Abraham's Celestial Miracle

I had my pile of about twenty tiny, orange and grapefruit sized cabbages on the motor home couch. I brought four over to the counter and started to cut them up, when Joe brought me another one.

"Thank you, Joe! I am glad you brought me the last one," I teased.

He got a huge grin and walked back to the couch. He picked up another cabbage and said, "No! Here is the last cabbage," and brought me another. Then back to the couch: "Oh! Here is the last cabbage!"

Over and over, twenty times, we giggled our way through cabbage processing.

That was fun.

But it was more than fun when I went to check on the bees. I opened the top of the Celadon hive. It's humming, but not much appears to be happening yet in the upper level.

I looked at the Celestial hive before opening it. I had expected to find a massive number of drones, or a box of starved bees, comb taken over by the wax moths. A week ago, there were eight empty frames: no honey, no brood, no eggs. So it surprised me to see that there was still activity outside the hive: bees flying in and out.

And it surprised me to pull out the first frame and find bees daisy-chaining, as if they were making new comb. Why would a nearly dead hive want to build new comb?

The next frame had a bit of capped honey. Honey!? They hadn't starved yet, if they had more stores this week than last.

The next frame had bee babies. Little white grub-like babies. They weren't capped, and the frame wasn't full. Maybe laying workers had begun to lay eggs?

The next frame had brood. Perfect, gorgeous brood. Almost entirely full. It was so perfect, I wasn't sure I was seeing it properly. Maybe each cell was actually a drone cell. But drone cells are rounded, to create the space needed for the larger bodies. And these didn't seem to be rounded. But if each cell is rounded, would I be able to tell?

The next frame: more brood. And the next. Brood! This hive has hope and a future! And there was a drone cell, to remind me what rounded cells look like.

In utter disbelief, I removed each frame again. Did I miss a queen cell before? I didn't see one. Could I spot the queen?

On about the fourth frame, I think I spotted the queen. She had the extended abdomen, and very different coloring from the other bees. But the bees didn't appear to pay the appropriate attention to her, and she didn't actually lay an egg while I watched. I'm going to assume that's the queen, though.

She was unmarked, and I don't remember if I bought an unmarked queen this year (and I have no photo evidence, nor explicit receipts, to remind me).

So where did she come from? Was this an injured queen, nursed back to health? Or a swarm that I didn't notice that came and took over? Why did the hive dwindle to nothing, but now has life and hope?

I think it was Abraham's prayers. About a week ago, he began to pray (unprompted, if I remember correctly) that the bees would be okay and that they would make much honey.

I would not have prayed that. The grief over another failed hive was so great for me, I tried to be pleased with one hive.

But the way I felt like I was walking on air the rest of the day made me realize just how deep was my disappointment. Now changed to joy.

Pictures! (in no particular order)

We love to watch the cows graze.

Abraham helped hold the hose in the trough. It was having a hard time staying put, and he faithfully completed his task.

When cows have had enough to eat, and have overall well-being, they get horizontal lines in their hair, down on their bellies. Can you see the horizontal streaks, called "happy lines," on this shiny cow?

Can you spot the cow in all that grass?

To get some perspective on the new greenhouse: the old greenhouse, 16'x10', is in the foreground, and the new greenhouse in the background. I love the structural frame of the new greenhouse; I'm a bit bummed that it will soon be a plastic-covered caterpillar, too.

The white ducks are Pekin, the black are Cayuga, the mottled are Welsh Harlequin, and there's a Khaki Campbell at the front of the group, if you look closely.

Phil thinks Buttercup is within a week. She is certainly moving with that slow, ready to be done, late pregnancy waddle.

Some time ago, I found a nest with an egg. Then there were three eggs. Then there were babies, quite ugly and naked. I never saw a mother come and feed the babies (not that I watched much). And then, one day, after only a week, there were no babies. I found nothing under the nest. It's just empty and abandoned.

The wasp nest, so small and delicate only two months ago, is now about as large as a basketball, and quite intimidating.
wasp nest
Joe goes everywhere with us. In this case, he's going down to help Phil till.

This evening, Jadon was taking self-portraits with the camera, as best as he was able. (He has such a nice face! Such a nice boy!)

He took a nice photo of Joe.

And then I took the camera and Joe attacked him. These brothers have a sweet relationship: Joe adores Jadon, and Jadon enjoys Joe. I haven't seen that before in the boys (who are friends and companions, but haven't been hero/followers).

I continue to thrill to the colors on the farm. The red of the flowers.

It even has my all-time favorite color: rich magenta.

In more flowers than one.

The All-Day Potato Harvest

The 80 pounds of slowly rotting seed potatoes have been on my back burner for a few months now. I haven't had time, place, or motivation for those poor Yukon Golds. But today is a biodynamic root day, and I finally decided to do what it took to get them in the ground.

But first, I put the peanuts in the ground. I had popped them out of their pods in mid-May, when they should have gone in the ground, but didn't plant them. Maybe they'll grow. And if not, well, there was hardly enough to eat.

I pulled a few onions. We have some reasonably sized ones, but most, after the 105 days allotted for growing onions, are barely larger than scallions. I'll continue to have patience.

I cut the potentially usable bits off the potatoes yesterday, which cut the total from six flats to one.

Starting this morning, I pulled seven varieties of special potatoes. One of the varieties of fingerling potatoes must have needed longer to develop, since I had planted a pound of seed potatoes and came away with three ounces of new growth. But that was the only bust in the bunch! The other variety of fingerling had four fold growth, or four pounds of potatoes.

One variety (Carola, a sunny yellow) increased almost twelve fold, and the best variety (Cranberry Red) produced over fourteen fold!

I started in March with 14.5 pounds and came away with over 120 pounds. That is a great feeling.

Next, I harvested whatever cabbage bits I could. Little cabbage heads have kept forming, but the cabbage field had become overrun with weeds.

The broccoli must have suffered the same fate as the cabbage: of the 150 plants, I found one small head this morning. I tried it and spit it out: bitter and not pleasant to swallow.

So we rolled up the drip tape and Phil tilled the bed.

Then he plowed three and a half rows, so I could just drop the seed potato pieces in. Previously, I had planted eight rows of potatoes in neat beds. The spacing was great, but I only managed to get the potato bits about two inches down. And I found that I couldn't hill them well: I had almost no soil to pile around the plants.

So we'll try the plow method. Three and a half rows instead of eight, but the seed potatoes are a good six inches or so buried, with plenty of soil to hill around them.

Physically, that was a LOT easier on me. Even so, by 6pm, after bending, digging, and planting since before 9am, I wasn't eager to go milk.

Isaiah has begun to pray for two things. He asks that Catherine, due in July, will have a healthy girl calf (and that neither will die); and he asks that Reese will give more milk.

Phil has changed the pattern of grazing for the cows. They no longer walk down slope to rest in the shade (he finally ran out of movable posts). Now they graze up slope only.

He filled a large tank in the back of the truck. From there, while he puts up the new section of fencing, the water gravity feeds into the cattle trough.

Whether because Reese walked less, or because of Isaiah's prayers, Reese about doubled yesterday's production. I'll take a bit more than a gallon of rich milk.

And she's figured out how much she can shift about in the hobbles. She certainly doesn't plant her feet and stand still!

Phil moved the layer hens today, out of the cherry orchard and into the apple orchard, following the sheep. We hope they scratch the dung and eat the flies. It is quite beautiful to see them against the neatly trimmed grass.

We have started to get a single pullet egg every day. The incredible White Leghorns, the most productive chickens, have already begun to lay. They are less than four months old (usual egg laying doesn't start until five months or so)!

The Darwin Awards II

To get the worst news out of the way first: I was walking back from milking (barely over a half gallon all day today, the turkey!) when I came across another dead lamb, caught in the electric net. This one was painful. Chocolate, our only black lamb, so large, healthy, vibrant.

So that was awful, and takes up the majority of my thoughts at the moment. But there was much of interest today, not quite so sad.

Happily, the hobbles worked well on Reese. In appearance they look like enormous handcuffs that attach her back feet together. She realized right away that something was odd about her feet, and she kicked out, tentatively, once. I was happy she didn't kick hard and lose her balance. I had visions of being crushed under a tipped over cow.

Phil finished most of the rest of the frame for the greenhouse today. It looks great.

I have been working through my freezer of random meat, preparatory to the next pig slaughter. Last night was spare ribs with homemade barbecue sauce (which wasn't as good as I'd hoped). Tonight was pork backbone, which was surprisingly meaty. Paula Dean has a recipe with backbones cooked with butter, onion, pepper, salt, and bay leaves which turned out absolutely delicious. It made a huge pot.

I picked over ten pounds of jalapenos today. I'm not sure how much over ten pounds, since my scale only goes to ten, but the box sure felt heavy.

I like jalapenos probably more than the next person, and Phil delights in them. I intended to make a large quantity of hot sauce so we don't have to buy the overpriced ounces any more. I was seeding the peppers merrily when a seed flew into my eye.

The world stopped. I licked my fingertip to see if I could touch my eye, and my tongue, mouth, and lips were on fire. The eye heat was spreading down my cheek, so I turned on the bathroom shower head and tried to rinse my eye without touching any part of it. No good: the heat increased. I ran to the barn and got an ice cube, which was cold, but not strong enough.

Milk is supposed to break the heat, so I poured a bowl of milk and tried to bathe my eye. But nothing was working, and I could hardly breathe. Could I go permanently blind?

I called Phil, who was up the ladder working on the greenhouse. "Help me!" I said, panic rising.

He came and turned the shower faucet on, reminding me to open my eye so I could actually get water flushing it. So painful! But it worked. The heat began to subside, and I could again see.

Then my hands started to tingle. I hadn't worn gloves (though the thought had crossed my mind). Jalapenos, next to habaneros and "real" peppers seem so innocuous. And the heat of summer hasn't really arrived yet. How hot could they be?

Hot enough that, for the next several hours, my only thought was how to keep the burn out of my hands. I bathed them in everything I could find recommended online: milk, oil, dish soap, poison ivy soap, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, aloe. When none of those seemed to work, I held ice cubes constantly. Or tried to divert my attention: I cut rotting seed potatoes until my hands cramped in claws.

By milking time, though, the burn was better. And from now on: gloves and safety goggles!

I roasted green peppers (not so sweet as red) and cut up some for the freezer.

The white Feherozon peppers are extremely mild. I checked online to see if they are always white, and was gratified to read again why I had chosen them: they should ripen to orange, then red, and if I let them dry, they will powder to excellent paprika. Sounds multi-purpose to me! I'm not sure what to do with the large quantity of white peppers picked, but they are certainly interesting.

The garden by turns excites and exasperates me. We have plenty of tomatoes (Phil had a "ensalata caprese," or Capri salad today: tomatoes and basil, drizzled with olive oil and salt and pepper. Fresh mozzarella would have made it truly authentic, but we need more milk for mozzarella). But the tomato plants look nothing like their bold, tall counterparts in professional greenhouses. The scourge of Bitsy has decimated many plants, as she cavorts around, sampling and trampling tomatoes. I suppose it's just as well I planted 500, way more than needed. And, as foibles go, I'll take Bitsy's one annoying trait. It's not that bad.

The summer lettuce is holding its own. It's ridiculously small and won't be ready for some time, but it is yet living, and that counts for something.

I had such high hopes for my flower bed. Planted with asparagus, rhubarb, and many types of flowers, I had a vision of a perennial flower and edible bed right in the middle of the garden, like a lovely jewel. Instead, the foreground shows the weeded section, with nascent zinnias and cosmos, among others. But the background, where the asparagus and rhubarb reside, has become an incredible thicket of tall grass.

Phil and I feel gratified that our garden is growing such incredible plants. A year ago, this land wouldn't grow grass higher than half an inch. So to have grass waist high and some weeds over our heads feels like a sort of accomplishment. Just not at all what we expected. With the meager growth of last year, we weren't expecting to battle weeds much at all. I will probably transplant the rhubarb and asparagus at some point, and then till the garden. Some time.

To have a thick mat of grass where last year was only red clay is gratifying and beautiful, around the edge of the garden. When it starts to overrun the peppers, though, it becomes just a bit scary.



I went to the corn patch today. It's a mass of green: tall corn stalks, ground covering watermelon and squash vines (mostly watermelon, I think). An occasional bean plant, but those have not done well. And plenty of grass.

I had gone to look for summer squash. I had looked just on Friday, and seen nothing, but I apparently missed a zucchini, since when I looked today, there was one larger than my foot.

I am excited for summer squash. And I am eagerly awaiting okra, my favorite vegetable from last summer.

What a day. From burning eye to fiery hands; from greenhouse success to deceased lamb. The emotional swings of farming keep coming, and we just try to keep up.

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The Lykosh Darwin Award of the Day

Phil and I have scared wildlife a few times. Phil was putting up new fence for the cows when a turkey mama and about six little babies suddenly flew out of the brush only a few feet away. It really startled him! I saw the mama and babies, too, a few days later, but they were not super close to me.

I have seen fawns a few times, and I saw a deer cross my path right behind me, soaring over our fence. A deer leap is so powerful, so floating: it appears to defy gravity. Amazing.

After the great progress on Friday, Phil went to help build a treehouse on Saturday. On Sunday, we slept. We slept in (Phil took an extra two hours, rising at 7:15, still tired). Then Phil had a bit of difficulty moving the sheep: they were in their new, large pen, and suddenly decided to bolt out of the fence. Somehow he managed to corral all of them, by himself.

We came back from church, and Phil went right to sleep. I slept, too, and then went to a party. Came back, made dinner, and went back to sleep at 9pm. We were surprised at our apparent inexhaustible fatigue.

Life (and death) don't stop, though. We found a lamb, dead, in the electric netting (not one of the Babydolls). It looked like she tried to head straight through two levels of electric net: not under, not avoid, through. If she had been a week old, it may have made sense, but after three months of electric fence training, I would have expected her to be a bit more wise.

Acorn was baaing pathetically, so we think it was Caterina, winner of the Darwin award for most creative removal from the gene pool.

And, on the life front, Buttercup looks like she's getting close to her due date. Her teats have grown for a while, but her mammary glands are now filling out. The books say that she should deliver in the next week or two. I hope we're ready.

The boys and I harvested about two five-gallon buckets of peppers today; beautiful, chemical-free peppers. I planted many because I don't like paying $7/lb for organic peppers at the grocery store, but I realize now that I don't eat that many peppers. Maybe we need some roasted peppers?

I made a marvelous cream of tomato soup today. Except for the salt, it was all from our farm: lard to cook the onions and garlic, then tomatoes, stock, a few handfuls of basil, all blended together once cooked. Fresh cream added, with salt. So great!

In less happy moments, I had a massive melt down on Saturday night. I went to milk Reese, who had already started to walk up the hill. We want to encourage her eating as much as possible, so I let her walk the quarter mile or so up to the pasture, expecting that Phil would be along in the truck soon, so I could tie her in. But the truck didn't come, and my attempt to milk Reese while she stood and ate her therapeutic aloe pellets lasted about 25 seconds, until she realized that I hadn't tied her at all. Then the hooves and the head started flying, and she soon walked away.

I had walked the better part of a mile at that point, when I could have been doing a good many other wonderful things. I am not a confident truck driver, the cow needed to be milked, and I was just furious at the wasted time, about the most stressful thing in my life right now. (When I go to bed every day feeling a bit more behind than I had been in the morning, it wears me down.)

Phil showed up around that point and bore the brunt of my shrieking rage. Reese, wandering by grazing, stopped in front of me and butted me with her head. I saw red to the point that I took a karate pose and threw punches. Not to hit her, of course, but just to demonstrate my extreme irritation.

You know it's a bad meltdown when you shadow box a cow.

I understood why she kicked me in the knee the next morning, and felt like I deserved it.

Phil came to milk this evening, and when Reese kicked over the bucket, despite Phil's holding her leg, he said, "That's enough. Next time: we hobble."

I'm ready. The constant dancing and kicking has not gotten better. We'll see if hobbling helps.

Swift Progress

Phil has spent the last several days pounding stakes in the ground for the greenhouse. He started with the hardest side, the cut in side (what was "uphill"). Driving steel rods four feet into the ground, when not even an inch is topsoil and, therefore, easy: he felt grateful to get four posts driven in a day. Swinging an eight pound hammer around and overhead again and again, connecting with the 3" diameter post driver: it was tough.

But yesterday he finished the nineteen posts on the uphill side, and we strung the line for the downhill side. I'm amazed by how precise it all needs to be: the posts have to be not only line up perfectly along a string, but they need to be driven to a precise depth, with the drilled hole facing exactly to the center. I am glad Phil is an engineer: I shudder to think what "greenhouse by English major" would look like.

Phil hammered in the first four posts. He said that the first couple of feet were, indeed, easier, and to only have to work hard for a foot or two, rather than four feet, made the task much easier. When Steve came today, he and Phil finished that line (minus the 19th post, which was formerly in place, but has since succumbed to water runoff and erosion. Phil plans to place that one in a concrete tube to keep it steady). And then they began to build!

The size of the first arch took our breath away. It was like our own Chartres cathedral: soaring, beautiful. As the boys went outside, each came to me and commented. "Mom, have you seen!" (Isaiah) "That REALLY BIG!" (Joe) Yes, yes!

The next four arches went up quickly, and then Steve, taller than Phil by some inches, attached the ridgepole for stability, and then one of the side connectors, too.

The view from directly across the driveway shows the slope of the land: the greenhouse pad is a steep three or four food drop from the driveway.

I think the thrill of rapid construction sustained the men, since they kept putting up pieces until all the eighteen were in place before coming in for lunch.

Afterwards, Phil began to tie the structure together with crossbeams, working until it was absolutely too light to see. Projects are fun when there is noticeable achievement.

It is our 11th Anniversary today, and this was a fabulous gift.

Nature, too, offered celebration with flowers, both few (Blue Bachelor's Buttons)

and many (strawflower, which never look as good in photos as they do in person).