Family-Scale Vegetable Planting

While Phil ran errands yesterday, I took advantage of the sunny weather and attempted to prune the apple trees. I soon gave up. Too many decisions! Too much margin for error!

Phil took over again today, and finished the entire orchard in a couple of hours. Apparently he does not struggle with indecisiveness.

I had a great time following along, gathering appropriately-sized (1/3 to about 1/2 an inch), 2011 growth twigs. It took me a couple of hours, but I finally had them labeled, cut to size, and put in the refrigerator. I'm pleased that I have enough to try a couple different types of root stalks, to see what does best in our soil environment. (Earlier this year, I had planned to take advantage of the great savings of bulk purchases. When I mentioned to Phil that I was planning to order 1000 root stalks, he blanched, but kept his cool. "That's probably a bit more than we really want this year," he said. And it turns out, he was absolutely right. Not only was I extremely bored by the time I had finished gathering proper-sized twigs, the entire orchard only yielded a little over 200 scions.)

Phil also hiked around with a forester who may harvest some timber. It's sobering to think that an orchard of 30-year-old pine will only net the owner perhaps $300/acre. True, you don't need to do a whole lot with an acre of pine (unlike cows, they don't require moving, supplemental watering, or birthing assistance), but certainly there must be something better to do on steep hillsides of degraded red clay than pine. We just have to figure out what.

Speaking of birthing assistance, after carefully watching Babe's backside far into the night (until I actually saw something that looked like a pink tennis ball coming out, though I wasn't sure what that was, as it didn't really match any book description), apparently I'm not very good at predicting calving, as there has been no sign of a calf yet. And all the indicators that I thought I saw are, apparently, unchanged. Since the bull was only rogue for a week last May, and the last due date possible from that rogue week was yesterday, either she's really late delivering (an indicator of a baby bull), or she'll deliver sometime in late April or May, having fooled us well.

I opened the bee hive today. Apparently, early warm weather is the time most likely to starve bees, since they lay more eggs earlier, which require more food, and foraging can be spotty so early in the season: rain (or snow) washes away what little pollen there is.

Compared with a month ago, the hive bodies did feel noticeably lighter, and there didn't seem to be as many bees. Probably a good many were out foraging.

I am finding the whole "examine the hive" concept really difficult. First, I've never had a hive overwinter. Hives seal all cracks with propolis, a sticky substance they create from pine sap and their bodies. Apparently, it hardens quite well, as the frames which moved with alacrity last fall are not glued in place, requiring a great deal of force (and time) to extract a single one. Last time, I didn't manage to remove a single frame. This time, I got a frame out, and it broke open several cells of honey. This did not endear me to the bees.

I moved a couple more frames, enough to see that they are not full, but not empty enough for removal. (My mentor generally removes the bottom hive body in February, since it is fairly empty. That gives him a chance to remove the wax and clean the frames. Get rid of some of that propolis!)

Then, as the bees whine turned positively shrill, I hastily replaced the frame. Two bees then stung me through my gloves, and I put the upper hive body and cover on as swiftly as I could (which probably smooshed some bees—too bad!), and, for the second time in as many openings, ran as fast as I could to elude the persistent defenders trying to penetrate my veil. Yuck!

The thought crosses my mind that maybe I'm not as enamored with beekeeping as I once was.

It's not nice to be rejected by insects, you know?

To improve my day, though, I headed to the greenhouse. Yesterday I planted the tree seeds. Today it was time for peppers (jalapeno, cayenne, and bell), tomatoes (my favorite Roma, mostly), a few fun tomato-like plants (the exquisite ground cherry, wonderberry that didn't grow at all last year, and beet berry, which is supposed to be like a mulberry). I finished the planting with broccoli, three types of seeds from the last three years.

What an amazing experience! I had been dreading "the tomato planting," because last year, planting about 700 little tomato seeds, then pricking them out into 2" pots, and pricking them out again into 4" pots, and watering them all for a couple of months, only to transplant them outside, lovingly stake and tie them, only to have them set fruit once and die: it was a lot of effort for an extremely little reward.

But to plant 24 little tomato seeds, and not even expect them all to live, or to plant 30 broccolis, realizing that perhaps some of the seeds were too extremely old, but that's fine—this was a new experience. It felt, well, manageable! Like maybe I could try to garden this year and actually succeed.

I like that.