Welcome to the Patch of Heaven blog! Join us as we plant and harvest, learn bee keeping, make soap, and have fun doing as much as we can ourselves. Our goal is to learn how to do things from start to finish, relying on ourselves – instead of the store.
Haven’t posted an update for a good while. Work out here has simultaneously been slow, and fast, and I never knew it could be both. With spring coming to a close there were a lot of things to get wrapped up. The bees needed to be checked, and box added. The planting needed to be finished, well installed, irrigation figured out, and fields wrapped up for the growing period. The chicks need relatively small amounts of our time, but they still have us running around. We had some beautiful days for friendship, and some yucky days for cozy comfort.
First off, chicks. They are growing wildly. Every day they seem a handful bigger. They’re rapidly outgrowing the chick coop, and something bigger needs to be made for them. We try to interact with them daily, and it seems to help them not panic when we need in there, but they still prefer to be left alone. We let them out into the yard and chasing them down to get them back into the coop is a workout! They are healthy and growing well, we’re already talking about getting more!
Guess what?
The crops are almost all in. A little about what I’m attempting to do. The three sisters method is where a cereal crop, a legume, and a sprawling cucurbit are planted near each other. The cereal (typically a maize) provides a tall support for the vining legume to grow on. The legume (typically a bean) fixes nitrogen for the group. The cucurbit (typically a pumpkin or squash) sprawls out, protecting the roots, and providing ground cover and weed control. These plants balance each other and increase plant density and soil health. I’m wishing to increase produce variety, while maintaining a consistent practice. I’m hoping to eventually plant, fertilize, water, cultivate, and harvest the same way, in rows, every year. If I do the same thing every year, I can experiment with small changes, without fear of unknown variables. Plus, it just sounds fun to me. This year I picked “painted Hill” corn. A type of field corn which should be sweet enough to eat as sweet corn. It produces yellow, white, red, and blue kernels on the same cob. This is a fun and unique plant I hope to draw better value at a farmers’ market. For the legume I chose sugar snap peas. To me they are the unbeatable pea. My biggest fear is that I won’t get any in the house and they’ll all get ate where they stand in the field! The cucurbit I chose is a “burpless” cucumber, called English cucumber, which is sweeter, and has a thinner skin. Again, I hope that they Gain a higher value by virtue of being unique. I also prefer them over normal cucumber when eaten raw. The corn was planted over three weeks ago. The temperatures were cold, and there was little water. Such that, rather than waiting only a week to plant the peas in a stand of corn that had emerged, I waited three and planted among corn that hadn’t emerged, yet. Although, while planting the peas I did see some corn sprouts, and more have sprouted following the irrigation and warmer weather. I will be planting the cucumbers next weekend, regardless of the growth of the peas. It is simply getting too late to not plant them.
I’ve acquired a couple sprinklers that can cover the whole 100′ “cash crop” bed. Right now, the water pressure is low, having to run 200′ of hose from the house, but when the well pump is installed I will have a great irrigation method.
One more point on the fields. There was a dilapidated barbwire fence between the yard and the south field. That is no longer there. There was a repair almost every 50′, some of it was fallen into the grass, and most of the posts were bent. Since we don’t have animals, and the fence would have taken too much to repair, it’s gone. Unfortunately, the corner brace we used to identify which driveway was ours is also gone. Wish us luck finding our way home!
Finally, the bees. The bees are doing fantastic. I’ve been feeding them 1:1 sugar almost every day, if not every other. I was successful at leaving a gallon of sugar water out by the hive. I would go up, when the feeder was empty, with no bees by it, I would refill it with no issue with the bees. That is until last Friday. Instead of using the ATV, parking 40′ away, and slowly, but deliberately, refilling the container. I used the louder tractor, parked 20′ away, paused to observe them and make my presence known, then refilled the container. Apparently, that was wrong, and a bee stung me near my eye. Which has since swollen up big! No pain, slight Itch, incredibly annoying!
Today, despite my swollen eye and the Benadryl taking me for granted, I inspected the hive and added a deep brood box. The hive looks incredibly healthy! It is not expanding quite as fast as I’d hoped, but I believe that is because I didn’t separate the Nuc frames and place empty frames between them. During my inspection, this time I replaced the frames with the empty frames between them, to encourage them to grow more brood. I saw many drone cells. Sticking up from the hive, what I believe is one supersedure cell, and a couple frames of capped cells. When removing the top of the hive I inadvertently exposed some drone larvae. I was worried about a parasite, but the Internet has come to the rescue and assured me it is common for drone cells to be made at the top and bottom of the frame. Beekeepers around me are of a consensus, two deep broods are sufficient. So, we will monitor growth closely, and hold out hope for some honey!
The goals for this patch of heaven are to learn a bit about subsistence, the work that goes into putting a meal on the table, learn about how things were done, when you didn’t have a store to buy things from, and, most importantly, slow down and enjoy life. These past few weekends we cashed out our hard work invested in the property, and had some true fun. Hayrides with friends, fire pits, and just generally enjoying the country air outside. Until next time, heaven awaits.
So we decided that for Mother’s Day this year, we wanted to get some chicks. We specifically wanted breeds that would do well on the cold, had a friendly disposition, and were layers rather than meat chickens. We wanted four, 1 each a different breed, and we would name them after the Golden Girls. We settled on Americana, Barred Rock, Braham, and Easter Egger.
We already had this large rabbit cage/outdoor catio cage from the previous owner of our house that will work great for the first few weeks. We put a wooden box inside that they can go in easily, and it will provide protection from the elements. But they still have an outdoor area so they can get some sunshine. We set it up with a heat lamp, water fountain, and feeder.
On Mother’s Day we went to the local ag store for our new babies! The only breeds they had that I wanted were Americana and Barred Rock, so I got two Americana, one Barred Rock, and one Silver Laced Wyandotte. I hadn’t read anything about it but we thought it looked cool so we went with it.
We asked on Facebook, and talked to various people about their experiences. We should have a really good place to keep them safe from the hawks, crows, foxes, and skunks. We knew to watch out for foxes, but didn’t even think of the crows or hawks! We will do everything to make sure they are well adjusted, and can handle being around people.
We’ve started looking into what it will take to sell eggs at the local farmer’s market. A couple special licenses and we should be good to go for that, in the not so distant future. We will need more chickens, too, before we are able to consistently sell at a farmers market.
All in all, we’re very excited to have these chicks. They have survived the first night, which feels like a good start. We want to handle them more, get them more comfortable with people, even try to desensitize them to our dog so if they do escape, she will leave them alone.
Patch of heaven acquired a Bee Castle bee hive! Two deep boxes, two medium boxes. It is estimated that a deep frame box can contain up to 80lbs of honey. We plan to use Carniolan bees – a more winter hardy bee, with a gentler disposition. They were also recommended for first time bee keepers. These bees will need 80+lbs of honey to survive our winters. We estimate that both deeps will need to be used for brood, and likely only one medium super will be used for Honey. I hope to be wrong! Two medium supers full of honey would be a wonderful first year! There will be more to come on the bees as the hive is setup outside, the bee nuc installed. We’ll make sure to post about the whole journey, and bring you along with the first few inspections.
