Coming-out Day

Are you all tired of pictures of fruit trees in bloom? Too bad. It’s spring. That’s what you get. This one is the Gravenstein apple. I do think apple blossoms are my favorites in the orchard. The combination of pink and white just out-dresses any of the others, and the moment before the bloom opens, that swollen pale pink potential embraced by itself, that’s the best part of the display.

Yesterday we had rain and gloom. Today the sun came out, the orchard is in bloom, the bees are flying, and the pullets are ready for their move into outdoor quarters. Remember those fluff-ball chicks from a while back (March 2 post)? They’re adolescents now, and ready to move up in society. Today they graduated from their screened bathtub in the barn to the little chicken tractor in the garden.

The chicken tractor is a pen with no bottom meant to be moved when the girls have used up the good ground beneath them. This should be a huge relief, or a revelation, to the little hens. Truth is, they were completely suspicious of the arrangement when we put them into the pen, and wanted nothing but to tread down the grass and get away from it. They’ll figure it out. Green feed and live bugs will very quickly become their preferred diet.

And besides, they have some work to do. All that grass needs to be worked into garden soil, and I am ever so eager to have someone working on it besides me. We suffer from a heavy soil here (Jory Clay Loam, it’s called), and it holds the winter moisture well into spring. I tried sticking a shovel into it this weekend, and found it still sticking like gumbo. When we lived in town, by this time I had half the garden planted in the hardier coles and lettuces. Out here, we wait. We wait for the one moment between gumbo and adobe when the ground can be tilled. So I say, let those young hens have a go at it. They’ll benefit from the spring grass and I will benefit from having some eager young things to scratch it up and turn it under.

So the day was still shining, and though I smelled like chicken litter (what a good thing to have moved out into the garden that is!), I set to work in the orchard. I had ordered little trees a while back, and they had spent the winter in pots. Three young fruiting quinces and a pie cherry.

The quinces are not so usual in orchards these days. Time was, not a fruit lot went without a quince tree. The hard golden fruits, when still uncooked, can be anywhere from acrid on the tongue to complexly sweet. They’re mostly used in cooking, as jellies and jams, poached with spices, as sauces, in compotes, as pastes, as ingredients in baked goods. I remember quinces first from the time when I was a young teenager. Mother and I would go to an old farm property, an empty relic with a broken gate and a long driveway overgrown with grass and brambles. The house was falling under the weight of a rampant wisteria. In spring we would find mushrooms under the orchard trees. In fall we would go back and find quinces on the same trees. The apples in the orchard were ancient and bitter. The quince trees, however, continued to bear large yellow fruit, and we brought them home in baskets. Quinces make the loveliest jellies you ever saw.

The pie cherry comes with a legacy, too. For years we benefited from the prodigious yield given by my Aunt’s pie cherry tree. Oh, those sour-sweet jewels, they came off in clusters, like a tree dripping rubies. When my old Aunt passed, the tree passed, too, to new ownership, and our privileges went with it. I have longed for a tree like it since then. So today I put one, just a slight little thing, into the orchard. I’ll be patient. Cherries will come.

Well, but the day still shone, so, with an eye to catching a little bit of early vegetable planting, I set out the red cabbages, not into the garden, but into great big pots. It’s an experiment. In another year I might get an earlier start on the tilling, but for a year like this one, maybe setting the early sets into pots is a solution. We’ll see how they do there.

And still that sun was high and bright, so I went to work clearing some brambles from the orchard. It’s needed to be done, and the rain has kept me sulking in the house, so out I went with my loppers and clippers and my assistant cat.

In fact, that bramble was one of her best vole-hunting thickets, and the look she is giving me is not necessarily one of approval. The bramble is much improved now. From my point of view.

At last the sun was sinking wearily behind the hills. We came inside and decided one last gesture in acknowledgment of the weather was in order: Richard opened the grill, cleaned the racks from their winter’s slumber, and we did hamburgers on the barby. A long day, well-used.

I hope the pullets are pleased with their new digs.

Happy Birthday, Pete

Peter Seeger, born May 3, 1919. Many more returns of the day, Pete.

(This photo of Pete Seeger by Christopher Felver.)

Hiving Day

After that brief relapse into winter, spring seems to have returned. And good timing that was, too, because package bees arrived this week, and time and bees wait for no man.

Package bees: this is a commodity that might be unfamiliar to some of you. Time was, you could buy honeybees from Montgomery Ward and have them delivered by the postman. They came in wooden boxes with screened sides, and apparently the postal department was willing to live with this arrangement. No more! Post offices still accept ducklings and chicks, but not honeybees. It was probably pretty hard on the bees, being handled like parcel post and delivered to post offices, and then waiting for the call to go through to the beekeeper who came to pick them up. These days they’re trucked by bee haulers instead of sharing the trip with the mail, and picked up at bee supply houses by local beekeepers. Not as accommodating a method as delivery by postal carrier, but it still makes delivery of package bees possible to small-yard beekeepers. The big boys usually expand their holdings by dividing colonies within their apiaries. Hobby folks, being only lovers of the hive and not so driven by economics (and usually not having so many hives they can divide them), buy packages.

Because of losses the last few years, we went beeless last summer. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal to have no hives, and we had a lot going on, what with the beginning of the house project and all. But I felt unhappy about it. Nothing is so sad as an abandoned bee yard. The hives stood out there empty, a housing project without all the families. So I ordered bees for a new start-up this spring. On Wednesday I got the call: packages had arrived.

The bees still come in a screened wooden box. It holds three pounds of bees. Bees sell by the pound, odd as it may seem. So does honey, for that matter. You might think bees would sell by the each (only queen bees do), and honey by the liquid ounce, but it is pounds of bees that arrive, and pounds of honey that go out at the end of summer. Here are some of the boxes, empty after I have installed the bees into the hives.

A three-pound package contains something like 12,000 eager young worker bees and a bred queen. The cans hanging from the tops contained sugar water, feed for the bees during their journey. Scattered on the floors you can see some empty queen cages. All this will be explained.

Here is a video of how to get the packaged bees into the hive. Look what I’ve learned to do! I can stick the video right here into the post!

Each beekeeper, it seems, develops minor variations in the routine, but for the most part, that’s how it’s done (I try not to drop the queen cage into the package, however…).

Like beekeepers, honeybees are most happy when the sun is shining. On the day the bees arrived, it was pouring rain, and by the time I got home with them, it was dark. So we held them in their packages until Thursday. It was still not such good weather then, and late in the day by the time I was off work and returned to the bee yard to get them into their hives. This is why you have no pictures of them in their packages. They were, shall we say, grumpy, and I was in a hurry to get them hived. It does them no good to be held in those little boxes overlong, but neither do they really like being handled in the dusk. Yes, beekeepers get stung. Yes, it hurts. But not that much.

True to its nature, spring weather comes foul one day and fine the next. When I went back to release the queens from their little cages, the sun was high, and the bees were singing. Now, here’s the truth of the matter. There is nothing like the song of a sweet hive. You can tell from the sound when a hive is at work, when it’s ill, whether it’s queen-right, or if it’s not. When bees are busy, they are happy.

Here’s a shot of a queen cage just pulled from the new hive as I am about to release the queen. It’s covered with attendants who are there to feed her. Even though she is captive in the cage, they take care of her.

And bees love housework. Here they are tidying up.

All that rubbish on the landing board is stuff the bees have found inside that, in their opinion, does not belong there. They will take an old messy comb that has spider webs on it and broken cells, and whisk it right up into sparkle and shine.

A hive is very quick to divide up the tasks of building a colony. The workers who are feeding the queen are not the same ones who are cleaning house and performing mortuary duties to remove perished bees from the hive. Nor are either of those the ones who go out into the world and bring home supplies. The colony wastes no time getting to work. In this shot, you can see a bee disappearing into the hive with pollen in her baskets while others are on their way out (Good shot of the sting-y part, too!).

They have no time to waste, these members of a new household. It will be 21 days before newly hatched workers will augment the population of the hive. For those 21 days, the bees who arrived in the package are the entire future of the hive. They must build a nursery and fill it with eggs laid by the queen, they must feed the queen and the larvae in the nursery, they must keep the hive clean inside, they must bring food to the hive, and they must do it in the chancy weather of spring. See how they keep the new nursery warm:

On a spring day when it’s not quite warm enough to go in a shirt alone, the temperature inside the hive is about 95F. (Click the image if you want to be able to read the scale.)

It’s a big job for little girls, but they seem to know how to go about it.

Nothing makes me much happier than working a yard of healthy bees on a fine spring day. The sun is up and the hives already have a distinctive scent made up of wax, pollen, warmth, and activity. There is magic in a beehive, and it’s starting to happen now.

So I feel we have broken the back of the cold old season and are on our way into the warm, sweet one.

Here I am in my spring bonnet:

The bees are in their hives and all’s well in the world.

When in April

I suppose one of the charms of spring is its unsettled nature. That’s the most forgiving view.

Our expectation is, as Chaucer wrote in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales,

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour…

or, in more a recent English:

When April, with its sweet showers

Has pierced the dryness of March to the root

And bathed every vein in such moisture

That of its strength is brought forth the flower…

and so on, in a spring-happy manner.

It was pilgrimage season for Chaucer, meaning a fair season in which spring is in full rush. Winter with its storms and dark was over.

Here are his pilgrims setting out on the road, on a glorious day in April.

It’s still a bit cool, as you can see from their hoods and coifs, but they do not expect rotten weather, because it’s spring.

Spring! A season of light! Burgeoning flowers! Early daylight! Longer evenings! And some small dampness. After all, Aprille shoures bringen May floures.

This morning we woke to snow on the ground again. Deep into April, and it’s snowing. Hailing, too, if you want to put a fine point on it. A week ago the sun was shining over temperatures in the Fahrenheit 70’s.

Ah, well. How boring would it be to know the sun would sparkle every morning and the birds sing, tra-la!

Off and Flying

Our last couple of days have been suddenly warm and sunny. After late snows and extended rains, it’s a surprise to our bodies and minds. Throw open the windows! Breathe the sun!

Richard set our mason bee hatchery in a warm spot in hopes of bringing on an emergence, and the bees obliged with pleasure. I imagine the pleasure. If I had spent the winter holed up in a log plugged with mud at the entry, I would be ecstatic to see the sun.

Here is one of them just taking in the light of day.

This is probably a male. They are the first to emerge, and they linger at the nest site then, waiting for the girls to come out. The Orchard Mason Bees (Osmia lignaria) are mostly unsung as a force in the garden, but they are early and efficient pollinators. They hatch and go to work in the orchard before the honey bee is ready to expose herself to the chill. They don’t ask much of life: only a niche in the shingles or right-sized hole in which to spend the winter, and a little something to eat when they quicken in the spring. We put out drilled wooden blocks or log sections like this one to encourage them to nest right here, and we give them the orchard for early sipping. How generous we are, to provide an entire orchard of mixed varieties, all for the gratification of the Orchard Mason Bee.

Check out the Orchard mason bee link to learn more about these gentle pollinators and how to make them feel at home in your garden.

Richard added this addendum, as a comment. Since I know not everyone sees the comments, I thought I’d insert his thoughts  here:

That old log has been around for a long time. 10 years ago, we moved it from SE Portland where it already had been in service for several years. Mr. Knox, probably wouldn’t approve. [ed. note: "Mr. Knox" is the source from which you can purchase Orchard Mason Bees in our region. His website is linked just below in this comment.] The log is drilled, with no discernible precision, on both ends. As I recall, we started with a purchased 20-cell block that was full of bees (don’t know whether he sells those anymore.) We experimented with several materials for our own blocks. (4×4 cedar, redwood, pine, fir, etc. Most worked, although the aromatic woods that last a long time weren’t colonized until at least the second year.) For those intending to do it themselves, invest in a 5/16ths” brad tipped high speed bit. If you intend to use Knox’s paper tubes, you should find out what their outside diameter is.

A source for bees and nesting blocks (if you don’t have the equipment to drill your own) can be found at http://www.knoxcellars.com/ (They don’t have bees until fall of this year. However, if you anticipate adding bees when they come available, order a nesting block or two and Mr. Knox’s book. It’s possible you’ll snag some wild bees this spring.)

The only reason I refer you to Knox is that’s where we got started and he was prompt with delivery.

And a note about the bees: insecticides that kill hornets and wasps and other flying insects, of course kill orchard bees. Especially in small plots and around your garden, it’s probably a good idea to at least reduce the amount of insecticide you use. At the time of year orchard bees are flying, the real pests, bald faced hornets, haven’t emerged in numbers. And even they are not much of a problem until fall when natural forage begins to disappear and they try to fly off with your pork chop when you dine outside. Both wasps and hornets are beneficial in the garden. Except those that pose a hazard by nesting on the porch near a door or in the ground near a gate, we leave them alone. If you must kill them, try to use non-persistent insecticides that can be applied directly to the offending nest. [ed. note: I don't mind the Bald-faced hornets so much -- they seem to be pretty gentle, though they look black and mean. It's the Yellowjackets I'd prefer to do without. But then, we'd be up to our necks in carrion I suppose, so we'd better keep them around, too.]

ry

Stop! Thief!

If you doubt the season is changing (how it comes all of a sudden!) just look up. The crows have returned in a raucous black cloud. And sure as eggs is eggs, they are out for the main chance.

At morning feeding I found this evidence of thievery. Without wings of its own, there is no way an empty chicken egg can come to the yard in front of the barn.

After the evidence came to light, I watched for a while from the window. Sure enough, here came a crow to sit on the top end of the hay elevator and look things over. Hmm. Nothing more? Nests empty? Too bad.

Egg-suckers.

And yet, there is something about them that makes a person’s imagination run. To watch them harry a hawk in the air is to cheer for them both — the hawk for being picked on, and the crows as protectors of their neighborhood. To hear them arrive all in a flapping murder of self-announcement and settlement into the treetops is to admire their party instinct. To find the remains of their pillage is to, grudgingly, acknowledge an intelligence that challenges our own. We confound them with ravens, who make us shudder just a bit as we whisper in our minds, “Nevermore.” We say “crow’s nest,” and think of pirates on the bounding main. Scarecrow? It doesn’t work, but it brings folklore into the garden, and a slight creeping of the skin.

When I was a child, an old woman down the road had a captive crow. To call it captive really does not describe it, though. The crow had frequent free flights over the garden and the woods behind the house. When we would invade those woods for little girl explorations and imaginations, the crow would circle overhead and announce hoarsely, “Robber! Robber!”

He should talk.

Egg-sucker.

Frondescent

But then, things move on, don’t they? What you learn first on the farm, and what is continually impressed on you in a way that is somehow not so much a part of city life, is the progress of the seasons. Of course, living in town you still know what time of year it is. If for no other reason, you know it because the images in store windows tell you! The Valentines are scarcely off the shelves when the shamrocks and Easter bunnies appear. It must be spring, then.

Here, we have a greater intimacy with the seasons. We watch for wet and dry, cold and heat, planting times, mating times, hatching times, haying times. And just now, even though it’s been a rough few weeks in the stock yard, we note it is an emerging time in the landscape. I spotted the mama rabbit darting into the brush. The crows are ferrying huge sticks from the roadside bramble to the tops of trees.

Frondescent: [fr. L. frondere, to put forth leaves] springing into leaf…

One of my favorite spring views is this hedgerow. Alas, it does not belong to me, but I look for it every spring on my drives into town. I expect there is not much fruit in this tangle of plum trees and underbrush, but fruit is not the value of a hedgerow. It blocks wind in winter, it buffers heat in summer, it holds moisture in the shade of the thicket, it keeps soil in place. And just look beneath those withy trees. Look at the hiding places for deer, hawks, rabbits, voles, skunks, and small children on a wander.

Smell those old trunks and the roots grappling in the dirt. See the twiggy light within, and the narrow tracks of animal passings. Listen to the flowers opening in the spring chill.

(Click either of these pictures for a wider view.)

Wish I had a hedgerow, too!

I Will Love You Till I Die

If you are not a regular reader here, you must see the previous post to have the background for this one…

An 18th Century song sings this of a lover’s heart:

Black, black, black
is the color of my true love’s hair
Alone, my life would be so bare.
I would sigh, I would weep,
I would never fall asleep
My love is ‘way beyond compare
She with the wondrous hair.
Black, black, black
is the color of my true love’s hair.

Click here to listen to a Midi file of the tune and see a longer version of the lyrics: Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.

There is not much that’s more maudlin than a folk song about lost love, but I feel like wallowing today.

Our P.D. could not make it through without his Black Locust. You can’t imagine how I ached for him as I watched him grieve. We read of lovers who die of broken hearts. Now I have seen it’s true. I knew when he took up his place in front of the barn he was going to die. After watching him hold his vigil for a week at the place Locust died, and seeing him drift at the edge of the herd after that, I knew when he settled down to wait for her at the barn door that he was going to follow her. All he needed was a couple of days to get there.

The apricot tree is blooming in the snowfall today. Let them be flowers for Locust and P.D.

The Tenderest Heart

In addition to the sheep, the bees, the mule, and the chickens, we have some llamas on the farm. Though I think I am a sheep soul at last, the llamas came to our menagerie first.

Here are Camel, Llama and Musk Deer in a 19th Century print:

Early on, when we needed some grass eaters to keep the field down, we brought two young llama geldings home. They were acquired cheaply because of certain oddities in their genetics: Trace, who was born with three toes on his feet instead of the canonical two (Get it? Trés, for “three”); and Painted Desert, the color of desert sands, a smallish boy who has remained slender, not to say bony, his whole life. We call him P.D., pronounced like Petey. Llamas do have distinct personalities. They all seem a little aloof when you see them in a field with their noses held high and their aristocratic posture. But they are individuals inside. Trace has always been a bit retarded, never quite “getting it” as we would say if he were a human. P.D., on the other hand, turned into the diplomat of the group, the ambassador who greeted all newcomers, the dignified and curious llama who always reached out to others. Eventually we bought a bred female, and our first large stock birth on the farm (we don’t count the bees as “birthings” exactly) was a llama, a robust girl we named Honeysuckle. In time (it takes about 11 months to make a llama) we celebrated the arrival of her sister, Black Locust.

About three weeks ago, Black Locust lay down in the field one day and didn’t get up again. She went with the suddenness that animals sometimes do. They keep their secrets. As our friend Rose wrote, they seem to say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, now I’ll die.” Locust died with grass still in her mouth and no apparent sign of distress. Just down. Just gone.

I was not very happy about this. Locust had been a sweet girl. She was personable and affectionate, a more or less rare result in a llama. She would blow on your hair, follow you into the hay room to steal, permit stroking of her neck and handling of her feet, and would burp congenially into your face. (Let me be the first to inform those of you who have not experienced it that a ruminant burp is almost beyond pungent description.) In my mind, Locust was linked to our dear internet friend of 15 years, Joni, who had sent us a book on the occasion of Locust’s birth. Joni passed away last year without our ever having met each other outside email. I now have a double hole in my heart, one for Joni who helped us celebrate Locust, and one for Locust.

That’s baby Black Locust reading over my shoulder from the book Joni sent us.

But I am not the only one who misses Locust. P.D. has been grieving. If you do not think animals have something like souls, you have not paid attention. He spent days sitting out in the field near where she died. And though he roused himself to come at feeding time, he really hasn’t been eating much. He wanders the edge of the pasture, looking across at the rest of the herd, but not interested enough in their society to join them. Now he has taken up a solitary position in front of the barn. Maybe he is waiting for her to come out from one of her sneak raids on the hay room. He may not know what his heart is, but I think he knows it is broken.

So, I’m sorry, P.D.

I wish I could give him some comfort.

Easter on the Farm

This is me tending the sheep on Easter morning. Even on Easter, the chores must be seen to.

I’m a little more dressed up than usual at feeding time, since it is a church day, after all. Let’s hope these spotty lambs respect my Sunday best. They are fine examples of young Jacob sheep — or, wait a minute… Has someone been Photoshopping my antique greeting cards? For shame!

Best to you all at Easter, whether you celebrate the season or the worship.