One's picked up along the left of the Kauni cardigan and I'm noodling along on it.
There had been some discussion about whether or not I wanted a zip or buttons on this sweater, but I found some lovely pewter buttons with bees on them and thought it might be fun to have those, since they had a nice geometric feel to them, to go with the squares on the sweater.
Busy couple of days. I got to play with someone else's bees, and got dinner out of it -- thank you so much, Esperanza! Finally did some gardening, and I'm looking forward to finishing those bands. Slow, but I see progress on the horizon. So much to knit, so little time, such a messy house to do it in.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Specificity is a Good Thing
But first, a picture of all of the past few day's snow peas, just before they got stirred into tonight's stir fry. Yum. I still don't wish I'd planted too many more, but maybe enough to put some in the freezer would have been smart. The kids really love these.
This year, I was going to go all Cynthia Sandberg and plant tomatoes like she does at Love Apple Farm. On Sunday, I stopped by my favorite meat counter and chatted up the butcher about fish heads. Of course that led us right to tomatoes, how much water citrus needs, and homeschooling! Wordsworth was right, it is all in a grain of sand. He said he'd get them for me by Monday, so I held off on planting the tomatoes, two of which had shot up to about 12" high and were thinking seriously of blossoming.
Monday, I stopped by again. "I forgot!" he said, and called his supplier, "The truck is gone? Well, the truck is gone. She's standing at my counter with a package of tofu." That last was with real disdain. He assured me he'd get them for me by Tuesday. I had hoped to put those tomatoes, lovingly nurtered from seeds, in the ground because a storm front, possibly the last one before a long, dry season, was coming through. Instead, I just schlepped the tomatoes out in their upside-down yogurt containers, figuring that I'd give them a taste of what was coming. Also, I had people coming to talk about raised bed gardening, and didn't want it to look all empty. Besides, there is always plenty to do.
With a rainstorm coming, I planned to prep and seed the corn bed, and get the cut flower bed ready for Ellie to plant. Got it half done!
Today, after a serious homeschool morning and a brief garden tour -- it was pouring rain by the end of it -- finally it was time to pick up the fish heads.
I trotted brightly to the counter -- "Got 'em?"
He said, "Let's party!" and I thought, "Do we know how to live? Fish heads!"
And then I got to go all the way back into the storage cooler, to see . . . a two foot long styrofoam box, filled with Kraken heads. Seriously, fish heads the size of mine.
David said, "This one is a Ling Cod, these are salmon, this one's a yellowtail, and I think, yes, this one is a flounder."
"I plan to put in about ten tomatoes!"
So we agreed that I would take only enough for ten tomatoes, and I watched as he fired up the bandsaw and cut that gorgeous Ling Cod head into pieces for my tomatoes. Ridiculous, I thought, too bad I don't like fish broth, because that was a lot of good eating going to waste. I need to spread the word among local gardeners that he's got tomato food in his freezer. And, that next time, he and I need to be much more specific about what we mean by "fish heads." Or that I need to find a free source of fish, because $8.00 is more than I want to pay for fish bits to stick in the ground, really.
Here's the set up: saved, washed and smashed eggshells from our chickens; a bit of organic fertilizer; a bottle of aspirin from old pregnancies; a Principe Borghese plum tomato in its yogurt container (turned upside down with the bottom cut off so I can just pop the top off of the bottom and slip it right into the hole); and a bag of former fish head, now in parts.
I dug a pretty deep hole, although as usual, I could have gone a bit deeper. The important thing to note in this picture is the depth of the wet soil. This is fluffy, amended garden soil. The rain gauge showed 1/2" at this point, and this is all that was wet:
Only about 1/2" deep. I'm definitely going to have to stay on top of watering this summer plus use heavy mulch if I want to eat anything.
Finally, bottom leaves clipped off, the tomato nestles in there. As I think back, I put them in exactly the wrong places. The line of tomatoes nearest the edge is the paste Principe Borghese, with the lovely Sungold cherries more in the center of the bed. Since I want Ellie to be able to graze through the garden, I should have put the Sungolds right by the edge. I don't think I can face digging them up and moving them, although if it's lovely part of tomorrow I may just do that. My arms can reach, but she's only 9 -- it's more difficult for her, and nearly impossible for her little sister. I'd rather not tempt them into standing in the beds!
This year, I was going to go all Cynthia Sandberg and plant tomatoes like she does at Love Apple Farm. On Sunday, I stopped by my favorite meat counter and chatted up the butcher about fish heads. Of course that led us right to tomatoes, how much water citrus needs, and homeschooling! Wordsworth was right, it is all in a grain of sand. He said he'd get them for me by Monday, so I held off on planting the tomatoes, two of which had shot up to about 12" high and were thinking seriously of blossoming.
Monday, I stopped by again. "I forgot!" he said, and called his supplier, "The truck is gone? Well, the truck is gone. She's standing at my counter with a package of tofu." That last was with real disdain. He assured me he'd get them for me by Tuesday. I had hoped to put those tomatoes, lovingly nurtered from seeds, in the ground because a storm front, possibly the last one before a long, dry season, was coming through. Instead, I just schlepped the tomatoes out in their upside-down yogurt containers, figuring that I'd give them a taste of what was coming. Also, I had people coming to talk about raised bed gardening, and didn't want it to look all empty. Besides, there is always plenty to do.
With a rainstorm coming, I planned to prep and seed the corn bed, and get the cut flower bed ready for Ellie to plant. Got it half done!
Today, after a serious homeschool morning and a brief garden tour -- it was pouring rain by the end of it -- finally it was time to pick up the fish heads.
I trotted brightly to the counter -- "Got 'em?"
He said, "Let's party!" and I thought, "Do we know how to live? Fish heads!"
And then I got to go all the way back into the storage cooler, to see . . . a two foot long styrofoam box, filled with Kraken heads. Seriously, fish heads the size of mine.
David said, "This one is a Ling Cod, these are salmon, this one's a yellowtail, and I think, yes, this one is a flounder."
"I plan to put in about ten tomatoes!"
So we agreed that I would take only enough for ten tomatoes, and I watched as he fired up the bandsaw and cut that gorgeous Ling Cod head into pieces for my tomatoes. Ridiculous, I thought, too bad I don't like fish broth, because that was a lot of good eating going to waste. I need to spread the word among local gardeners that he's got tomato food in his freezer. And, that next time, he and I need to be much more specific about what we mean by "fish heads." Or that I need to find a free source of fish, because $8.00 is more than I want to pay for fish bits to stick in the ground, really.
Here's the set up: saved, washed and smashed eggshells from our chickens; a bit of organic fertilizer; a bottle of aspirin from old pregnancies; a Principe Borghese plum tomato in its yogurt container (turned upside down with the bottom cut off so I can just pop the top off of the bottom and slip it right into the hole); and a bag of former fish head, now in parts.
I dug a pretty deep hole, although as usual, I could have gone a bit deeper. The important thing to note in this picture is the depth of the wet soil. This is fluffy, amended garden soil. The rain gauge showed 1/2" at this point, and this is all that was wet:
Only about 1/2" deep. I'm definitely going to have to stay on top of watering this summer plus use heavy mulch if I want to eat anything.
Finally, bottom leaves clipped off, the tomato nestles in there. As I think back, I put them in exactly the wrong places. The line of tomatoes nearest the edge is the paste Principe Borghese, with the lovely Sungold cherries more in the center of the bed. Since I want Ellie to be able to graze through the garden, I should have put the Sungolds right by the edge. I don't think I can face digging them up and moving them, although if it's lovely part of tomorrow I may just do that. My arms can reach, but she's only 9 -- it's more difficult for her, and nearly impossible for her little sister. I'd rather not tempt them into standing in the beds!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Always something to do
This weekend I got a few more things done in the garden. First, I took out the plants in the way and set up my new flat tomato cages. Storing the tall, 6x6" square wire cylinders I made out of concrete reinforcing wire had proved totally impossible for barnless me. Instead, this year, I'm trying to "cage" tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and tomatillos by setting up flat panels of the same wire, held up with three rebars each, in parallel lines. I'll put the plants in between them, and set sticks and things across the lines, to make individual cages. If I have to, I'll use pieces of old t-shirts and tie plants up. After I'm done, they'll store flat in the garage or leaning against a fence.
I used some old 1/4" soak hose and set up an experimental irrigation system. I have an old five gallon bucket with a little 1/4" attachment on it, and I'm hoping that sitting on the edge of a bed will provide enough pressure to push water through the hoses for a short amount of time. That way, I could both use recycled water and not have to stand with a hose. Must try that out before I plant!
Stopping by the meat market, I ordered a bag of fish heads from my favorite butcher. We also had a long conversation about tomatoes, gardens, and homeschooling, so that was a real treat. I'll drop a fish head into each hole before I plant the tomato, then follow up with a handful of crushed eggshell and apparently, an aspirin or two and some organic fertilizer. I don't have everything, but I got these ideas from the Love Apple Farm blog. I'll side dress with manure and rabbit poop a couple of times over the season.
Mulched the newly-planted pole (for which I put up poles and strings) and bush beans with hay, as they were drying out in the warm, windy weather. I had planted 25 Scarlet Runner beans, 20 Romano pole beans, 15 Christmas Limas, 50 Marrow fat bush beans,and 62 Taylor's Dwarf Horticultural bush beans. I'm seeing tiny rootlets on the ones I check, but keeping them wet is a real challenge.
Dug, amended, and raked smooth the corn bed. The irrigation experiment will have a huge impact on this bed, since it's 6'x9' and difficult to reach across. The True Greek Oregano is perking along in it, though. Reminded me I need to make spaghetti sauce.
I also double-dug the area my second daughter wants for a flower bed. We always grow flowers in the vegetable garden, just for fun, but I'd love for her to have a cutting bed. She likes to sell flowers at a table in our front yard, and to give them and cut arrangements for our dining table. I'll finish amending and smoothing that this week, so she can transplant the zinnias.
Keeping the baby plants downstairs watered is proving a challenge too. I guess we all need to keep hydrated.
Checked the bees again today. They've taken all the syrup, and are finally drawing comb in the super. I guess I'll keep feeding until they stop. Lots of eggs and brood, and some hatched-out queen cells. Perhaps the swarm was from my hives. They look poised for a population boom. I dusted with powdered sugar. Still need to build new hive stands.
Speaking of building, must build new nest boxes and perches for the big hens and a junior perch for the chicks. I think one chick must have mites or something -- she needs some sort of treatment.
I'm excited -- the garden feels as though it's turning a corner of some sort, rounding into the real productivity of late spring/early summer. I love the soft evenings of work out there and watching my winter dreams become reality.
And I do plan to take more pictures.
I used some old 1/4" soak hose and set up an experimental irrigation system. I have an old five gallon bucket with a little 1/4" attachment on it, and I'm hoping that sitting on the edge of a bed will provide enough pressure to push water through the hoses for a short amount of time. That way, I could both use recycled water and not have to stand with a hose. Must try that out before I plant!
Stopping by the meat market, I ordered a bag of fish heads from my favorite butcher. We also had a long conversation about tomatoes, gardens, and homeschooling, so that was a real treat. I'll drop a fish head into each hole before I plant the tomato, then follow up with a handful of crushed eggshell and apparently, an aspirin or two and some organic fertilizer. I don't have everything, but I got these ideas from the Love Apple Farm blog. I'll side dress with manure and rabbit poop a couple of times over the season.
Mulched the newly-planted pole (for which I put up poles and strings) and bush beans with hay, as they were drying out in the warm, windy weather. I had planted 25 Scarlet Runner beans, 20 Romano pole beans, 15 Christmas Limas, 50 Marrow fat bush beans,and 62 Taylor's Dwarf Horticultural bush beans. I'm seeing tiny rootlets on the ones I check, but keeping them wet is a real challenge.
Dug, amended, and raked smooth the corn bed. The irrigation experiment will have a huge impact on this bed, since it's 6'x9' and difficult to reach across. The True Greek Oregano is perking along in it, though. Reminded me I need to make spaghetti sauce.
I also double-dug the area my second daughter wants for a flower bed. We always grow flowers in the vegetable garden, just for fun, but I'd love for her to have a cutting bed. She likes to sell flowers at a table in our front yard, and to give them and cut arrangements for our dining table. I'll finish amending and smoothing that this week, so she can transplant the zinnias.
Keeping the baby plants downstairs watered is proving a challenge too. I guess we all need to keep hydrated.
Checked the bees again today. They've taken all the syrup, and are finally drawing comb in the super. I guess I'll keep feeding until they stop. Lots of eggs and brood, and some hatched-out queen cells. Perhaps the swarm was from my hives. They look poised for a population boom. I dusted with powdered sugar. Still need to build new hive stands.
Speaking of building, must build new nest boxes and perches for the big hens and a junior perch for the chicks. I think one chick must have mites or something -- she needs some sort of treatment.
I'm excited -- the garden feels as though it's turning a corner of some sort, rounding into the real productivity of late spring/early summer. I love the soft evenings of work out there and watching my winter dreams become reality.
And I do plan to take more pictures.
What's it all worth?
Big question when it comes to gardening. I know (because we keep pretty tight records) that my family of 6 individuals eats a lot of food, both in volume and in dollars. Of course, money isn't the only way to measure what goes on in our yard. There's the thrill I get from doing it all, what it means to me to be knit into my community -- there's a couple of "tea in the garden" meetings happening here this week, where I talk new and unsure gardeners into giving it a shot -- and the hours such as the one tonight, after dinner, when my eldest daughter and I worked in the garden and talked, in the gloaming, our favorite time of day in our favorite time of year. She listed all of her favorite foods, and noted that they all happened in summer. Since we eat pretty seasonally, her year gets better and better until the thrilling culmination of Halloween, foodwise.
But Eric and I have been talking about what it would be like to figure out more closely where the dollars do stack up in this project. He insists that I want to sort of amortize in the big costs, so things like the chicken coop, the raised beds and chicken yard that were built by hired hands, the fruit trees, etc.
The fruit trees ranged in price from part of the yard cost for the plums, Katy apricot, Anna apple, Fuji apple, and some rasperries to roughly $20 or so for another apricot, to under $10 for each of five more rasperries and a boysenberry, to free for the blackberries from Denise's yard. to almost $80 each for the three espaliered apples in front and the persimmon tree. The three citrus trees were bought years ago, and were probably $30-$40 each. The true Bay Laurel and rosemary have been around for years. The rosemary was a gift from our perpetual realtor, the Bay was a present from me to me. They are all just bearing for the first time this year. All told, we have approximately $600-800 worth of trees in the front and back yards. Hm! That's more than I expected, and I'm grateful for every one of them.
Bee equipment is easily cost based at $400 or more right now, from starting kit three years ago to the powdered sugar I bought yesterday to sprinkle over them. Local honey is going for $13 a pound now, so I'll keep pricing it as we go along. I know the first year we kept bees, we got at least 40 pounds of honey, and have gotten something every year. Records, records, we need records. The bees have, with one exception, been swarms, with the only cost my time and gas and a box to put them in.
Best I can figure out, the beds/irrigation/chicken yard were about $2500, as part of a bigger job. I'd have to find out the cost of redwood 2x12x10s, because that's what the beds are made of for material costs, and then we paid for labor, of course. If we end up taking down our redwood deck, I'll salvage that lumber and use it for future beds and projects. This first round at this house, however, wasn't salvaged. The chicken coop we built and designed ourselves and was, we agreed, paid for in eggs over the past few years.
Chicken feed, however, has been running us approximately $20/bag. We're going through a bag perhaps in a month and a half, now, with only 4 hens. Eggs are $2.79/dozen at Trader Joe's for free range, non-organic eggs, which is a fair comparison to ours (although I bet they're happier than what passes for free-range hens in production). Just in March, with 82 eggs, that's about $19 worth of eggs -- just over the cost of feed. The chickens also eat a lot of scraps that I wouldn't necessarily compost, and we eat them sometimes. All part of the calculations.
I spent $18.56 on the part of the seed order that showed up from Seeds of Change this week. Still to come is at least that much, possibly more, because I ordered soil builder mixes. Seeds will last a couple of years.
Then, at Home Depot, I bought a fairly expensive amount of things (and have lost my itemized reciept). I know that for over $100, I got rebar and 6x6" wire for my new tomato cage idea, a couple of trellises for climbing flowers, a potted Thunbergia, three varieties of peppers I haven't the seeds for (Jalapeno, Ancho/Poblano, and one other variety I'm too tired to go down and look at), a single Early Girl tomato, a single eggplant, a bag of compost, and something else. Nearly all of that cost was going to go into the garden.
Another trip to the feed store resulted in a $57 bill. With that was bedding for the baby chicks, a new baby chick waterer, two bales of straw for mulch, a bag of layer feed and a bag of scratch for a chicken treat. The chicks were $18.
I get about 6 5 gallon buckets of rabbit poop and used rabbit food/litter from a friend every month. I notice that the beds that are amended with that hold water better than the non-amended ones. I have no idea how to value that, dollar-wise. Kindness and relationship-wise, I find it very valuable!
Water is an ongoing concern here in my area. So far, we've gotten by with recycled bath tub water - hooray for siphons - and with good mulch and good amendment, I'm hoping that we won't end up using "new" water for the outside this year. The three rain water catchment totes were $120 each, for a total cost of $360 plus about $20 in hardware to hook them up.
So far, since I started keeping records? Well, let's see:
Those 8 pounds of kale would sell at my produce store -- and I'm only pricing where I'd buy currently -- at $2.29 for a 1/2# bunch. I've added a couple of pounds onto that, and that brings the total to $22.90 for kale. We eat a lot of this, at least 2-3 times a week. Yum!
Snow peas are $5.99 a pound there, and I've harvested a whole 5/8 ounce. Lest anyone (Tricia!) snicker, that's from one square foot of snow peas, about 12 plants. I don't like picking them, and my second daughter eats them for outside snacks when she gets to them, so it's a miracle we have any. They get fought over in stir fries. That 5/8 ounce translates into a fairly respectable $3.71.
Leaf lettuce is $1.99 a head. I've harvested (and eaten, almost singlehandedly) 16 heads, so $31.84 of lettuce so far.
Carrots, of which we've harvested roughly a pound, are more expensive with their tops on. This of course makes no sense, because the tops expire moisture out of the carrot, but they look nice. $2.99 a pound for bunched carrots.
The 40 baby leeks I pulled to make room for the tomatoes soon to come had no direct equivalent at the store. Big leeks were only something like $1.49 a pound, but green baby garlic was $6.00 a pound. I figured cute baby leeks would probably be about $5 a pound, and those babies were 3/4 of a pound. $3.75 for those, which means I might not grow leeks again - they take an enormous amount of time, and the resultant product isn't so far superior to store bought that I want to give up my ground for that, unlike tomatoes and broccoli and kale.
Two limes, almost 1/2 pound, will have to wait until I find my notes for their cost. I remember being surprised at how expensive they were to buy.
Then there's the wild amount of free food that comes our way. I'm part of a local fruit exchange and get lemons and oranges and other fruit in season -- haven't valued that except for fun and deliciousness, but I'm certainly not buying lemons, either. We have herbs as landscaping. I don't buy sage or oregano or mint -- they were all about $2 plants, and have given far more than that by now.
I obviously need to hook into Eric's capacity for number management. He's not a gardener, but he can manipulate a spreadsheet like nobody's business. I'm flummoxed by the price changes over a season, as a fruit or vegetable becomes more available, and just don't think in this way. I am curious, however, about how this will stack up over a full year. And those answers don't come because I wax rhapsodic about my soil or watch the baby beans anxiously. I'm amazed at how much of this comes down to record keeping. Sigh.
But Eric and I have been talking about what it would be like to figure out more closely where the dollars do stack up in this project. He insists that I want to sort of amortize in the big costs, so things like the chicken coop, the raised beds and chicken yard that were built by hired hands, the fruit trees, etc.
The fruit trees ranged in price from part of the yard cost for the plums, Katy apricot, Anna apple, Fuji apple, and some rasperries to roughly $20 or so for another apricot, to under $10 for each of five more rasperries and a boysenberry, to free for the blackberries from Denise's yard. to almost $80 each for the three espaliered apples in front and the persimmon tree. The three citrus trees were bought years ago, and were probably $30-$40 each. The true Bay Laurel and rosemary have been around for years. The rosemary was a gift from our perpetual realtor, the Bay was a present from me to me. They are all just bearing for the first time this year. All told, we have approximately $600-800 worth of trees in the front and back yards. Hm! That's more than I expected, and I'm grateful for every one of them.
Bee equipment is easily cost based at $400 or more right now, from starting kit three years ago to the powdered sugar I bought yesterday to sprinkle over them. Local honey is going for $13 a pound now, so I'll keep pricing it as we go along. I know the first year we kept bees, we got at least 40 pounds of honey, and have gotten something every year. Records, records, we need records. The bees have, with one exception, been swarms, with the only cost my time and gas and a box to put them in.
Best I can figure out, the beds/irrigation/chicken yard were about $2500, as part of a bigger job. I'd have to find out the cost of redwood 2x12x10s, because that's what the beds are made of for material costs, and then we paid for labor, of course. If we end up taking down our redwood deck, I'll salvage that lumber and use it for future beds and projects. This first round at this house, however, wasn't salvaged. The chicken coop we built and designed ourselves and was, we agreed, paid for in eggs over the past few years.
Chicken feed, however, has been running us approximately $20/bag. We're going through a bag perhaps in a month and a half, now, with only 4 hens. Eggs are $2.79/dozen at Trader Joe's for free range, non-organic eggs, which is a fair comparison to ours (although I bet they're happier than what passes for free-range hens in production). Just in March, with 82 eggs, that's about $19 worth of eggs -- just over the cost of feed. The chickens also eat a lot of scraps that I wouldn't necessarily compost, and we eat them sometimes. All part of the calculations.
I spent $18.56 on the part of the seed order that showed up from Seeds of Change this week. Still to come is at least that much, possibly more, because I ordered soil builder mixes. Seeds will last a couple of years.
Then, at Home Depot, I bought a fairly expensive amount of things (and have lost my itemized reciept). I know that for over $100, I got rebar and 6x6" wire for my new tomato cage idea, a couple of trellises for climbing flowers, a potted Thunbergia, three varieties of peppers I haven't the seeds for (Jalapeno, Ancho/Poblano, and one other variety I'm too tired to go down and look at), a single Early Girl tomato, a single eggplant, a bag of compost, and something else. Nearly all of that cost was going to go into the garden.
Another trip to the feed store resulted in a $57 bill. With that was bedding for the baby chicks, a new baby chick waterer, two bales of straw for mulch, a bag of layer feed and a bag of scratch for a chicken treat. The chicks were $18.
I get about 6 5 gallon buckets of rabbit poop and used rabbit food/litter from a friend every month. I notice that the beds that are amended with that hold water better than the non-amended ones. I have no idea how to value that, dollar-wise. Kindness and relationship-wise, I find it very valuable!
Water is an ongoing concern here in my area. So far, we've gotten by with recycled bath tub water - hooray for siphons - and with good mulch and good amendment, I'm hoping that we won't end up using "new" water for the outside this year. The three rain water catchment totes were $120 each, for a total cost of $360 plus about $20 in hardware to hook them up.
So far, since I started keeping records? Well, let's see:
Those 8 pounds of kale would sell at my produce store -- and I'm only pricing where I'd buy currently -- at $2.29 for a 1/2# bunch. I've added a couple of pounds onto that, and that brings the total to $22.90 for kale. We eat a lot of this, at least 2-3 times a week. Yum!
Snow peas are $5.99 a pound there, and I've harvested a whole 5/8 ounce. Lest anyone (Tricia!) snicker, that's from one square foot of snow peas, about 12 plants. I don't like picking them, and my second daughter eats them for outside snacks when she gets to them, so it's a miracle we have any. They get fought over in stir fries. That 5/8 ounce translates into a fairly respectable $3.71.
Leaf lettuce is $1.99 a head. I've harvested (and eaten, almost singlehandedly) 16 heads, so $31.84 of lettuce so far.
Carrots, of which we've harvested roughly a pound, are more expensive with their tops on. This of course makes no sense, because the tops expire moisture out of the carrot, but they look nice. $2.99 a pound for bunched carrots.
The 40 baby leeks I pulled to make room for the tomatoes soon to come had no direct equivalent at the store. Big leeks were only something like $1.49 a pound, but green baby garlic was $6.00 a pound. I figured cute baby leeks would probably be about $5 a pound, and those babies were 3/4 of a pound. $3.75 for those, which means I might not grow leeks again - they take an enormous amount of time, and the resultant product isn't so far superior to store bought that I want to give up my ground for that, unlike tomatoes and broccoli and kale.
Two limes, almost 1/2 pound, will have to wait until I find my notes for their cost. I remember being surprised at how expensive they were to buy.
Then there's the wild amount of free food that comes our way. I'm part of a local fruit exchange and get lemons and oranges and other fruit in season -- haven't valued that except for fun and deliciousness, but I'm certainly not buying lemons, either. We have herbs as landscaping. I don't buy sage or oregano or mint -- they were all about $2 plants, and have given far more than that by now.
I obviously need to hook into Eric's capacity for number management. He's not a gardener, but he can manipulate a spreadsheet like nobody's business. I'm flummoxed by the price changes over a season, as a fruit or vegetable becomes more available, and just don't think in this way. I am curious, however, about how this will stack up over a full year. And those answers don't come because I wax rhapsodic about my soil or watch the baby beans anxiously. I'm amazed at how much of this comes down to record keeping. Sigh.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Steeking in Public
My Kauni sweater came with me and my swollen hands to park day today. Partly, I wanted to work on it, since I'd just finished the neckband on a ride to and from the snow yesterday (thank goodness for friends who drive) and partly to cut a steek dramatically in front of a group.
It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.
Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.
Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."
A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.
I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.
I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.
It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.
Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.
Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."
A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.
I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.
I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.
Steeking in Public
My Kauni sweater came with me and my swollen hands to park day today. Partly, I wanted to work on it, since I'd just finished the neckband on a ride to and from the snow yesterday (thank goodness for friends who drive) and partly to cut a steek dramatically in front of a group.
It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.
Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.
Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."
A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.
I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.
I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.
It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.
Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.
Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."
A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.
I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.
I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Succession Swarming
I had a post all written in my head, prompted by posts on Esperanza's blog and some other things I've been reading and thinking about, about record-keeping and planfulness and recording output, and the different ways people decide what to plant -- dollar value of crop? Taste of homegrown vs. storebought/farmer's market? Nutritional value, or calorie count, á la John Jeavons?
I was even writing down how many pole and bush beans we were planting out today, and remembering about how we'd made a math lesson out of equilateral triangles to make spacing jigs for the beans, and thinking aloud that if we were even going to have a garden, those escaping hens were going to have to have their wings clipped if we didn't want to rebuild the entire coop "roof," and trying in between everything to motivate my children to do their chores and schoolwork and responding to "Mama, look at this!" when my second daughter called to me. "The bees are swarming."
No. I had just reversed the hive bodies! They have lots of room! I haven't put feed bags and re-dusted them and and and.
And maybe -- I don't know -- maybe it's a swarm from the feral hive in the neighbor's tree. That's the source of my original beehive, and I still don't know. I'll have to get into my two hives later to see if they're the same.
I got on the phone. My sister, my gardening partner, wants to keep bees. But she wasn't home, and wasn't answering her cell. I called a local homeschooler who wants a swarm. But she didn't want it if it wasn't huge. And it wasn't. It was a standard-sized swarm:
It was also way overhead in another neighbor's acacia tree. I figured it wouldn't be hard to lop off the branch and drop it into a box, but the prospect didn't fill me with delight, either. I went back to planting beans.
My son was fascinated with the bees. "Hey! Look where they are!" While I'd been otherwise occupied, the bees had relocated themselves:
For some reason -- the queen falling, maybe? -- they'd moved to the ground, by the fence, about 6' north of where they'd been in the tree. Hmmm.
I have a spare hive body, with a few frames of drawn foundation:
What would happen if I just put it out by the swarm? The lazy beekeeper's method!
They were gentle while I was moving the box around, just flying and hanging out. I was completely calm. Swarms are generally pretty nice to be around, and I've seen numerous videos of them being captured barehanded by keepers. Not me, though. I was willing to just watch and see what they'd do.
However, I'm not just a lazy beekeeper, I'm also an impatient one. (Maybe just a really busy one.) After 15 minutes, I hadn't noticed any movement from information given by a scout bee to the group. Really, it's not going to happen that fast. I don't know the exact mechanism a swarm uses to communicate "Found a great place. Everyone relocate," but I'm pretty sure it isn't an instant thing.
Fortunately, I have a bee suit
They were around sticks and on a log. My seven year old was taking these pictures, until after I shook and swept them off of this log and he decided he wanted more space between him and the now-agitated bees.
One good indication that you've got the queen bee is that the workers will raise their Nasanov glands and fan a "queen here" pheromone to signal the rest of the bees to stop flying around like crazy girls and get inside. To me, it looks as though they're standing a bit on their heads:
For about a half an hour, the hive looked like this:
I finally had my son, who had suited up by now,
help me by lifting the lid of the hive while I gave the log another good hard shake. They didn't like that, but I finally got about 90% of the bees in the box. In about 20 minutes, they no longer looked like a swarm. Just like that, I've got another hive to learn from.
As my littlest one demonstrates all the time, this is all about learning in one way or another.
Tuesday morning:
I should haev remembered that it's never dull. The swarm took off, despite a hive with honey stores in it. I have no idea where they are, but I'm ready for the next one, I guess.
I was even writing down how many pole and bush beans we were planting out today, and remembering about how we'd made a math lesson out of equilateral triangles to make spacing jigs for the beans, and thinking aloud that if we were even going to have a garden, those escaping hens were going to have to have their wings clipped if we didn't want to rebuild the entire coop "roof," and trying in between everything to motivate my children to do their chores and schoolwork and responding to "Mama, look at this!" when my second daughter called to me. "The bees are swarming."
No. I had just reversed the hive bodies! They have lots of room! I haven't put feed bags and re-dusted them and and and.
And maybe -- I don't know -- maybe it's a swarm from the feral hive in the neighbor's tree. That's the source of my original beehive, and I still don't know. I'll have to get into my two hives later to see if they're the same.
I got on the phone. My sister, my gardening partner, wants to keep bees. But she wasn't home, and wasn't answering her cell. I called a local homeschooler who wants a swarm. But she didn't want it if it wasn't huge. And it wasn't. It was a standard-sized swarm:
It was also way overhead in another neighbor's acacia tree. I figured it wouldn't be hard to lop off the branch and drop it into a box, but the prospect didn't fill me with delight, either. I went back to planting beans.
My son was fascinated with the bees. "Hey! Look where they are!" While I'd been otherwise occupied, the bees had relocated themselves:
For some reason -- the queen falling, maybe? -- they'd moved to the ground, by the fence, about 6' north of where they'd been in the tree. Hmmm.
I have a spare hive body, with a few frames of drawn foundation:
What would happen if I just put it out by the swarm? The lazy beekeeper's method!
They were gentle while I was moving the box around, just flying and hanging out. I was completely calm. Swarms are generally pretty nice to be around, and I've seen numerous videos of them being captured barehanded by keepers. Not me, though. I was willing to just watch and see what they'd do.
However, I'm not just a lazy beekeeper, I'm also an impatient one. (Maybe just a really busy one.) After 15 minutes, I hadn't noticed any movement from information given by a scout bee to the group. Really, it's not going to happen that fast. I don't know the exact mechanism a swarm uses to communicate "Found a great place. Everyone relocate," but I'm pretty sure it isn't an instant thing.
Fortunately, I have a bee suit
They were around sticks and on a log. My seven year old was taking these pictures, until after I shook and swept them off of this log and he decided he wanted more space between him and the now-agitated bees.
One good indication that you've got the queen bee is that the workers will raise their Nasanov glands and fan a "queen here" pheromone to signal the rest of the bees to stop flying around like crazy girls and get inside. To me, it looks as though they're standing a bit on their heads:
For about a half an hour, the hive looked like this:
I finally had my son, who had suited up by now,
help me by lifting the lid of the hive while I gave the log another good hard shake. They didn't like that, but I finally got about 90% of the bees in the box. In about 20 minutes, they no longer looked like a swarm. Just like that, I've got another hive to learn from.
As my littlest one demonstrates all the time, this is all about learning in one way or another.
Tuesday morning:
I should haev remembered that it's never dull. The swarm took off, despite a hive with honey stores in it. I have no idea where they are, but I'm ready for the next one, I guess.
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