And Now, the Rest of the Story

After picking up the bees, I went to milk Bianca and was horrified to find that her breath was raspy, as if she was snoring while awake, and her throat was swollen. I've seen a similar swollen throat last year: in the sheep we killed for food. But he wasn't raspy. Phil and I scanned our natural healing books: bovine pneumonia? Some form of parasite? Allergies? Will she need gentle treatment? Or do we need to put her down? We have no answers. I dosed her with aloe pellets, some kelp, sea minerals, and three homeopathic pills. And some prayer.

Sickness seems to be going around right now. Abraham, too, has a low grade fever and slept most of the day. I think he was worn out from late nights while my Dad was here. I have been reading about how fevers are restorative for children, so I'm not worried. He can use some rest.

I, too, though, have the flimsiest fingernails I've ever had. They bend backward when I put on gardening gloves. Ouch! And my heels are cracking and bleeding for the first time. This is minor compared with cancer, but since we want to be a farm that offers nutrient-dense food for good health, it upsets me.
Ironically, Phil broke a mug. (Can you read it? "I never make misteaks.")

I planted some of the Amish Moon and Stars Watermelon seeds that I started way too early. (I followed a reference book for the "Mid-Atlantic Region," so it seems that the watermelon could go out. However, I think we could get a frost any time for the next month or so; melons need warmth, without a hint of cold.) The plants have to go out, so rather than simply chuck them in the compost bin, I figured I would plant them out. Their yellow-speckled leaves are so pretty.

Although the ground was still damp from the rain yesterday morning, that moisture was not enough for the melons, which wilted quickly. We need better watering systems before we plant on a massive scale.

The tractor suddenly stopped working. It worked at noon, and when Phil went to start it up again at 5pm, it wouldn't even turn over. He removed the seat, opened the engine, couldn't figure it out. After reading online, he wondered if Joe had engaged the PTO when playing on it. Sure enough: a two second flip of a lever fixed the problem. We had hoped to move the layer chicks out to join their older aunties, but by the time the tractor was running, the hens had roosted for the night and their pen won't move to new ground until tomorrow.

In happier news, I hung my Christmas gift windchime outside my window. It has the most beautiful bell-like sound of any chime I've heard.

I was happy to receive my 1000 raspberry and 100 blackberry plants today. I am ready for fruit! And with all my practice last week in fast planting, well, it will still take a long time, but I think it's doable.

Also today: consider adjusting the swales; plant 10 chestnut trees. Phil puts fairly raw manure and hay several inches thick in our new pond, then pounds it down and begins to cover it with clay until the bees flying around his head unnerves him. This pack of organic matter, then clay, is called "gley." We hope it will create an impermeable barrier, so the pond will hold water. It doesn't at all, currently. When the ducks come, we want to be ready. (Even though, officially, ducks don't NEED water. I think they will like it.)

And that is farming. In one day: joy over new bees on dandelions; sorrow over dead ducklings. Fear over the future for the bees; fear for Bianca's life. Deep desire to be a healer, to have a farm of health and giving. Frustration that we don't have our systems in place; resignation that we're doing the best we can.

It's bewildering to me: how can one endeavor create so many emotions in such a short amount of time? Is that even healthy? How does one process this life?

One way is through blogging, I suppose.
***
Isaiah had the camera for much of the day. We downloaded 277 photos from today, so I give you some of the best.
Joe, making silly faces.

The bees, late in the afternoon, as they headed home for the night.

Jadon, always stressed when in front of the camera, here acting silly as he always must. But you can see in his face that he's such a nice boy.

Creative lighting on the Duplos gives just a hint of the toy chaos that often erupts only days after a thorough cleaning.

And me, on the phone, hoping the outdoor air will give me better phone service.

Animals at Spring Forth Farm

Animal photos, by Isaiah. Almost entirely uncropped and untouched, just as he took them. What a good eye he has!
The chicken stampede.

Acorn and her baby Caterina.

Acorn, up close.

And, for humor, Acorn chewing. (What good jaw action!)

Chestnut the lamb. (Joe, age 2, can identify all these babies in the photos, with 100% accuracy. I sure can't!)

Clementine from the side.

Clementine from the front.

Clementine, again.

Bethlehem, up close.

Zara.

Clementine the photogenic.

The White Leghorns and Barred Rock layer chicks. (I cropped this photo.)

Tux, the hen, wandering as usual.

Our hillside, with the faint colors of spring on the surrounding trees.

Welcome, Celadon and Celestial

"I have good news and I have bad news," the postmistress said. It was 8am, and I had been expecting her call. "The good news is that your bees are here, and they are doing well. The bad news is ... none of your ducklings made it."

So Isaiah, Joe and I went to pick up two colonies of humming bees and a box of dead ducklings. The temperature had been predicted to be 39 degrees overnight; it was 29 degrees when I awoke. If the ducklings were loaded last night and left in a delivery truck: it's upsetting to think about. We'll get a replacement shipment next week, and hopefully those 20 beautiful birds will arrive safely.

Phil and I worked quickly to finish assembling the bee frames. Then it was time to put the bees in their new Langstroth hive. (After the fiasco of the top-bar hive last year, I wasn't about to try that again!)

Assembled, one of the two covers didn't quite fit. I had noticed that weeks ago, but brushed it aside, figuring maybe I was wrong in how it was all supposed to fit. Today, I had to face the reality that I really did need a proper sized inner cover. My online order had been a mixed up mixture of two different sized hives. I had ordered a second set of outer covers; now I ordered a second set of inner covers, too. Those two errors added a substantial price to the cost of the hives. And with the bees only lasting about 24 hours last year, I sat down and cried for a while before I could bring myself to install the bees.

So much expense. So much room for error! So much hope and excitement last year, to end in failure. So much deep desire for a land of milk and honey; so much fear for what might come this year.

But that's farming. Chin up and try again. I dried my tears and went to install.

Phil had found a great little movie on how to easily install bees. First, I had to pry the strips of wood that connected the two hives and made carrying them easy for the USPS workers and myself.

Then I removed the queen. In the little movie, a woman asks the teacher if that's easy enough for a beginner. He says, "Sometimes a beginner is nervous and drops the queen cage into the bee box. It's nerve-wracking to stick a hand into a box with 10,000 bees." That hadn't happened to me last year, as a rank beginner, and it hadn't happened now. A few bees started to emerge from the hole made by removing her cage, but her pheromones should be strong enough to keep them around.

I screwed out the little cork on one side of the queen's cage. It covers candy, which the bees will gradually eat through and free the queen. Hopefully she will have acclimated to her new home, and will make the hive orderly and happy.

I lifted out the can of sugar syrup, put the box of bees into the hive (after removing a few frames), and put on the inner cover. Phil punched some extra holes in the sugar syrup and inverted it over the cover. The first hive, Celadon, was installed without a hitch.

The bees soon began to fly in and out.

Isaiah was excited to find a drone bee. These males have no stingers, and are quite tame. Isaiah let him crawl all over his hands before the bee flew away. (I later caught Jadon and Isaiah having a competition to see who could find a drone first. The two little towheads, searching all the bees around the hives, was a cheery sight.)

On to the next hive. I pulled the tab for the queen.

The tab pulled off in my hand. I stared at it stupidly for a moment, wondering how I would get the queen cage out.

And then the queen cage vanished from view, fallen into the box with 10,000 bees.

And the bees immediately began to swarm out the hole.

Despite what the movie said, I was not going to put my hand in. Rather, I removed the sugar syrup can and prepared to shake the swarm into the hive. The queen cage should fall out, too, and allow me to free the queen.

As I picked up the box to dump, I watched in horror as a bee crawled into my sleeve. I remembered then that Melanie had mentioned that her grandma rubber-banded her sleeves down. This bit of brilliance I put into practice as soon as I extricated myself from the bee-infested sweatshirt. After turning it inside out to ensure no cling-ons remained, I banded my sleeve and returned to the hive I had abandoned. It takes guts to keep calm in the face of 20,000 stinging insects.

After dumping a good many of the bees, the queen cage fell out. I picked it up, unscrewed the cork, and rubber-banded it into place.

You can see the large white candy blocking in the queen.

And now the Celestial hive was installed as well.

Last year, I named the bee queens Queen Esther and Queen of Sheba. I learned later that bees are really a unity; they should be named for their hives, not for their queens. Since this is the C year, Celestial seemed appropriate for insects that fly in the heavens. Celadon is a type of green Korean pottery, which I learned about in one of my favorite children's books, A Single Shard. Creation of something beautiful out of something earthy, whether pollen or clay, seemed appropriate.

Walking back up the hill, Isaiah said, "It's good to have bees back again."

I agree.

Redbuds and the Bond of Perfectness

My Dad left early this morning. We'd had almost half an inch of rain overnight, and leaving in the pre-dawn dark I was concerned that I would get stuck in the mud as I backed up the driveway.

The Lord spared us that—barely. I came within inches of hitting the fence (I literally have never done that before), did get stuck in a ditch for a few seconds, but got unstuck. I was so thankful not to make Phil come and tow me out. Dad would have missed his flight.

Driving home in the new day, I smiled to see that the redbuds had opened. During the almost two weeks Dad was here, we kept anticipating their opening, but he missed them, by just hours.

Phil and I caught up on office work. I read a lot to the boys. We all took naps. It was a quiet day.

Since there isn't much to say about the farm, I'll close with a verse we've memorized recently, Colossians 3:14.

And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

I like that definition of charity, or love. The bond of perfectness. The perfect bond. The perfect connection, the strongest glue.

I can see that sometimes I have charity toward the farm and animals, toward my family. And sometimes my bond is imperfect. So I seek to put on charity.

First Day in the 80s

Phil started to actually build the greenhouse today. He pounded in corner posts, which was a difficult and labor-intensive task. The metal posts had to be pounded three feet into the ground. Phil is strong, but after the first one, he augured holes a foot deep.

I was impressed: Jadon was helping Phil, and when Phil took a break to help my Dad finish up planting, Jadon took the sledge hammer and actually whacked the pole. I was impressed that he could 1) lift the sledge hammer and 2) hit the pole. He's growing up.

Isaiah helped me in the greenhouse, seeding a flat of rainbow chard and a flat of kale. I potted on until the greenhouse could not take one more tray. That little 10'x16' greenhouse has over 80 full trays, and I have about 200 tomatoes that still need potting on. And I haven't started the peppers! It's good Phil is working on the larger greenhouse.

I planted 10 chestnut trees near this year's few apples. Happily, they require much smaller holes. I also helped my Dad put in the last trees that will fit on his land: 934 chestnuts and 28 fruit trees, with almost 10 tons of humic acids spread today (thanks to the lifting power of Butch's tractor and ingenious tote cutting, that allowed the granular humic acids to spill out while Butch drove carefully near the chestnut trees). Dad's been busy.

In the evening, Joe has a good time with my Dad.

Since the weather hit the 80s today, I watered my little cabbage and beet seedlings that I set out on Friday both in the morning and the evening. I fought discouragement: many of the seedlings have drooped since I transplanted them, despite four waterings in four days. I think maybe I am supposed to harden off plants before setting them out? Except these plants are in the greenhouse, not under artificial light, and I open the greenhouse door as needed. Do the baby plants really need some form of acclimation?

Maybe the plants don't have enough water. Or maybe the watering wand is shooting too hard for tender leaves (when many of the holes on the rose get clogged, the few remaining shoot out like lasers. I know I damaged some plants that way). Maybe I should have watered every day, as they really do not have enough water? Is a Sunday off okay?

Not every plant appears dead. Some appear to be yet living. That is better than my first attempt at broccoli and cabbage, where every plant died. The way I fought discouragement was this: there is a lot to learn. A lot of mistakes to make. That doesn't mean I'm a failure, or a market garden is a no-go. I shouldn't give up. If I have only a few beets live and only a few cabbages make it, that is disappointing, but not a disaster. I may yet have some successful crops, just not as much as I wanted.

So I can choose: rejoice in what I have, or despair over what I lost.

For today, I'll choose rejoicing.

Algae Song of Thanksgiving

Dad and I spent most of Saturday planting chestnuts. Late in the afternoon, we ran out of space, with 166 trees left to go in the ground.

We went on a walk this afternoon. Six Lykoshes and my Dad, enjoying the sunshine and the trees.

I thought about the depressing moment on the tractor earlier this week, as I stood, barefoot in a beautiful patch of woods. Jadon had gathered algae for the chickens, then left the soggy, smelly ball in my hand. Joe cleared spots for my feet, while the three older boys ran up a steep slope. They all made it to the top, and then slid and jumped and ran down again, beaming with pride and joy.

I don't know of any songs of thanksgiving under the trees with a handful of algae, a blue sky with a few puffy clouds, four happy boys and three happy adults, but maybe that's as it should be. Some moments are too beautiful to capture in words.

Transplanting and No More Space

Phil helped Butch fix his bulldozer's starter. The electrical box wouldn't work, and Phil figured out the dozer needed a new starter. He was pleased to put a little of his electrical experience to work, and Butch was pleased not to have to call a repair man.

After the dozer was again working, Butch helped cut swales that Phil and Dad laid out, and Phil subsoiled. Then Dad was able to plant the rest of the day. He has a ways to go, but he's extended his stay, so we have hope of finishing.

He is running out of space faster than he is running out of trees. After he wondered aloud how he over-calculated the number of needed trees by almost a quarter, I started to laugh. I'm sure my Mom and I were talking and said, "Oh, you think we need 752 trees? Might as well order 1000; we'll find a good place for them." Hmm. Now the time is here, and we need to find a place. We could use some brilliant brainstorms. I would love to plant 150 chestnuts around the Lykosh land, but I'm not sure where they would go.

Phil fixed the steering wheel on the tractor, then subsoiled along the garden beds. Then he leveled land next to the future bee site, using the backhoe. He made great progress before dark fell.

I had intended to get over to help Dad, but with the new garden beds tilled, I had about six trays of greens desperately waiting to go outside, including beets and mustard greens.

I happily transplanted most of the afternoon.

What a beautiful sight, to see the late afternoon sun glow through the green leaves.

Before I did that, I counted the trays waiting for plants in the greenhouse: there were 17. I ordered 100, so I'm guessing I had 83 trays in use in the greenhouse. That's quite a few!

I have been steadily working on potting on tomatoes and cukes, doing 20 or 30 a day. I have many to go, but it's not overwhelming anymore. I do what I can, and that's enough.