Strawberries, Blueberries and Huckleberries

Technically, the month for strawberries has passed in the garden - though there are a few lagging behind to ripen as the season continues.  If we're lucky, and the heat-wave subsides, these 'everbearing' plants will flower again (maybe two more times), and we will enjoy more fruit in the future.  For the time being, our attentions have turned to the blueberries which have been ripening since the beginning of July.  We try to pick the ripe berries at least once a day from our established bushes, to discourage predation by all of the birds looking for a tasty treat.  I just scared off several Stellar Jays having brunch... By the end of the season, we will be so tired of these daily pickings that the time will come to just let the birds have a little feast.  We still treat Nugget to a few of her favourite tidbits - our chicken loves her blueberries, and will jump to carefully nip them from between our fingers.

Yesterday morning, I went out to one of my favourite picking spots to hunt for wild huckleberries.  They're much harder to pick, averaging roughly 1/2 hour of picking for each 1/2 pint of jam that I make, but it's become a bit of a tradition for me.

 

Several times throughout the day, I checked on the hive to make sure that there was no sign of the robber bees - we physically moved the hive after the robbers returned the second day after they found the hive. The distance of a mere 10 feet and some tall plantings seems to have caused enough confusion to discourage predation. Two of the three entrance holes are blocked, and will stay that way in the near future.  I've observed guard bees pacing in and out of the remaining entrance, wary of intruders. We will do a hive inspection on Sunday to verify if our new queen is laying, and if the brood from Jen's hive has begun to emerge.  

 

In the garden, the barley, shallots and garlic are nearly ready for harvest. We had the last of our first -sown lettuce greens with dinner last night, and had blueberries with a bit of ice cream to top off our meal.  The tomatoes are in bloom, but I have yet to see any fruit development (very late this year). Cucumbers and zucchini are beginning to form, as well as the fruits on our winter squash vines.  The pole and bush beans have peaked in their growth, and are starting to set flowers for pollination. More pole beans are just breaking the ground to replace the pea plants I pulled on the weekend. Cilantro plants are busy flowering, so it looks like we will have a good crop of coriander seed - and I have successive plantings of the herb, so we are still enjoying fresh salsa, even if the tomatoes are from the store. The heat caused the oriental greens to bolt, and I've decided to let the planting essentially re-seed itself in place for the cooler months.  The first planting of basil is hitting a foot in height, and I should be harvesting this weekend to make basil/almond pesto (it keeps wonderfully in the freezer). Also on the to-do list is using up some of the parsley for home-made tabouli. 

 

While I was giving some of our plants a bit of extra water, this dragonfly fearlessly landed a foot away from me, and stayed to let me take pictures.

 

Of Bees and Bunnies

Yesterday, we processed our two recent litters of rabbits, while taking some time to show friends how to put down a rabbit as quickly and humanely as possible, and what comes after.  My farming/beekeeping/font of knowledge friend Jen dropped by, having run to the post office to pick up a queen bee that had been mailed overnight from Vancouver Island, and shared some personal tips and tricks about rabbit butchering.  All of us chatted and had a few positive hours of preparing home-grown meat for the table. I think everyone learned a thing or two!

I took a moment to discuss with Jen how we had determined that we no longer had a queen in our hive, and that our colony was likely doomed - knowing that the current bees would die off with no replacements being reared.

A few minutes after cleaning up after ourselves that evening, I received a call letting me know that the replacement queen from the Island was available, since the 'queenless' hive she had been meant for in Jen's bee yard had managed to produce their own queen after all, and things were ticking along.

Adrian and I quickly decided to ask for the queen - and a little bit of help as well. 

So, this morning, Jen came over with the queen in a little cage the size of a tic tac container (shipped via Canada Post Expresspost), and a frame of capped brood from one of her Langstroth hives.....

We shifted all of the top bars over, to make as much room as we could at one end of the hive, and placed the wood pieces which previously held the sugar syrup feeder, so we had a bit of a platform.

 

 

Jen had brushed as many bees off of a brood frame as she could, and brought the frame over in a pillow case for transport. Unfortunately for the bees that hitched a ride, our colony identified and killed them as intruders. It was a bit gruesome to watch.

 

Removing two of the built up top bars gave us just enough room to squeak the Langstroth frame in on an angle, and allow it to remain upright. 

The removed top bars, started with new, unused comb, went on either side of the foreign brood, in an attempt to insulate the brood, and to give a bit more security - and possibly to lend a reassuring, familiar scent to the remainder of our colony.



The queen was duct-taped to one side of the brood from Jen's hive, and the second top bar placed in front of her to provide warmth and security, while the bees from our top bar learn to recognize her scent and release her from her cage by eating the candy cap at one end.

We covered this decidedly unconventional compromise with a burlap sack, before putting the lid back on the hive, and this evening I will go in to (hopefully) verify that 1. Our bees have not killed the new queen, and 2. That they are congregating around her protectively and feeding her while they accept her leadership.

 

Thank you Jen, and here's hoping that our emergency measures help our hive to regain its lost numbers.

One Step At A Time

We started small, buying a house in 2007 with a backyard of open grass and possibilities. We have added (and are still adding) raised beds for vegetables, a hoop house (diy-car-shelter-style), dwarf fruit trees, berry bushes, potted divisions and cuttings, permanent perennial vegetables, herbs and flowering plants. A second, larger hoop house went up, then collapsed in the weight of our first (and only real) snowstorm this past winter.

The first major addition came with our chickens - our first three girls were Isa Reds (de-beaked, hybrid, pullets from the feed store) called Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner (the husband has dibs on naming and does it so well). We built them a chicken tractor which stays on grass for most of the year, and replaces our tomato plants in the hoop house for additional warmth - and added fertility - in the cold months. We've bid adieu to some of the girls, and added new, heritage breeds to our flock, raising three from day-old balls of peeping fluff in our second bathroom.

Currently digging up the yard are Nugget, Pilgrim and Celine Dion. Once the chickens seemed to have become just one more familiar item on the chore list, we added Florida White meat rabbits to the mix. We've bred several litters of kits over the past year, sending them to freezer camp and learning to cook with home-grown meat fed on gleanings from the garden, dehydrated fruit slices, dry orchard grass, alfalfa pellets and the occasional winter-time treat of grains.

This year - specifically yesterday - the bees came. We built a top-bar hive after much research and thought, and so will be working a tad outside the norm for beekeepers in our area. I hived them yesterday, after a demonstration and an assist at another bee yard (in a Langstroth hive), and am waiting for them to settle in and release their queen. When I went out this morning and heard absolutely nothing from the hive, I (panicked) cheated and peeked - and they're still here, just adjusting to the new digs and needing to free their queen before they really get down to business.

Jen, in full beekeeper regalia demonstrating for the newbies:

Also this year, I'm getting some hands-on work with larger livestock - sheep, goats, and a friendly, well-trained horse who is likely to spoil me for horse-handling (but the husband is allergic, so that likely isn't in our future). My friend Jen over at Horse Drawn Farms is teaching me the ropes as I take yet another step - this time to one day having a few dairy goats of my own.