Repotting

Over Mother's Day weekend, Josh capitalized on the break in rainy weather. On Saturday, he planted our first round of Golden Beets and Red Chancery Carrots. We are planning on doing multiple plantings of both of these varieties. If all goes well, we will have enough carrots and beets to store for use throughout the winter months.

Mother's Day found us repotting our latest batch of seedlings in preparation for their move to our raised beds. This probably should have been completed a few days earlier but with the weather being so nice after quite a rainy spell, we spent most of our time off from work outside. After the dirt (and newspaper!) settled, we ended up with 12 Butternut Squash, 4 Boston Marrow Squash, 16 Straight Eight Cucumbers, 4 White Cucumbers, 12 Zucchini, 12 Summer Squash, and 12 Sunflowers. We had 10 Jiffy pots laying around the house so we used those up first but I handmade the 62 remaining pots using our PotMaker tool.  We are planning on storing and using more Zucchini than our other crops (I will perfect my zucchini bread this year!) so we will be doing another batch of 12 Zucchini in order to increase our output. Stay tuned!

Chickens

The chickens have become a very important part of our self-sufficiency goal. We have been selling a portion of our eggs and so far have been able to cover our operating expenses each month. We are averaging about 3-4 dozen eggs per week from our six hens. In June, we will be adding to our flock with the addition of six Barred Rock hens.

Here are some pictures of our girls causing trouble


hunting for some food

soaking up the sun

Steph's First Mini Book Review

Since I have been working in libraries in one capacity or another for just about half my lifetime now (how did that happen?!), I am quick to utilize all the wonderful resources that I have at my fingertips before shelling out one penny for anything like that!  I have hoped to include as a part of our blog some of the books that we find useful throughout the journey.  The first one that I have had the time to open and look at, even though it is probably not the first one we will utilize, is Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables by Mike & Nancy Bubel.  It's another rainy day and even though the skies are brightening, I was in the mood to finally crack this interlibrary loan book open so I could return it to the lending library by its due date!  We definitely have extra space in our basement (once I do a bit of organizing, that is!) so trying to create a space dedicated to food storage makes complete sense and would be a huge stride in the direction of our self-sufficiency goal.  In between requests from Charlotte and other household chores, I am getting the feeling that this is definitely a project that Josh and I can undertake and actually take at our own pace.  The authors not only introduce you to many different options for food storage, they suggest the type of crops that would make sense to grow for this purpose.  Chapter 15 was dedicated to "The Basement Cellar" and seems like it will come in the most handy for our particular situation.  The text is easy to read and there are helpful diagrams throughout.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in raising these type of crops and using natural storage to enjoy your harvest all year long!

A New Queen

We have experienced our first bee casualty! On Friday afternoon I inspected both hives to ensure that the queens were laying eggs and that everyone was working correctly. I have been nervous because one of the hives has shown much more activity on the outside with workers coming and going.

However, when I opened up what I thought was the weaker hive and pulled a frame out I saw something that made my afternoon....larva in the bottom of cells! This confirmed that the queen was out and laying eggs in the hive to increase it's size. I immediately pulled out each frame and located her walking around on an inner frame. After locating her I put that hive back together and went on to the other hive which has been showing so much more activity.

I opened up this hive with a bit more air of confidence (this one has had bees swarming everywhere), pulled my first frame, and saw capped honey/pollen being stored. This meant they were foraging and storing food but no larva were present on this frame. My first thought was "no biggee, the queen will just be on the next frame". I pulled the next frame out and saw more capped honey and pollen being stored. This process continued for all 10 frames until I recognized that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach...The queen was dead...

I immediately called Rick Cooper at Bees-N-ME and after talking with him decided to secure his last queen for purchase. Saturday morning I picked up the new queen and brought her home.


New Queen with worker attendants

Introducing a new queen can be tricky, and to help improve the odds that she will be accepted I sprayed down each frame of bees with the sugar water solution mixed with vanilla extract. This masks any scent from the old queen and helps create a smooth succession. Now the waiting game begins again.....


Bees feeding on 1:1 sugar water solution