly nervous new compatriots. We figured if we were going to have any success at all it would hinge on the chicken’s happiness.
We let them all out and that seemed to ease tensions enormously. They only exception to this was bed time. We placed two large roosts inside the coop but only Helga would perch. Mama slept in the nesting box (and still does) and the four BJGs slept huddled in fright by the door to the yard. Every time they would get up and cross the coop Mama or Helga would give them a sound pecking and send them scurrying back to the pile. There was plenty of room on the roost and frankly even half grown they were of equal stature to their new sisters, it was just their own cowardly natures that kept them from claiming a spot on the perch. But nature has a way of working things out; they do not call it a “pecking order” without reason.
I knew that chickens had to establish this chain of command and so I sat back and tried to relax. We are diligent chicken keepers and I knew no one would starve or not have enough to drink so I tried to stay calm as Mama and Helga basically bullied and tormented Stacy-chicken, Miranda-chicken, Gina-chicken and Autumn-chicken. I would give them pep talks as I sat on the porch telling them that they were big girls and to stand up for themselves. Well I must have been a little too convincing.
They BJGs are now much larger than the RIRs and as the weeks progressed they seemed to begin to realize this, at least as it pertained to Helga. Fred and I began to notice at first that Helga no longer chased them around the yard squawking at the top of her lungs. Then one day, as I was standing on the porch throwing stale bread crumbs to the girls I watched as Gina-chicken (the smallest of the BJGs) ran up and snatched a piece of bread from Helga’s mouth. I looked on, mouth agape, expecting a trip to the emergency vet when Helga pecked her eyes out. Instead Helga put her head down and scratched away looking for some other snack.
I thought it had to be a fluke, Helga was my back yard bully. She was the kid who waited in the playground after school to shake down the others for their lunch money! But it was not. As time wore on I watched Helga slip from high and mighty (second in command only to Mama) to low man on the totem pole. All of the BJGs would take her snacks or run at her like they wanted to flog her. Poor Helga. As I went out, to shut them in the coop one night, I shone the flashlight in only to discover all of the BJGs on the high roost, Mama in the nest box and poor Helga relegated to the low roost all alone.
Ok, I am always going to root for the underdog. I do not know why, something in my DNA is hardwired to go straight for the most pitiful rescue in the bunch. Helga has quickly moved into first place in my heart. I sit on the porch and talk to her and hand feed her special treats I sneak out in my pockets. In return she sits beside me and croons and clucks and generally seems pretty content to eat from my hand where the others cannot steal her goodies.
Mama, mysteriously, has remained in her queenly domain as head of household. This is so strange to me because she is the smallest of all six, even smaller than Helga. But old girl is in charge and don’t you forget it. They are all terrified of her and I really do not know why. I guess it just goes to prove attitude can carry you far in this world. If you believe it you can make it happen. Mama believes she is in charge, she carries herself like she is in charge and so therefore she is in charge. Women with low self-esteem could learn a lot from a chicken coop.
Although at the moment Helga gets special treatment because she has slipped to the bottom of the pecking order you should not feel too sorry for her. Remember, although she may at the bottom of the chicken list they all still consider themselves to be far above our dog Louie on the food chain. Not one of them is afraid now to walk up to him and peck him on the toes or steal bites of his food. Poor Louie, sixty pound sissy!
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Blood, Sweat and Pickled Corn
Today was probably not the best choice of days to pickle the corn but I was seriously running up against the deadline of four dozen ear of ruined corn. They had been sitting in my refrigerator for several days taking up most of the available space and generally looking a little sadder every day. I had several billion things to do this morning including catch the bus to town so the ideal cool temperatures of the before dawn hours passed me by and I was stuck firing up the stove in the early afternoon as temperatures outside crept above one hundred and temperatures inside were not much better.
I finished cleaning out the crock and set the water on the stove to boil to cook the ears. Sunday my friend’s mom informed me that the ears were pickled whole and the kernels not cut from the cob until the pickling process was complete. I put Sarah on salt dissolving duty and I manned the boiling water. I can tell you that if pickling and canning are going to become part of our rituals then we are going to have to invest in some larger pots and measuring devices.
The ratio of salt to water is one gallon of water per one cup of salt. The largest measuring bowl I had held two quarts (there are four quarts in a gallon if I am not mistaken) so Sarah dissolved a cup of salt in to two quarts of water poured that into the crock as I placed the corn in the crock. For every bowl of salt water we added one bowl of plain tap. My largest pot would only cook about six ear of corn at a time so it took quite a while to cook all four dozen ear. Needless to say I think Sarah and I are now significantly thinner due to water weight loss. I am pretty sure I sweated off at least ten pounds crouching over the stove and every time I looked at her she had sweat pouring off her face in rivers as she diligently dissolved the pickling salt into the hot tap water.
After we had finally loaded the pillow case in the crock full of corn and the whole project covered in salt water we sealed it off with a plastic bag clip. My friend’s mom said that if you covered the pillow case with another plastic bag full of water before you put the plate on this would create a seal. I had a turkey bag from last thanksgiving so we filled it up with water and tied it off. This created a mess instead of a seal. I guess the crock was too full and it just caused salt water to slosh all over the kitchen floor. So we took the plastic bag off and put the plate directly on the pillow case.
Then came the problem of how to weight it down. I had saved an empty large pickle jar for just that purpose. Eventually we decided to fill it with rocks from the driveway. We filled it up, cranked the lid on tight and sat it on the plate. WAHLA! The plate pressed down on the corn and the water came up around the pickle jar and over the plate about four inches. Now everything I have read and everything people have told me seems to point to needing at least two inches of brine over the corn at any given time so I think four inches is a nice buffer. We put the other pillow case over the whole thing to keep the bugs out.
That leaves us with one last teeny problem…um…five gallon stone crocks filled with corn and brine are not light! I tried to scoot it and sloshed some more salt water on the floor. Since leaving it in the middle of my kitchen floor until January is not really an option I am not entirely sure where I should put it or how to get it there. I have been told two completely polar opposite things about the storage. One person says to leave it in a cool dark place and the other said if it is too cool it will not ferment so warmer is better. Well warm I can do, there are very few cool spots in our house. We do not have a cellar and I don’t want to put anything we are going to eat out in the barn so I am not sure where to put the crock (never mind how to put it somewhere).
I guess that will have to wait until Fred gets home. I know between me and my beloved spaghetti arms there is no moving it from the kitchen without risking a serious mess. Ah, the struggles to get back to basics. I hope by January to have some decent pickled corn to can because if that whole container rots I cannot promise I will not have a full scale melt down. I tell you Sarah and I literally poured our hearts and sweat into this effort and we look forward to eating the rewards.
One last funny little aside: at my daughter’s expense I will point out the mentality of growing up in a totally fast food culture. In all reality even our home cooked meals never take more than a day or two at the most to come together. So as we stood over the crock wiggling the last pillow case down around its edges she said,
“ I’m anxious to try pickled corn.”
Me, “Well you only have to wait till January.”
Sarah, “January?!”
Me, “Yes, it has to ferment.”
Sarah, ”Well can’t we put it in the microwave or something?”
Oh yes folks, I want it and I want it now. Giggles!
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
I finished cleaning out the crock and set the water on the stove to boil to cook the ears. Sunday my friend’s mom informed me that the ears were pickled whole and the kernels not cut from the cob until the pickling process was complete. I put Sarah on salt dissolving duty and I manned the boiling water. I can tell you that if pickling and canning are going to become part of our rituals then we are going to have to invest in some larger pots and measuring devices.
The ratio of salt to water is one gallon of water per one cup of salt. The largest measuring bowl I had held two quarts (there are four quarts in a gallon if I am not mistaken) so Sarah dissolved a cup of salt in to two quarts of water poured that into the crock as I placed the corn in the crock. For every bowl of salt water we added one bowl of plain tap. My largest pot would only cook about six ear of corn at a time so it took quite a while to cook all four dozen ear. Needless to say I think Sarah and I are now significantly thinner due to water weight loss. I am pretty sure I sweated off at least ten pounds crouching over the stove and every time I looked at her she had sweat pouring off her face in rivers as she diligently dissolved the pickling salt into the hot tap water.
After we had finally loaded the pillow case in the crock full of corn and the whole project covered in salt water we sealed it off with a plastic bag clip. My friend’s mom said that if you covered the pillow case with another plastic bag full of water before you put the plate on this would create a seal. I had a turkey bag from last thanksgiving so we filled it up with water and tied it off. This created a mess instead of a seal. I guess the crock was too full and it just caused salt water to slosh all over the kitchen floor. So we took the plastic bag off and put the plate directly on the pillow case.
Then came the problem of how to weight it down. I had saved an empty large pickle jar for just that purpose. Eventually we decided to fill it with rocks from the driveway. We filled it up, cranked the lid on tight and sat it on the plate. WAHLA! The plate pressed down on the corn and the water came up around the pickle jar and over the plate about four inches. Now everything I have read and everything people have told me seems to point to needing at least two inches of brine over the corn at any given time so I think four inches is a nice buffer. We put the other pillow case over the whole thing to keep the bugs out.
That leaves us with one last teeny problem…um…five gallon stone crocks filled with corn and brine are not light! I tried to scoot it and sloshed some more salt water on the floor. Since leaving it in the middle of my kitchen floor until January is not really an option I am not entirely sure where I should put it or how to get it there. I have been told two completely polar opposite things about the storage. One person says to leave it in a cool dark place and the other said if it is too cool it will not ferment so warmer is better. Well warm I can do, there are very few cool spots in our house. We do not have a cellar and I don’t want to put anything we are going to eat out in the barn so I am not sure where to put the crock (never mind how to put it somewhere).
I guess that will have to wait until Fred gets home. I know between me and my beloved spaghetti arms there is no moving it from the kitchen without risking a serious mess. Ah, the struggles to get back to basics. I hope by January to have some decent pickled corn to can because if that whole container rots I cannot promise I will not have a full scale melt down. I tell you Sarah and I literally poured our hearts and sweat into this effort and we look forward to eating the rewards.
One last funny little aside: at my daughter’s expense I will point out the mentality of growing up in a totally fast food culture. In all reality even our home cooked meals never take more than a day or two at the most to come together. So as we stood over the crock wiggling the last pillow case down around its edges she said,
“ I’m anxious to try pickled corn.”
Me, “Well you only have to wait till January.”
Sarah, “January?!”
Me, “Yes, it has to ferment.”
Sarah, ”Well can’t we put it in the microwave or something?”
Oh yes folks, I want it and I want it now. Giggles!
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)