August 30, 2009

Seems that every week there is a lot of things going on here…

We were introduced to a woman who loves horses, and she took us up on our offer to exercise Zippy and give him attention. Lilli has come over twice now this week and patiently, Zippy and Lilli are getting to know one another. It is a great situation for both of them and Zippy is already responding really well to the extra attention. He looks happy! And it’s good for Kath and I as it gives us time for our horses too, so that all the animals are receiving the time and attention they need.

Karen stopped by to help weed the strawberry bed, and spent the evening tugging at ragweed, crabgrass, etc. Karen helped me feed the bees for her first time. She mixed the water and sugar, and brought it out to the hive. As I was getting stung and she wasn’t, she poured it into the feeder jars I was holding. Oh well….

The other day I was wearing loose shorts when I was feeding…that was dumb. I never thought about the places a bee could go – such as up my shorts. And I guess the first one up called out to a few friends to come join her! I think I will end the story now and let your imagination finish it, cause that’s exactly what happened.

Well anyhow, Karen didn’t get stung, but she says that she got a case of chiggers from pulling weeds, so it all evens out.

Monday I tilled part of my field preparing to plant for fall crops. I am planning to grow spinach, mesclun, lettuces, radishes, cabbage, and some mixed greens for the fall portion of my CSA. As of weeks end I was able to seed spinach and cabbage. Yesterday we received 3” of rain which made things pretty sloppy out there and I was unable to get any more seed in the ground. Next week a few members of the CSA are coming out to help with the planting, so I hope to get the seeding done then.

A few chickens hopped the fence and got into my tomato patch last evening. They helped themselves to a few tomatoes…I can’t get too mad at my chickens. After all they do for me and the farm– eat bugs and weed seeds, lay eggs, and provide fertilizer – losing a few tomatoes is really a small price. I just let them stay there and took some comfort watching them enjoying themselves. Chickens are pretty cool.

So all in all, it has been a good week on the farm!

August 22, 2009

We have taken on a third horse! Zippy has been boarded here for the last two and a half years, and a few weeks ago his owner offered him to us. We were happy to take him over, as we’ve always considered him a part of our family, and we would have been crushed to see him sold off. Zip now will stay here with our other two horses, Louie and Patrick. We are really glad that its worked out this way!

August 15, 2009

I am not too sure what to think about this, but I will share this story with you and let you think about it for yourself…

We called it the “pot plane”. There was a small single engine plane that flew very low over our farm almost every week. Not just a fly by, but it circled three, four, and sometimes five times. It then repeated the same circling maneuvers over other properties in the area. It continued its circling patterns right down the highway.

We suspected that big brother was looking to see if any of us were growing marijuana on our farms, in our backyards, or in the wooded areas around here, hence we began calling it the “pot plane”. I doubt they were counting our horses, or appreciating the colorful view of our free ranging chickens from up there…Every so often, some one does get busted in the area.

This year I left the white plastic on my hoop house, where I store perennials over the winter and begin vegetables for spring. Normally I remove the plastic once the weather warms up, but this year it stayed cooler than usual, so I decided to just leave it on.

I came to accept the circling plane each week, wondering what they were really doing up there. When it came over, I am sure they saw me go in and out of my hoop house with a watering can to water my daylilies, spinach, and garlic sets, although they could not have seen inside the hoop house to know that that was what I was watering in there. I often wondered if that made me suspect. That is, if they really were pot cops.

After a few weeks of this, I came home from work on a Saturday afternoon and found that the white plastic had been torn from the hoop house, exposing the perennials and vegetable plants inside. No one had been home that day to see what had happened. There was not a storm or wind that day. But there was the plastic – ripped all apart, though still attached to the batter boards. There was nothing left to do but take it all off.

Since that day, the plane stopped circling my farm…. I haven’t seen it since. I can’t help but to wonder if it all was a coincidence, or if someone needed a better view?

It does give me something to think about…

August 6, 2009

In the garden, or with my animals, I am always reminded that we are braided together in this life. There is an interdependence and interaction that deep down, is spiritual – I think of it as a continuous equal trade between us, and a trade with all things else in the immediate and distant environment. This trade supports a steady balance in this interconnected life of give and take.

For everything here on earth, there is a reason and purpose. There is a reason and a purpose that we did not design, and at times we do not fully understand. But God does….

There are almost too many connections to list here, and then so many more that are yet to be realized. Some are easy for me to see and follow, like the relationship and connectedness of bees and flowers. And then there are those that are less pronounced and I did not expect. Two recent experiences follow:

It took me a while to figure out why there were green frogs in the beans and chard, as my experience could only allow me to associate frogs with water and lily pads. But finally it dawned on me that they were feasting on the insects in the garden, keeping these predator populations in check, while staying sheltered and moist beneath the leafy canopy of these same plants. I never had seen or heard of this before, but here it was…frogs and plants helping each other to survive another day.

Every bird nest here on the farm – bluebird, wren, martin, barn swallow, etc – to some degree is weaved and lined with the long horsehair shed from the manes and tails of our horses Louie, Patrick, and Zips. These same birds spend the day swooping over the pastures eating up the mosquitoes, greenheads, and horse flies that can make grazing impossible for the horses. It has always been easy to see how the birds helped out the horses, yet I had never given thought that the horses traded back. Now I know better!

I could go on with other examples that have given me some surprise, but the point of these two examples is that we are all connected somehow. We live with, and from, the help of each other, whether we are a frog, bee, bird, horse, human, plant, etc. Each day we trade, whether we know it or not. Each day we need to remind ourselves that our trades need to be fair, otherwise our relationships will fall out of balance, and then life will lose its sustainability.

July 26, 2009

It is a very quiet Sunday morning – not a whole lot stirring. It’s the way I think Sundays should be. I think that we do not get enough down time. We’ve created a social lifestyle that does not allow for much rest or reflection. I don’t think that it’s good for us at all. Sometimes we need to stop long enough to just listen to our own breathing. Just long enough to pull us back to the reality that we are a living being, and that we don’t always need to let ourselves be chased by time, that we can live in the wholeness of a moment – moment after moment.

In a bit I will be getting shares together to distribute to the CSA members, and then leave for Connecticut to see my daughter who is doing a summer internship at a theatre along the Connecticut River.

My horse, Louie, and our boarder horse, Zippy, got themselves into a nest of chiggers while grazing and have had an awful time of it this week. Both broke out with itching, allergic sores on their cheeks, chins and noses. Zippy also broke out on his legs. We’ve been keeping the sores clean, and applying anti – itch sprays to these guys two to three times a day, and hosing them down with cool water in the evening. It all seems to be working as the sores are starting to heal, and the itching subsiding. I feel so bad for these guys…if you ever have had chiggers you can feel the pain just thinking of it!

Snoops had a good week – she’s my “garden disposal”. Snoops gets all the food that is still good, but might have blemishes that I don’t feel comfortable giving to my members. This week she has enjoyed radishes, a huge squash, some chard, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, bolted arugula, bolted lettuce, and even a jalapeño pepper! With a goat, nothing much goes to waste around here!

Speaking of jalapeno peppers…I had picked some and thinking that they were not too hot, I snapped one in half and gave it to Snoopy, who thought it was the best tasting thing since the tin can. So I shoved the other half in my mouth and…ran to the hose and shoved that down my throat! That damn jalapeno was so hot - I was not expecting it to be hot at all after watching Snoopy gobble it down and beg for more! I should know better than to trust a goat to tell me what’s ok to eat!

My corn has been having a time of it too. I did not plant very much –maybe thirty seeds. It’s about waist high now, and doing ok. But I don’t think its going to make it to the dinner table, because I am not the only one who likes corn around here! First, Patrick, my wife’s horse, was grazing nearby, reached over and pruned down about five plants! A week later, Louie, who usually is a good horse, slowly creeped over to the corn plot, and “Chomp”! Louie doesn’t prune like Patrick – Louie pulls the whole plant out by the roots and runs, chomping away! I think he was proud of himself that he was clever enough to get away with it. Then Snoopy, who I had on her leash, pulled me over and got a stalk too! I don’t really get too mad – I kinda like it that the animals like what I grow.

Interestingly enough, the horses have all been getting beans lately. The ones that have gotten too big on the bush have become great “treats”!

I did get stung this week, but it was my own stupid fault. I have a very bad habit of just opening up a hive to peek in – without smoke, veil, or gloves. Sorta dumb! I lifted the top of my friendly hive and started pulling frames, and they came out like popcorn from an uncovered pan! When it was over, I was as bad as Louie with chiggers! I deserved it – I should know better than that, but I don’t seem to learn!

That’s about all for now. I am going to get shares together and hit the road…

July 19, 2009

In last weeks edition (7/17/09) of the Ocean City Sandpaper newspaper, Bill wrote an article about beans and quoted me several times, and included a picture he took of one of our yellow wax bean plants, which I have posted here. I’d like to thank Bill for taking the time to talk “beans” with me, and for mentioning the farm in his article. Bill writes a column which he calls the “Edible Shore” and features local food and the local farms and farmers who produce it. Some of his other articles featured greens, strawberries and blueberries. He is the only local writer that I know of who is doing this. Thanks Bill!

I recently found that “No More Trenches”, a poem that I had written and published in the August 2003 edition of “Friends Journal” was included in the book “Answering Terror – Responses to War and Peace after 9/11/01”. The book is an anthology of articles, poems, letters, etc that were published in “Friends Journal” from three years after the 9/11 attack. I am very humbled to be one among so many Quaker authors…

July 12, 2009

The state apiarist came by last week to inspect my hives and with him was Bill, who is the area’s best known beekeeper and is referred to as the “sage of bees”. Bill has gotten countless people into bees, including myself. He began the local bee association, runs educational programs, helps everyyone with their hives…I' m not sure how he does it all, but he does, and the beekeepers in this area are grateful to him for his help.

Tim, the apiarist, tore into my hives- he took the hive tool and separated the supers, pulled frame after frame checking for mites, afb, and a host of pests that mess with bees. He checked the brood, the workers, looked for drone and queen cells, burr comb, capped honey and assessed the general vigor of the hives. All my hives were in good shape and very strong, which, as a novice, made me proud, and his positive remarks helped me to forget all the bee stings I had gotten during the past year!

I have one hive that goes after me all the time and the plan was to re queen the hive. Tim and Bill ripped into it without the benefit of veils or gloves and found the queen without getting stung once. Meanwhile I had my veil on and was being attacked. Tim hesitated. He changed his mind. He asked if it would be ok not to re-queen, because the hive was very strong and healthy, and one of the better colonies he had seen lately. He pointed out that he wasn’t being stung, nor was Bill. The sight of bees coming through my veil at the time did not seem to be an issue. For some reason, I conceded, and we left the queen, put the hive together, and walked away…bees all over ME and none on them. “Why don’t they like me?” They had no answer, but seemed amused at the show of bees circling me as if I was the center of a bee solar system.

So I let the queen live. Last night I stopped by the hive to give them their daily feed of sugar water. I had already fed my two other hives without any incident as usual. But this hive! Well, I put the jar in the feeder, and Wham! I got stung, then another and another and another. I fast stepped to the barn with bees all over me, stinging me anywhere they could. I got to the barn, turned the water hose on myself and showered them off me. Eleven stings on my fingers, body, and face. Soaking wet… swelling up…in pain….thinking to myself “why didn’t I re queen????”

I could not have even done it then. I can't kill a bee, no matter what. Even in the pain of eleven stings, there is a voice deep in my consciousness repeating “Long live the queen!” It had reminded me that that is why I am a beekeeper in the first place...