A New Book to Add to the Library

One of the bloggers I have been following for a few years has self published, and I would love to add a copy of her book to my personal library.  She has an impressive array of informative links on her site to a range of homesteading and self sufficiency sites and references, and I've learned a lot from her thoughtful, honest, and sometimes self-effacing posts.  She and her husband have slowly been rebuilding their home and learning about the realities of trying to provide for themselves and their animals on their land in South Appalachia.  She actually has her rain catchment system connected and functioning, and a wood cook stove in her kitchen.  I can hope and dream!

Leigh was the first blogger that I've followed who actually published a comment on this blog, and I have to say that it gave me a bit of a thrill to hear from someone I've been following for so long.  She has a wonderful blog, 5 Acres and a Dream, and I've been learning about her efforts to re-mineralize her soil and grow food for her animals rather than being completely dependant on the feed store. 

By posting this entry, I've got a chance to win her book in a draw - but I intend to add it to my collection either way! I encourage you to go have a look at what they've accomplished. You might just be inspired.

The Latest Buzz

Last week I finally buckled down and dealt with the comb I had been gathering from the hive over the past season.  I knew the process would be messy, so it made sense to do this small amount of processing in one go.

In the height of summer, we accidentally broke some comb in the heat... then there were a couple of off-centre bars we mangled to protect the borrowed brood on a Langstroth hive... and then there were a few empty bars we removed as the weather grew colder in October, to consolidate the area the bees would have for overwintering.  These last bars showed a bit of mould - possibly because the humidity in the hive was increasing as the temperature dropped (I had put the bottom board on when we had our first frost), or because there weren't enough workers to keep everything tidy in the comb furthest from the busy brood chamber.

 

I set everything up on the kitchen counter, and proceeded to get sticky.

Honeycomb darkens over time as the bees use the cells for storage and for rearing the young.  There were pockets of capped (fully evaporated and finished) honey in both the light and dark areas of the comb.  The newer comb I crushed and strained for household use, and the darker comb (some not fully capped), I cut out, and put on a cookie sheet to feed back to the bees. 

The sieve didn't work as well as I had hoped, so I pulled out my jelly-making tripod and left the crushed honeycomb to drain through the fine material. Much better, and easier to use all around.  I did purchase a buckets with three nesting sieves for processing larger amounts of honeycomb, but this set up was fine for the amount I was dealing with.

I kept busy with school and chores, and checked back on the dripping jelly bag a while later. After I had allowed the honey to drain, I swished the remaining crushed, sticky comb in some water, and dumped it into some cheesecloth. There are bits of pollen and debris mixed in with the wax.

 

I managed to drain a half pint of honey out of various bits of comb - equivalent to about one full top bar.  I will use this very sparingly, and keep a few tablespoons back to add to any herbal sugar water I might need to brew up for the bees in the Spring.

 

I crushed and rinsed the remaining, empty comb, and added that to my cheesecloth sack (note to self - trim off excess cheesecloth!) which then went into my jury-rigged double boiler with several cups of water - enough to cover the cheesecloth. 

This small pot conveniently nested an inch off of the bottom of the larger one. The double boiler method is used to prevent direct contact of the wax with the heat source - wax is flammable.  It's also important to note that the small pot will now by used only for processing beeswax.  Apparently, it's impossible to completely clean the wax away. Personally, since I don't use any chemicals in the hive, I'm not worried about a bit of beeswax or comb debris on my kitchen mixing bowls, or on a wooden spoon - but I will mark the pot.

 

I brought the water up to a very gentle boil, and watched for about twenty minutes as the wax melted  and formed a floating layer. I made sure to turn the ball of cheesecloth over to get all of the wax heated and melted, and stopped when it seemed that the volume of the bag was no longer changing. (Very scientific).

I removed the cheesecloth, pressing it against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon, and placed it carefully aside to cool, then turned the stovetop heat off and left the wax to harden.

The girls have still been flying in the sunshine - even though the temperature is below 10 degrees most days.  I set the comb out by the hive entrance over three afternoons, and they cleaned all of the honey up for me.  One girl had gorged on honey and lost track of time - I found her, apparently too chilled as evening fell, when I went to bring the pan in for the night. I heated her with my breath before convincing her to walk off of my finger back into the hive.

 

My first wax harvest.  There is a bit of  dusty debris on the bottom of the wax disc, but most was easily brushed away.  

 

I'll be giving some to my neighbour, who makes herbal salves - she has been so accepting of all of our crazy backyard projects. I intend to treat myself to a small candle in one of my canning jars, and there will be enough left over for me to melt 'start your comb here' lines on the top bars for next year's hives. 

Thank you girls!

Somedays I Wonder About Technology

Prompted for the umpteenth time to upgrade the software on my iPad, I have it downloading and plugged in (per the prompt that I should plug it in while it takes 45 minutes to download). I decided that maybe I should update my 4S iPhone (the update that I was putting off, after hearing so many people complain about it) so that the two are still able to sync, and find that I cannot do the update without more memory available.  

 

Go do a search online - on my laptop computer that seems to have slowed down notably, even since yesterday - to find out how to do the update to my phone without wiping everything off of it.  It's suggested to do the update through iTunes as an easier alternative - but should save my pics etc. "just in case."  

 

Can't save my pics to iTunes, though I made 3 attempts, because, well... it just won't. That's all I get.

 

Fine.

 

I will update the phone and think good thoughts.

 

Except I can't, because there's an update for iTunes, and I need to update iTunes in order to be able to update my phone.

 

Seriously? Fine.

 

Meanwhile, I have Mozilla, Internet Explorer, and now Chrome open, to run my online class, my searches, and my email and calendar respectively.  I have defaulted to using 3 different browsers because the first two drop my connections at various times, and I'm not sure if that's because I have a 'cheap' computer, a bad Internet connection, or because Windows 8 is fickle and doesn't like me, my non touch-screen computer, or a combination of some mysterious factors I cannot fathom.  I often start things up in the morning, finding that 'my PC ran into a problem....' (grrrr) and has shut everything down. I have to go through ten minutes of resetting all of my standard search windows before I can start my day.  Luckily I am fairly consistent at saving all of my Excel and Word documents, and have become a bit more obsessive of late.

Now I will need to wait while everything loads, and then restart my computer to reset iTunes, so that I can update my iPhone, so that I can sync to my updated iPad, and.....wait, apparently I have purchased items on the Phone that I need to back up, but it should have synced automatically when I plugged the cable in. 

 

Idiot proof my eye. 

 

There's a lot of valuable information available with access to the Internet, and smartphones and tablets can be valuable tools, but some days I just have to shake my head at the amount of time we spend looking at screens.

Maybe I'll give Adrian a call.....

 

Island Trip 2

Adrian and I headed to the Island last weekend, to view several properties with a Real Estate agent, and we travelled throughout the Cowichan Valley.

 



 

We met at the Duncan Farmer's Market, which was nearing the end of the season, but still had a fairly decent turn-out of vendors.  We chatted with a lady selling pickles and preserves, and she gave me so much information about permits and requirements to sell at the market, that I purchased a jar of baby dills to bring home (for an astonishing $9).  There was a vendor selling Mason Bee houses, and I promised to contact him for more houses and cocoons if we wound up settling in the area.

 

Looking at other peoples' houses objectively can be hard.  There are always a few things in a house that make me tilt my head to the side and ask 'why?'  The trip to the Island last weekend made me do that more than a few times.....

This was the first house we saw on our trip, and had a goat dairy barn attached to the main building (which would have been very exciting, if the power and water were functional and the rest of the house wasn't oddly, partially renovated).  There had been a few starts and stops in terms of renovations - more stops than I was comfortable with for the asking price, and the extensive property was very overgrown.....

 

This house was adorable, if a bit small for our needs.  There were a lot of little finishing touches that showed how much the owner cared for her home...then I started to notice the little missing pieces, and I saw the rot around the upstairs skylight.  Also, we realized that the kitchen stove was being run off a propane tank smaller than what we use for our barbecue. Still, it was 12 acres of forest, pasture, garden and a large bog, with fruit trees, animal housing, 2 partially completed cabins (likely done without permits)....and plenty of water coming from a nearby spring.  Unfortunately, all of the water came from a license to a spring across the road - no well, no water treatment..... Too many questions, but a nice little place for someone with the time and money to do the repairs.

 

 

We stayed in Lake Cowichan for the night, at the realtor's basement suite she keeps for friends and family, and had a great dinner at Jake's On The Lake.  I watched the mist rise off the water the next morning, and the fish were jumping.

There was a property we couldn't get in to see because there was no lockbox, and a forested acreage that was a bit too much for us to commit to.  The last house had a new heat pump and lots of space, but plenty of standing water on a smaller acreage, and some questionable building decisions.

A lot of our needs and wants are being clarified with this research, and I would be happy to shop at the local Farmer's Market - maybe even be a vendor after a couple of years have gone by and we have excess to sell. 

We'll keep researching and looking.

A Quick Look

It's hard to believe it's almost Friday evening as I sit at the computer.  Work has been grinding by this week, and I've been under the weather for a lot of it.  Right now I'm full of Vitamin C, Sinutab, Ginger Gravol tablets, and my forehead is slathered with Tiger Balm.  Feelin' awesome.

We're heading to Vancouver Island tomorrow, for a 2-day romp 'round the Cowichan Valley, looking at properties that might fit the bill for our future.  In all likelihood, these properties won't wait for us to get our ducks in line, but the time spent learning about the area's communities, services, roads, possibilities and drawbacks will help us make some decisions.  Looking at real properties and asking questions about heating oil (?!?), woodstoves, water quality, recycling and garbage services and the like will help to focus our search and refine our list of needs and wants.  We'll be visiting the Farmer's Market in Duncan to see what the locals produce and sell - the list of vendors is impressive.  They have fudge.

I've been trying to make this happen for a while, so I'm going no matter what.  Pray for Adrian's sake that I get a restorative night's sleep.

Last weekend was a 3-day affair because of Remembrance Day, and while some people spent time with family or got in some extra rest and relaxation, Adrian took a vacation day from work, and we made things happen. We also kicked back and played a video game, and played with bunnies. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have him as a partner?

 

We spent Friday completing most of this year's jam, with a little extra work on Saturday morning.  We now have about 95 half-pints of homemade preserves with only 3 failed seals (refrigerator jam!).  From left to right: Black Currant Jam and Strawberry Jam - both crops grown here in our yard, Cherry Jam, from BC cherries (I don't want to talk about our 3 trees in the back yard which provided not a single edible cherry this year), Huckleberry Jam from berries picked locally (if I say 'wildcrafted' I sound like a hipster), and Blueberry Jam, from the lovely bushes that came with the property (Adrian would like to dig them up and take them with us when we move....)

We got all of the jam made and canned, and left it to cool on the dining table (where it still sits, waiting to be labelled and boxed for the pantry - shhh!)

The time had come to butcher some of our crossbred rabbits at just over 12 weeks old, so we spent time over the rest of the weekend processing, freezing, and cooking meat, chopping vegetables, and making Rabbit Pot Pie for the freezer.  Then, since while taking all of the berries out of the freezer to thaw, I managed to turn off the power bar and hence both of our chest freezers (doh!), we made a huge batch of what I'm calling Chicken and Sausage Cacciatore.  It was coincidentally well-timed, in that I was able to use the last of my tomatillo harvest while it was still at it's best. Delicious.
 

Tomatillos from saved seed - we've been growing these for several years now, and I used to say they are more dependable than tomatoes for production.  This year, they bloomed early and failed to set fruit, just like the tomatoes - but they soldiered on as the temperature dropped, and I got a decent harvest long after the tomato plants were cleared away.  No tomatillo salsa this year, but we did have small harvests through the season that went into our casseroles and soups.  They also dehydrate wonderfully.

Good news is that the freezers are now very organized and clear of ice - Bad news is that we lost some prepared food.  Good news is that some of that food had been in there a little too long anyway. How does it happen that you never actually remember what you have in a chest freezer (despite your best intentions), and who is supposed to be able to physically reach the bottom?

A couple of weeks ago on a Costco run, Adrian tried sauerkraut and declared it good.  I glared at him and reminded he had eschewed my home made sauerkraut previously, and decided it was time to give it another try.

 

This is about 4 pounds of cabbage, with 3 generous tablespoons of salt mixed in, pounded together to release 'juice,' and left to sit on the counter.  I like that the red cabbage makes for a pretty colour.  I wasn't about to make a huge batch until we had decided if we would work it into our routine, and local cabbage is generally available through a large part of the winter.

Sauerkraut can be left to mature for between 1 and 4 weeks. I have a large intact leaf weighed down at the top of the jar to keep everything submerged under the brine.  At 1 week, it tasted like salty, crunchy cabbage, so we left it to do its thing for a little longer. Time will tell.

Good Luck Celine

Adrian has been very gentle and understanding with me for the last couple of days as I dealt with the shocking loss of my backyard girls.  There were kind messages in response to his post on Facebook, and I wanted to thank everyone for their sympathy.  A lot of people have been introduced to our backyard animals - learning how we keep bees, checking out the chicken tractor, seeing what we grow for the animals in a small space, and of course, petting bunnies (by far the most popular part of a visit).  These animals are important to me, and the quality and manner of their lives and especially of their deaths is something that warrants a lot of my consideration. It's taking me some time to deal with the sense that I failed to protect them.  I resolve to do better.  We will try to always have a Naked Neck Turken named Nugget in our flock, in memory of our hen who jumped for blueberries.

Celine went to a new home in Langley, meeting a clique of larger white girls who put her in her place, another smaller, tan hen who protected her when the bullying came to her attention, and a diminutive bantam rooster named Eddie, who danced for her within the first 15 minutes of her arrival.  He's about half her own, small size, and apparently very protective of his flock.  I checked in with her adoptive family this afternoon, and she is settling in as well as a new chicken can settle into an established flock.  She is allowing some handling and cuddles, and being placed on a roost at night, to show her the new set up of her quarters and help her adjust.

A Terrible Day On The (Suburban) Farm

It was just yesterday that I was looking out the kitchen window at my small flock of chickens rooting about under the blueberry bushes - they were exploring their extended territory now that I had pulled the last of the tomatillos and covered the crops that I wanted to protect. The world - and offerings of parsley, chard, kale, strawberry plants and fresh dirt to dig - was open before them. I was smiling at how lucky I was to have my own little illicit farm in a residential backyard, and taking note that Jodie the troublemaker seemed to be eying the height of the back fence.  This morning I went out as the sun rose, to let the girls out for the day, and as I went around the corner calling out to them, I came upon a terrible scene of destruction. It took a moment for my brain to register what I was seeing. Something had managed to unlatch the door to the nesting box in the night.  Pilgrim was dead, all that was left of Jodie was a mess of feathers and bones, and Nugget was terribly gored, struggling to breathe.  Celine was huddled at the front door, spattered with someone else's blood.

I yelled for Adrian, and he quickly ended Nugget's suffering, and I scooped up a dazed Celine to check her for signs of fatal damage.  We both stopped for a moment and stood there, stunned.

These are not the first chickens we have lost.  Patty died unexpectedly in the night, Strip took to hiding in the bushes, determined for days to keep her eggs to hatch, and we were unable to find her on a day we were heading out of town.  She fell prey to a predator, unprotected overnight.  Breakfast, one of our original 3 hens, was dragged from the coop in the night - our first loss and the reason we set up an additional wire barrier underground in the winter.

We maintain a habit of doing a head count and locking everyone in at night to make sure that no one has decided to lay eggs in the bushes, or roosted on the stairs to the back deck.  The days are short now though, and the nights are cold.  The chickens had instinctively taken to returning to the relative warmth of the coop long before I went out to check them for the night, and as I patted 4 chickens in the growing dark last night, I know that I secured that latch. 

I put out a notice to rehome Celine to a small local flock.  I have her nested in the dark foyer in a carrier with straw, water and food, but she is obviously out of sorts and in shock. 

Update: A nice lady in Langley called, and I will be taking Celine to her new home this afternoon.  She will be joining a small flock of mixed bantams that have outside access when people are about and a protected run to discourage predators.  After a bit of quiet time, she will roost with her new flock mates this evening, and by morning she will begin the process of finding her place in a new social structure.