Joyful Days

We finally stopped and got puppy collars and leashes Sunday afternoon. The puppies have been worn out the last day, as Abraham and Isaiah headed outside numerous times to walk them around. I like that the ankle biters are too tired to rush me. That's fine with me.

Now that I have tree pots, I'm doing my best to fill them. The 36 osage orange trees that sprouted and I planted out in the nursery bed were just too tiny to survive the weed and chicken competition. I think about 32 are yet living, but I have to really hunt for them. Even planted in an orderly, 6'x6' grid, they are overshadowed and lost with the grass and weed pressure. They'll go into pots until they're large enough and I'm ready to move them.

Filling the 13" tall pots takes some time: I want good soil, but to ensure the soil is weed-free and good quality topsoil ... it takes longer than I wish.

I grew discouraged at one point, and asked Phil if I was being ridiculous. Trying to save 36 tiny little trees?! He keeps my spirits up. This is all part of the learning curve. When I planted them out, I had no idea about tree pots; I had no idea the weed pressure would be so drastic. So I'm learning.

And to give up now would first, not be faithful to the tasks I've begun and, second, truncate the learning process. What other discoveries will happen now that the trees are in pots? It will be interesting to discover.

Can you spot the blackberry in the midst of the grass in the greenhouse? That beautiful grass was sown on the slope above the greenhouse, to prevent erosion. Harumph.

Phil went to help me dig up blackberries in the greenhouse. I had been having no trouble fitting the little plants into pots. But by the second or third plant, we had to quit: the blackberries were too vibrant. So Phil spent his afternoon crouched over 50 or so plants, carefully using the claw to remove the vetch, clover, and weed pressure from the base of the blackberries. We'll let those grow, and till the rest of the greenhouse for vegetables and such.

Phil has kept the boys busy. He moved the sheep down the driveway, and had the older boys with him, pounding stakes, putting up netting, and guiding sheep.

First thing this morning, I woke to the sound of the tractor. Phil had enclosed the chicken pen in mesh, and when he pulled the chickens to the neighbor's field, to allow the chickens to scratch cow patties behind the cows, adding their manure, breaking the cycle of fly larvae, he realized a long-time dream.

For an hour or so, until the chickens found their way back to their normal stomping grounds. After dark, Isaiah and Phil rounded up 13 of the 16 white birds (the last three found a VERY secure hiding spot, apparently), and moved them back into the hut near the cows.

Phil also scythed down the grass near our few blueberries. It had grown so lush and thick that he worried leaving the clippings would create such a dense mat of decaying matter that it would kill the grass beneath. So he scraped up part of it by hand: that little swatch of maybe 60 square feet filled the wheelbarrow.

With continued overcast days, the boys finally got their little fire, to burn cardboard and random sticks. They enjoyed that for an hour or two, while I did dishes, Phil scratched in the greenhouse, and the chickens scratched nearby.

And a few boys stories that I think are sweet: we read Captain Nobody last week (very cute), and the protagonist wear a little mask just over his eyes. Saturday night, I was supervising baths when I came in to find Isaiah and Joe very proudly displaying the masks Isaiah had made for them.

Abraham's reading gets better all the time. While Jadon was highly motivated, and Isaiah went from sounding out words to reading the KJV in about three days (it was so surprising that when Isaiah read a verse at Bible study for the first time, the leader had to make everyone read again, because he was in such shock over Isaiah's ability), Abraham's progress has been less motivated and more incremental. Tonight I pulled out a few very simple books, and Abraham read them without complaining, giggling as he read. Jadon came over and listened, too, laughing along with Abraham, just enjoying his brother's nascent ability.

Then Jadon took the pile of books and sorted them by what he thought Abraham would like. He passed them along, one by one, and offered little tutoring.

Add to that: Abraham asked me to open the door so he could give me a flower he found.

Joe tagged along to help me transplant osage oranges, and carried pots or shovel or whatever I needed (Joe is willing to do quit a bit, especially if I praise his muscles).

Isaiah grumbles a bit about having to choose a book to read, then holes himself up on his bed and reads until the story is finished. Did he like it? Yes, he did.

When getting Joe's clothes on after his shower, I asked if I could wear his jeans. "No. If you put them on, pshing! They explode." I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms, but I could certainly imagine it happening!

Sometimes Just Wait a Day

I'm still learning the rhythms of the farm. I think my lesson lately centers on not forcing things. Yesterday when I saw the several snapped grafts, I simply could not deal with it then. Too much frustration at the puppies, too much fatigue to go and search for the tape to mark new varieties and gather the various tools and supplies needed.

But today I was ready and eager. I have been so impressed with the Liberty apples, both in vigor and shapeliness, so from now on, any grafts that fail, I'm planning to replace with Liberty. Also, after trying freezer tape to seal my grafts (which looks like masking tape but is water impermeable), I bought a roll of 4" wide Parafilm online. I like it much better. Useful for sealing tops and wrapping the graft union, it will gradually breakdown and not require slitting, as the electrical tape does. It has a nice feel, a nice stretch: it's a happy product to work with. I redid the two grafts broken by puppies, and then I redid two that I hadn't wrapped sufficiently (somehow the tape had gaped at the top, exposing the cut portions of the graft to drying out).

One or two of the scions are fully leafed out. That is very fun, but it also makes me just a bit nervous. If those two are doing so well, what's happening with the other 265 that aren't leafed out?

Waiting has never been my strong point.

At the grafting class some weeks ago, I learned that certain trees with taproots don't transplant very well. But there are special "tree pots," extra tall containers, that can help nurse a baby tree along for a year or so. I had no idea. Where to order? I was surprised how hard it was for my to find any online, but I finally found Stuewe and Sons. It took a bit to decide that, yes, I really did want to order these special pots (a case is 360, and that's a lot of pots!), but they arrived today, and I started to play.

My 40 jujubes have had taproots growing out the bottom of their flats for a week or two. I put 24 of them into tree pots. A few of the soil blocks disintegrated on me, utterly snapping almost all the brittle white roots. I'm not sure how those ones will end up, but I planted them into pots anyway. After 24, though, my nerves were done for the day.

It sure is handy to have so many bulb crates around. The pots taper slightly at the bottom, and cannot stand up alone. Bulb crates appear to be specially designed to hold exactly 24 pots. I haven't tried to move a crate yet: once they're planted, they stay where they are.

Joe and I went to work in the greenhouse next. As Phil and I have talked about it, the greenhouse is absolutely out of control. Although much of the growth is volunteer "green manure" (mostly clover and vetch), the growth of grasses and these green manures make hand weeding out of the question. Some of the plants are almost two feet high: hoeing is supposed to happen when weeds are only a day or two old.

So what to do? Phil suggested tilling. I hate that tilling kills worms and burns up carbon. On the other hand, I hate weeding for hours: a few hours working, not weeding, and I could buy enough worms to well populate the entire greenhouse. We'll till.

But before we can till, we need to deal with the transplanted brambles. To my surprise, the raspberries have done almost nothing. In fact, many of the more vibrant raspberries, transplanted last fall, have died. (While the raspberries in the market garden area keep sending out runners and more runners.) The blackberries, for the most part, overwintered just fine, but they are only about 6" tall on average. The wild blackberries are in bloom already.

Clearly, the brambles are not happy in the greenhouse. And, truthfully, I'm not thrilled with them in there.

But where to put them? We don't really have a spot that's screaming: "Blackberries should come here!" Ideally, I'd have a charming little patch, neatly trellised and established. But that hasn't happened yet.

Enter: tree pots. I dug up 24 plants, pulled the weeds around the roots, and did my best to let their roots fit in the pots. Will they live? They certainly wouldn't live in the greenhouse while being tilled; these dear blackberries, now in their third location around the farm.

When I say I dug up 24 plants, that is true. But as part of my pacing, I'm learning to do what I can, and when I no longer enjoy it, to wait. I had finished about 14 plants when I was just done. Thoroughly. So I made dinner, and at some point after dinner, the blackberries called, so I finished. That felt good. But it also felt good not to push through with a task until it became drudgery.

I won't expect blackberry production this year either. I am hoping, though, that some of the plums that hang with such promise will be good to eat.

White Net Goes Up

I was thinking about transplanting my flowers yesterday, and I looked at how the beds in the moon garden are doing.

Overall, it's not been a rousing success. Or really a success at all. The bulbs I transplanted did not take (spring transplanting is not the best time). The peas I planted have been decimated by the chickens. Some plants, like peppers and tomatoes not only did not make any headway in the soil, but they alternately dried out and froze. The lettuces and onions never put down strong enough roots. The beets did nothing.

It's really been surprising how badly the growing season has been so far.

But experimenting with a range of beds, I decided I think I prefer the weed squashing method. I level the dirt, then put down a layer of cardboard, or a few layers of newspaper. Then I pile a few inches of mulch (in my case, manured hay). My mistake the first time was to plant only into the mulch, which probably left not enough soil contact, and too many air gaps. So this time I'm poking holes in my cardboard and planting into the dirt underneath, leaving little openings in the mulch.

I worked on garden beds yesterday, so I'd be ready to plant today. I didn't finish (I got tired of pushing the wheelbarrow and tossing the wet mulch), but I made good progress.

At first it was really fun to plant flowers today.

By my second or third tray, though, I looked over and saw the chicken scourge coming my way. They had hit the pea bed: another few feet and their aggressive claws and beaks would be chomping on my flower bed.

I had sort of thought the chickens would move to follow the cows, but Phil has had an unending stream of work-for-pay lately, and hasn't been able to move the chickens.

And even if the chickens move, the two puppies love to romp! While it is adorable to watch them run and tackle each other through the green manured fields, they head through the moon garden, snapping at bees, and leaping gleefully, without any regard for the tender plants they might be crushing underfoot.

And while it is hard to blame the puppies for not understanding artificial boundaries, it still discourages me so much.

The puppies have also taken to romping through my precious apple nursery bed. I haul them out, and they go back in.

Then, when they get bored with that, they turn to the garlic, and frolic among the plants.

Stately Bitsy sits in the driveway, waiting patiently for me to notice her. I bring her the recalcitrant pups, but she isn't tutoring them for me!

So Phil and I put up electric net around the moon bed. Then, when he went to get a second set of netting, I watched, dumbfounded, as the puppies pulled up one of my marking stakes in the nursery and chewed it; then cracked one of the grafts. (I later found a graft scion completely separated from the grafting wood. It was a successful one, too.) We couldn't get the netting up fast enough.

For the moment, my plants are safe.

Bud Break!

After one day in the 70s back in March, we had such a hot "spring" that it really felt more like we went from winter to summer in two days.

So we have been absolutely reveling in the cooler weather the last week. The gentle rain that started Saturday night finally ended 48 hours later. In all that time, we had less than an inch. But I think just about all that water actually soaked in.

With the cessation of precipitation, I was eager to see if any of my grafts had bud break. Grafting takes a rootstock and a small section of new wood (the scion), and joins their cambium layers (the thin layer of green growing tree right under the bark). The cambiums were cut, and they make the tree equivalent of a scab. The scabs should join the rootstock and scion, and the graft will function as a tree.

If the connection doesn't take, the rootstock might still live: I would just need to try grafting it again with a new bit of scion wood.

Many of my grafts showed no real change: the buds were small and tight, filled with latent life, waiting to spring forth.

Some of the grafts, though, have buds beginning to swell.

And a very few are actually showing green!

It is so exciting, I had to refrain from going down to peek at the grafts every few hours. I want to cheer them on, or caress them, or something. Keep swelling! Keep growing!

So that was wonderful. It was wonderful to see the bees out flying again. I spent some time getting the next section of my moon bed ready for planting, and to work down amidst the hum of the hives, and smell the sweet honey smell ... so great.

Joe came to bring me a few buckets of compost, carried in little sand pails. He figured I would need them, and wanted to help.

He held up four fingers and said, "You have this many hives." He didn't know the name for that number, but he sure had the concept down. (I remember from his brothers, matching objects to numbers is more tricky than I expected: it's so easy to start counting, and count "two three" for the second item, ending up with some wildly inflated number. Good for Joe to match hives to fingers and get the right answer.)

Phil and I commandeered Cheri, Jadon, Isaiah, and Abraham into helping us finish the tree paste. With six of us slathering trunks, we finished the entire orchard in short order. How wonderful to have another task fully accomplished.

Phil noticed that parts of his compost pile project were beginning to steam, and by evening the ground had dried enough that he could work on it a bit more.

Waxed Abdomen

Saturday was a great day to open the hives. I spent about an hour with them, and they were all in such a mellow mood, that Isaiah and Cheri came down without any protection and looked at all there was to see.

My first swarm with the old queen, the Celestial hive, has built some wax on nine of the ten frames. Beautiful snow white wax, filled with clear liquid: the hive interior sparkles. Though I looked, I didn't see evidence of eggs, nor the queen herself, but the hive certainly appeared ordered. It may be that the eggs were simply hard to spot; it may be that, after losing weight to get in flying trim in order to swarm the queen is still trying to regain laying ability. If I had to estimate, I'd figure they've built wax to fill about a quarter of the deep.

Their entire feeder box had fermented. Good to remember: do not overfeed! I dumped out the sugar solution. Many of the bees on the feeder, though, stayed for several hours. I was amazed to actually see the wax flakes emerging from their abdomens! Little white plates that they will perfectly place in order to form their hexagonal living space. Incredible.

From the first swarm, I went next to the Daffodil nuc, the last swarm, the Resurrection Sunday swarm. Despite their inferior numbers, they are producing a very superior hive. They've finished about a third of their five frames, and I am hopeful that they will soon need a full-sized space of their own. I saw the little eggs, newly laid, and Isaiah spotted the queen. I'm not sure she has her laying mechanism quite right, as it looked like some cells had two eggs in them, but perhaps that's a challenge to regulate your first day. I even saw some of the foragers do their waggle dance: the figure eight with a wiggle that the workers use to tell each other the location of forage.

My second swarm, Damaris, was also looking good. With about 60% of the frames filled, I put another level on. The queen's eggs were perfectly placed, and Isaiah spotted that queen, too. It's such a privilege to see the queens, and to have the bees so focused on work, not at all stressed or irritated: what a joy.

The original hive, now with a new queen, has not built up into the super at all. When I pulled frames on the lowest level, it made sense: there are many drones hanging out, presumably eating. There wasn't much food in the bottom deep. The second deep was heavier, but I had fiddled with the frames in the bottom deep so long, and with so much jostling due to propolis (the sticky substance the bees use to fill cracks in the hive: to take out frames, the beekeeper needs to cut through it, and it takes some effort), the bees changed their hum. They were agitated.

So I quit poking around, and began a varroa mite treatment for that hive. If three to five mites die naturally per day (which I can monitor on my white tray at the bottom of the hive), it's time to treat. I had a day with 12 dead, and another day this week with only two or three, but on balance, I think the varroa load is more than I want.

I like the formic acid treatment (MiteAwayII is the name of the product). The bees produce formic acid naturally, so to use a little more concentrated product does not harm them (well: it might harm a day or two's worth of brood, but better lose a day or two of brood than an entire colony). It doesn't store in the wax, and over the week of treatment it kills off the varroa. Within four hours, I found 60 dead mites on my tray. To think that all of those would lay multiple babies who would have matured in 12 days: disgusting.

So this was my favorite beekeeping day yet. I saw some new things, enjoyed the company of the bees and queens, and appreciated their incredible efforts, building hives out of almost nothing. What industrious, sweet colonies they are, and how much they enrich the farm.

Compost Wall and Grafts in Ground

I have finished planting the grafts. Friday I planted fifty or so, and tried to fully dig up the Johnson grass and other weeds from the entire area. This left little weeding and much planting to do on Saturday. It took hours longer than I expected, but by the time our soaking rain commenced, the grafts were in the ground, the soil mulched, and we were all ready for it. Happy Arbor Day.

On Friday Phil cleared a little swatch of pine trees with the chainsaw, then pushed the debris out of the way with the tractor, and strung up wire so the cows could graze near the creek. That little patch of pine trees is so overgrown, it's one of the myriad projects that I think, "Oh, if only we could get to that." Friday was the day; though not entirely cleared, halfway in a single morning is good progress. The cows were happy to move on.

Then the boys and grandparents helped Phil gather up various cattle panels that we've taken down around the finger. Logistically, it's a big task, and figuring out where and how to store them took some doing. (Phil ended up stacking them vertically against the fence, and tying them down after every couple panels. It took a long time, but they are compressed into a small space, and will hopefully not have too great a weed load grow up around them.)

Friday night, Mr. Bigglesworth joined us for dinner outdoors. The puppies barked at him, and he didn't raise a hackle or bat an eye. What a mellow, self-possessed cat!

Which was great until after dark, when we realized we hadn't seen him and couldn't find him. How disconcerting! Two days of cat ownership?

I found out the next morning that he had come scratching at the motor home door in the night, and spent the night there, contentedly curled up in bed between Phil's parents. I was very thankful to see him wander around the homestead the next day. He's not going anywhere.

Phil had wondered about bringing wood up slope with a trailer we've been borrowing to get hay. Before he could do that, though, he realized he needed to clear the driveway of the matted hay and manure pack accumulated at Christmas. So he started building a compost pile, using the tractor bucket to dump loads into a 4' space he made between two cattle panels. Ideally, a compost pile would be about 4' wide and 4' high, and as long as need be.

After a short while, he needed to add another cattle panel. Then he hooked up the backhoe, and used that to scoop the 12" or so of pack under the shelter where we fed the cows. This massive quantity seemed to continue expanding, and Phil wonders if it will make a wall 64' long. It could be.

Aesthetically, it's a bit odd to have a black wall now blocking the view of my garlic and grafts. But it's nice to be so wealthy in future compost.

Tree Nursery Beds Begun

With the lovely rain yesterday, and the overcast sky today, I figured I should start planting out the 300 trees (about 270 are grafted and the other 30 I'll play with bud grafting later this year).

Before I did that, though, I needed to clear the nursery. We planted a cover crop, then mulched with hay, and though the cover crop seems to be growing well despite the lack of water, I wonder how much Johnson grass is actually ready to poke up through the mulch.

So I dug out blades of Johnson grass, usually connected with a thick, foot-long root. I rolled back the mulch, weeded a bit, and then planted one third of the grafted trees. Not bad, to get 100 trees in the ground today!

It was marvelous to play in the soil. The hard-packed clay of three years ago is now, for the most part, well incorporated with organic matter, with good crumb texture and good texture. It's a joy to dig in and press around baby roots.

As I worked, I heard the hum of the bees. They aren't happy in damp, cloudy weather, and when I fed them, they were more aggressive than I've seen. The original swarm especially amazes me. Most wax flakes, exuded from their abdomens, are thin and translucent. These wax flakes are almost as thick and fat as grains of rice. What rich comb building!

And, finally, a reminder that pride goes before the fall. Last Saturday, Phil and I were talking with some friends. The women of the group laughed at how they can turn off the lights and walk to bed in the dark, while the men all need a cell phone, flashlight, or some other beam to light their way.

In the night, Joe needed a drink. As I got up, I thought, "Maybe I should grab Phil's flashlight here by my head. No, that would be too like a man. I can get the water in the dark."

And I could. Except that on my return, my foot connected with something wet and sticky that should not have been there. I woke Phil and asked him to toss me a flashlight, to find that I had stepped in cat vomit. (Which was better than my first guess, the stuff out the other end.)

The poor cats' digestions are having a hard time, and the air quality in the trailer is not the best. One of the boys left the door cracked open, and when I noticed it, outdoor cat Mr. Bigglesworth had gone missing.

Happily, Phil found him quickly in the barn, which is where we would have hoped he'd go. How pleasant, that he didn't run away from us!

Cadsbury and Mr. Bigglesworth

We had a good rain back on March 2 (.7"), and a good rain three weeks later, on March 24 (1.6"). And since then, we've waited. A single rain event in almost seven weeks makes for a really dry spring. But sometime before daylight, I woke and nudged Phil: rain on the roof! The long-awaited, prayed for, wished for rain.

But while rain is good for the land, it isn't the most fun for farm visitors. Phil's parents are in town, and though they willingly play endless games of Skipbo and Uno, among others, 16 hours of games in the motor home sounded a bit much.

So Phil and his parents and the boys headed up to town to get a cat. Well, actually, two cats. Just in case one isn't a good mouser.

The first time Phil went for a cat, the experience was stressful. Too many forms, too much time. And one semi-feral barn cat, that escaped from our barn and was never seen again.

This time, Phil was relaxed when he returned home, almost jubilant. We knew what we wanted, and the women at the SPCA helped us find outdoor cats that would be personable; mousers that would also be pets.

The boxes held our new pets.

Mr. Bigglesworth came first. The boys had walked into an area filled with outdoor cats, and he came over and played with them right away. That was an easy choice. He's at least eight, so definitely middle aged, but the boys delight in his interest in them. Abraham, especially, wants to be near him. (Abraham! Not known for his enthusiasm for pets.)

I like his light coloring.

Black cat Cadsbury is the young one, almost a kitten. Uncannily long and slender, he glides around the trailer like a panther, peering through his enormous eyes. A little skittish, yet friendly enough to come up for a gentle pet, he purrs his appreciation. I've never seen such a shiny coat. He's been an indoor cat, apparently, but the women seemed confident he could expand his environment.

I don't think of myself as a pet person, so I'm surprised by how blessed I feel to have two beautiful cats, two fun puppies (and a sweet dog) ... and four beehives! Maybe I'll be a pet person yet.

It's hard to resist puppies who love you just for stepping outside, or cats who purr just because you touch them.

Overcast But No Rain

After yesterday, a sunny day pushing 90, we were thrilled to have an overcast day in the 70s today. This incredible stretch of warm, dry weather brought the first June bugs out on April 15th: yes, a full six weeks before the start of June.

Phil has been rotating the cows through paddocks twice a day. He's been impressed to see how little minerals they are eating, especially compared to the winter. But with the green grass, they have the runs: too much fresh forage! He rolled out some hay bales for them, to help them balance their stomachs. As I understand it, a cow stomach is like a composting chamber: it needs both green and brown material to function properly. With the fresh, new growth of spring, there is no brown. So Phil gave them some.

This weekend I finally ran out of my lovely tote of Vermont Compost Company potting soil. Time to make my own. I shoveled thirty buckets of peat into the empty tote (the pigs demolished a big bale last year, and didn't spread it around thoroughly, so I could salvage some). Then Phil had the challenging task of transporting that floppy tote uphill with the tractor. It gave me some tense moments, as the big tractor wheels came off the ground sometimes: we have some steep terrain, and the heavy tote swung the tractor out of kilter.

Heading back up the hill, the asparagus patch had several weeds going to seed, so I weeded. That was good.

What was not good were the vole holes I found. Our cat, Tiger, vanished about three weeks ago. Perhaps a coyote got him: I vaguely remember hearing a louder than normal meow late at night around the time he disappeared. I miss him. He was personable with the boys, even sleeping up on Isaiah's upper bunk through the winter. And he was an excellent mouser.

Without a mouser, our asparagus patch is at risk. It's always something.

In happier news, I planted my fig tree today. It was terribly root bound, so I soaked it in water for some time, then loosened the roots as best I could. I think it will be much happier outside, rather than dehydrating and growing in circles in the greenhouse.

I've grafted my way through a full roll of freezer tape, and most of a roll of electrical tape. Although I'm sure we have more electrical tape, I'm inclined to attempt bud grafting the 30 remaining rootstocks (so, yes, I've finished 267, as three were dead).

A Flower for Amy

Early this morning, Phil moved the cows, and when he came back, he found me reading in bed, and gave me this poppy, the first I've seen here.

Why Bees Swarm

My nuc came on Tuesday, and I assembled it and hived my third and final swarm (which I've named Daffodil). A nuc is a five-framed hive, so half the size of a normal ten-frame box. Nucs usually don't overwinter, but it's possible that the swarm will grow and develop well enough to fill a full box. Mostly, though, the nuc is insurance: if I have an issue with another hive, I have a queen and additional workers that I could combine. If the Daffodil swarm ends up stronger than another, I can choose which queen I want. And if another queen dies for some reason, again, I have a replacement ready.

I opened all four hives today. The large original hive had dozens of newly emerged bees triangulating, all left over from before the swarm. The other three hives were out in force. We have a chilly, windy few days, and I think they were all thrilled to be able to forage. The swarmed hives looked remarkably low on bees, but I think that's because all the bees are older, and all capable of flight.

Something I should have mentioned earlier: why do bees swarm?

I'm not sure anyone knows definitively. Crowding appears to have something to do with it: had I put supers on, to let the bees gather and store honey, that would have, perhaps, prevented swarming. If I had monitored for queen cells, and split the frames into two parts once there were capped queen cells, that might have prevented it. If a queen feels like there's too many bees for the space, and no room to expand, bees swarm. But sometimes, despite all precautions, swarms just happen. (And, as I have heard, this is a year for swarming. The unseasonable warmth and incredible single blooming time probably contributed.)

As I understand it, when a queen feels like she has built up her dominion, so her larder is well stocked and her babies thriving, the workers build special queen cells, and feed the babies laid therein royal jelly.

The queen quits laying, and gets down to "flying trim" (which, usually, when she's laying, she has no opportunity to fly, as her abdomen is swollen with all the eggs. She lays about her weight in eggs every day during peak production: a fabulous feat). Then, when the weather is warm and sunny, she and half the hive eat as much honey as they can, and then leave, into the unknown.

They have three days to find a home before starvation kills them.

It's really an amazing act of faith, to leave the known and the safe, and go out to meet the future, without any reserves.

A few days later, the baby queen hatches. She soon goes on her matrimonial flight, drawing drones from miles around, who mate with her and die. After she is bred by ten or so drones, who give her all the sperm she'll need for her life, she returns to her hive and begins laying.

What was so unusual about my swarming, is that the first swarm went with the mature queen, taking half the original hive's bees. That usually is an end. But I had a baby queen then swarm with, perhaps, another half (now only a quarter) of the bees, and then another baby queen swarm with a smaller percentage of the bees (an eighth?), leaving a baby queen in the original hive.

The crimson clover around the farm is abuzz, and the hives themselves hum.

Cleft Grafting and More

Despite the sad day Tuesday, we've really had a good week overall.

Phil took the tarp off the chicken house, and made walls out of sheet metal roofing, courtesy of our neighbor. It is so recycled, it's cute (and, really, better looking than a torn blue plastic tarp).

Since my rootstocks are putting out leaves, they are clearly hardy and ready to grow.

I have grafted 197 apple trees (three of the rootstocks were dead, so I didn't graft the full 200). The whip and tongue graft proved too much for my hands, and even Phil had trouble cutting the thick rootstock. Happily, we learned cleft grafting on Saturday: shave off parallel chips on both sides of the scion, until there is a thin shim left. With the knife, gently cut down the center of the rootstock, then use the knife to pry open your cut and wedge the shim in. Line up one side, bark to bark, and tape all exposed areas with waterproof tape (freezer tape, which looks like masking tape but is impermeable to water is great: it doesn't need to be cut later, either; when I ran out of that, I used electrical tape, though I will need to slice it through once the graft takes, though I won't peel it off, which would damage the bark). Seal the top of the scion somehow (I use Doc Farwell's Graft Sealant).

Though some grafts took only two minutes, I would say they take me, all things considered, about three or four minutes each. Sometimes I needed to research more about the scions I was using: what is good about this apple or that? Do the apples bear annually, or every other year? How large a fruit? How sweet or flavorful? How does it do in warm climates? It made me excited all over again for the trees we have in our orchard.

Right now, the roots are covered with damp rags, and they will stay inside, in the shade, while they rest and recover. At some point, I will plant them out.

Preferably, after a rain. We were talking to a friend, and he said that his pastures are setting seed (meaning, they're mature enough and more to make hay), but they're only six inches tall, rather than the more preferred two or three feet. When cars drive by, they raise an incredible amount of dust. My lips are even chapped!

Overall, much of our land is still green. We have several beautiful clumps of crimson clover that bring joy to my heart.

And some are clearly heat-stressed, wishing for water.

Although I would always wish to be making faster progress around the farm, the very dry spring we've had makes me thankful we haven't had time or funds to plant more. How much hand watering we'd be doing otherwise!

As it is, I water little. My peach rootstock, growing untouched until the summer, I water once a week.

Then I turn around and water my garlic a little bit. The tops are browning over: the harvest time is coming.

And I water in the greenhouse every day. My pineapple guava, after weeks of two tiny leaves, today had four tiny leaves. Perennials take so much more patience, I can hardly believe it.

And, at last, I had five little kiwi sprouts. Those seeds are so small, and despite daily watering, the soil blocks sometimes form hard crusts, so I am pleased I had any sprouts. (Today I took all the neem, olive, and raisin tree seeds I could find and put them in separate bags with damp towels, to see if that will help them keep warm and moist for sprouting.)

Out of the 100 or so jujube sees I planted, I have about 40 yet living. Probably about 25 were cut off at the first leaves by my unknown assailant in the greenhouse. I got so frustrated, I finally moved the seeds down to the ground, and put the growing plants up on the grow mats. The plants have since been safe, but the remaining seeds....

I came out to find my nasturtiums, in the same tray, untouched. But the jujubes had been thoroughly scratched through. I figured the lizard (or whatever) had found any sprouts, so I went sifting to find seeds, and bring them to a more protected growing environment.

There were none left. Jujube seeds hold the same appeal as jujube sprouts, apparently. Who would have thought?

And, in the orchard, we have tiny peaches.

We have one tiny apricot (blemished on the other side).

And, as Isaiah said, "The yellow and red is really pretty." I think he's right.