November 30, 2009

The CSA season has wound down, and now I am picking by request for members who want gleanings. There is more left than I had thought that there would be – mostly lettuces, bok choi, and chard. I’ve let Snoopy clean up what remains of the summer gardens, There is not much left, but some greens, spent pepper plants, and a few dried, crooked, corn stalks for her to root through. She’s happy!

A week ago I planted garlic, and covered it with a hoop system to moderate the soil temps for the winter. The hoop system is simple- it is done by placing wire hoops every ten or so feet and hanging a light fabric cover over them. The row looks like a foot high tunnel. I also covered a portion of the lettuce so that I can extend the season a bit longer into the winter.

The chickens are laying enough eggs that we have begun selling to people we know, while still sending a dozen or more to the food bank each week. Most days they have been free ranging, searching the farm for bugs and plant seeds. The hawk migration through the Cape May area is over, so it is somewhat safe again to let the girls out. A few weeks ago we were visited by red tails and sharp shins that patiently waited in the surrounding woodlots to pounce on an easy prey. So far this year, we’ve been spared their hunger.

Thanksgiving morning I placed straw bales on the sides and back of the three bee hives to protect them from the winds and to help insulate them from the cold. The bees are still feeding from the sugar water feeders in the warmer hours of afternoon, and I have observed some bees coming back to the hive with yellow pollen – could be from the sporadic dandelion blooms, left over mums, or whatever – somehow the bees find these things. It amazes me how they do all the things they do.

I’ve opened up another “field” for next year. I initially tilled it in September, and Kath and I have been spreading horse manure and compost over it since. It will be ready for planting for early summer next year.

The horses are really doing well. With the CSA growing season slowed, we have been able to spend a bit more time working with them on weekends. Kath is working with Patrick, training him mounting and riding cues. Zipps is recovered from the popped splint and I have been working with him to get him into better shape and to build up our trust for each other. Louie…well Louie doesn’t need much work. I just saddle him up and we go for walks. Louie is sorta like an older car that has no bells and whistles, but always starts up and gets you where you are going and back home again. He might just plod along, but he never stops plodding along! Mr. Dependable.

As the weeks take us into winter, I will be doing more for winter at the farm. There is always so much to do. Animals and plants and soil are year round….I am glad that it never really stops.

November 22, 2009

Lately I’ve been asked how my bees are doing…I’m not really sure…

The swarm I caught and successfully hived last spring has been decimated by the varroa mite. The varroa mite feeds on pupae; disfiguring and weakening the ones that survive to become bees, to an extent that these affected bees cannot forage, and do not live too long. Over time mites weaken the colony through population loss and subsequently lack of food. As the colony continues to weaken, it cannot defend itself from other insect pests or from robbing by stronger colonies of honey bees. The mites attach themselves to robbing bees, and are then spread through the apiary. My other hives have evidence of mites, yet so far these colonies show evidence that they are strong enough to keep the mite populations from reaching damage causing thresholds.

I had few choices with the mite infested colony – treat it with pesticides or close it up and let it die off. Not easy choices for me. I want to stay pesticide free here at the farm. I do not want my colonies to become dependent on pesticides. And even if I broke my principle and treated, there still would not have been enough bees to overwinter successfully. On the other hand, it is not easy to kill off a colony. It is no different than euthanizing a favorite pet, as these colonies are a part of the farm and our family as is every other living being here. But unfortunately, it is what I had to do.

I removed three frames of honey, said a short prayer, and closed the hive, sealing up the entrance and securing the covers, ensuring that the weakened colony would not be robbed and mites carried to my other three colonies.

After a week – which is the period that mites without host bees will die – I will give the three honey frames to the “log” colony (October 15 post) for winter reserves to improve their chances of survival. In this way, the colony will not have existed for nothing.

Next year, I will change some things around to aggressively manage mites. There are a few things I can do that do not involve pesticides, such as using screened bottom boards, foundationless frames, feeding them with essential oils, and dusting them with powdered sugar….but more on all this later.

The “log” colony is doing well. The queen is laying eggs, there is brood, and the workers are making comb and capping some honey. It is still a small colony and I cannot even begin to speculate on its chances of surviving. With the three frames of honey from the lost colony, along with a frame of honey donated by a fellow “no-pesticide” bee keeper, there are four full frames of honey reserves, making chances of survival a whole lot better than they were a month ago.

The other two colonies are very strong, with lots of bees, and reserves. The newest of these colonies, which I got last spring, has less reserves than I’d like, but it is what it is and I think that it will make it. All the bees from these colonies are still foraging in this warm fall, finding pollen and nectar, and taking sugar water. I’ve been treating them to mint candy, which contains natural menthol oil, and supposedly suppresses the mites.

In the end, nature will determine everything, and I respect that. Next spring will tell if there were enough reserves and not enough mites…

November 15, 2009

The summer growing season is coming to an end. I’ve been slowly cleaning up the summer fields. A few days ago we had our first hard frost, which finished off the summer stragglers – the jalapeños, green peppers, and lima beans that had been holding on, even if just barely. The last of the fall red raspberries took a pretty good hit too, and the buckwheat I had planted as a fall cover crop and source of nectar for the bees was killed off. The lettuces, cabbages, carrots and swiss chard grow well in the cold though, and are still growing strong. All this reminds me - “for everything, there is a season”….

Yet each season has its rebel… Right now our farm’s seasonal rebel is one of our dwarf “Liberty” apple trees. In late summer one spur produced a spectacular bloom – about five months later than what is normal. Somehow, the bloom was pollinated. Apple trees cannot pollinate themselves – they need another apple or crab tree in bloom at the same time…which means that another rebel spur hung on a tree somewhere. The spur now has five very red, half sized apples that look pretty good. Being formed late, there have been no fungi or insects to attack them, so they have no imperfections. The apples that had formed in the spring never made it to the ripening stage due to attacks from the ever increasing fungi populations that exploded with the summer rains. Rebels are pretty cool…I like rebels. They teach me that I don’t always have to follow form. Sometimes rules are best to go….

October 31, 2009

Day Light savings time is ended. Standard Time, the “real time” based upon the sun’s highest noontime point, is back in effect. And although we get the hour back that we gave away last spring, it seems the very opposite…

The trees are speeding through their colours and are shedding their leaves to the ground, to re nourish their roots come next spring. Orion floats high in the sky, and the mornings are bearing sunlit frost…winter is coming. I can feel it. I can know it.

Here at the farm, there seems to be an unusually large population of wooly bear caterpillars this fall. I see them every where – in the stable, the hay barn, in the fields and lettuce garden, on the porch, driveway, and walks – so many that I need to walk with my attentions directed to the ground to avoid stepping on any. The other evening Kath reminded me that with so many, it will be a cold winter. The farmer’s lore says that if there are a lot of wooly caterpillars, and especially if their middle brown band is “short”, bordered by wide black bands, the winter will be a tough one.

And there are other signs of a cold winter coming….

The horses are telling me that it will be cold. All three are quickly growing thick coats, which they started back in the warm months of August. Zippy, whose coat is normally thin, is the thickest I have ever seen it in the years since he’s been here. Louie’s coat has gotten very dense and his mane is growing out, and Patrick already looks like a huge, unkempt wooly sheep!

Even Snoopie is fuzzy these days. It looks as if she’s put on weight, but it really is the thickening layers of fine hair building up on her body that makes her look fattened up.

The older chickens have finished their molt a bit earlier this year, and they have grown in thick layers of insulating feathers.

And then there are the bees. They are storming the sugar water feeders that I have set out, making every drop important. I have been refilling the feeders one, two, and sometimes three times a day when I am home. With very little natural nectar available at this time of year, they are taking the sugar water back to the hives and turning it into honey reserves for the winter. The bees innately know that the days for foraging are coming to an end, and that they need to make the most of these shortening autumn days to prepare for the coming winter.

The technological world has pretty much taken a stand and spun out “rational” data to disprove the farmer’s tales. I can understand the transparent fallacy of events like Groundhog Day, which is too farfetched, and theatrically staged for an insatiable media, but I still cannot necessarily discount all of nature’s foreshadowing. Nature seems to have ways to prepare for the seasons and take care of her self, and I feel comfortable trusting her on this one. And let’s face it, that even with Doppler radar and computer forecast models, man is still left to guess at the future, and nature’s odds of being right about the future have always been just as good, if not better. The signs that mother nature is showing me here on the farm are telling me that it’s going to be a cold winter and that I need to begin splitting the firewood…I’m listening.

October 25, 2009

I thought that I would ramble on a bit.

I was always taught to write in a manner that led with an introduction to a subject, then the body of the theme, ending with a conclusion that basically wrapped all the thoughts up into s few well worded sentences. Right now, I don’t feel quite like following form – and for most of us that is hard to do. We’ve been taught since childhood to follow forms. The result is that we have unsuspectingly standardized ourselves. Socially, it creates for us a safe, predictable way of living, and it keeps most of us on a one way street. Standardizing the population makes it easy for us to be grouped, led, and most importantly, marketed. We easily fit into “a one size fits all” box for easy handling and shipping. Maybe it’s why we’ve become such good Wal-Mart and Target shoppers. Pay less and live better, whatever that means. How’s that working for the people who make all that stuff that we love to throw out?

I normally don’t go to the big box stores. Once in a while I have to, because these corporations have bought out, or run every mom and pop in the area out of business, leaving me no other choices. But the real reason that I rarely go into one is that I don’t need too much stuff…have less and live better.

On to something else now…The other night Kath and I went to see a 40th anniversary concert performed by one of my favorite bands, Renaissance. Sitting in the audience, I really felt my age…it seemed everyone there had grayed hair. A year ago, Kath and I had gone to another concert, this one by Death Cab For Cutie…and there too I really felt my age. Most in the audience of kids had color highlights in their hair, piercings, etc, and when ever someone bumped me, he/she apologized with “I’m sorry sir! Are you ok sir?”

Maybe I am getting older – but not old. As I have aged, I have come to a change. I have realized that up until a few years ago I was a sort of gatherer. I went out into the world everyday to gather things for myself and my family to provide for our own well being. I was not necessarily selfish, but bent instinctively to hoard away reserves. Lately, the gathering instinct is weakening, and the giving urge is strengthening. It’s a good change. I feel better. If that is what getting older is, I am liking it.

That’s my ramble…I guess I should get back to farming.

October 15, 2009

Last week an owner of a tree company gave me a section of a hollowed log with a cluster of honey bees hanging tenuously inside. It seems his crew was taking down the tree when they cut into what they thought was a hornets nest. They sprayed it down with wasp and hornet spray and when all the bee activity ceased, they opened up the cavity to see the remains of a honey bee colony. The bees that came to me were maybe a thousand of what maybe had been a population of 10-20 thousand.

I took the hollowed section, bees and all, home and transferred them into a hive body containing a frame of comb donated by Bill, the area’s beekeeper’s mentor, and a few frames that I had around the house. Later I searched for the queen which I thought the odds of finding were zero, considering the colony had been sprayed down. I did not find her then, but until three days later during another inspection. I was really surprised to see her!

The problem now is this. The bees have no reserves of honey, and most likely the cluster will not be big enough to protect and warm the queen through the winter. In all likelihood, as it stands, the colony will not make it. At this point my plan is to keep feeding the bees sugar water for them to make honey, and maybe steal a frame or two of extra honey from another hive if their reserves are enough, to give to this new colony. With a little luck, that might work. The other option is to join this colony with another hive. To do that I will need to kill one of the queens, ‘cause there cannot be two. That involves playing God. No matter what I decide, their chances are better now than what they would have been.

October 14, 2009

I’m not quite sure why, but every time Snoopie and I go out to do errands, people tend to look at us a bit funny, and some even point at us. I mean, doesn’t any one else take their goat to the store, to get gas, etc.? Doesn’t any one else’s goat eat pennies from the coffee holder?