April 2011
04-24-11
"Beekeeping 101: For Felicia"
We should stipulate a few things first. 04-18-11 "Jonnie Cash" About this time every year we find ourselves in the position of needing a bull. 04-10-11 "Cooking: Part 1" I have a cookbook fetish. Problem. Addiction. 04-03-11 "Ahead of Schedule (then again, who needs schedules!)" "Hear the hymn to welcome in the day
1. Bees sting.
2. Bees sting.
3. Bees sting.
Ok. Got it?
There is good news: each bee can only sting once.
Also, we're much larger, we can choose to squish them.
Of course that's a little hard to do while holding a smoker, standing on one foot, swatting at mosquitoes, saying a few Hail, Marys and generally wishing you knew more than you did.
Sorry, I said 101, we'll come back to the rest of it.
This is a beehive (yes, I know you knew that. Sorry.)
Ok, bees live in...no, we (try) to make bees live in boxes called supers.
Supers come in three sizes: deep, medium and shallow.
In a perfect world (yeah, I know, this isn't...work with me) we place a deep super on the bottom and then, depending on our level of OCD, shallow and medium supers above the deep.
Again, in that world I mentioned, the queen bee, one per hive (don't question me on hives with more than one queen, that's another story for another time), the queen lives in the deep box on the bottom.
The deep super provides her with plenty of space to lay eggs and raise brood (baby bees).
Above that deep super we place medium and shallow supers for honey production.
In the photo you can see that I've removed the shallow super from the top and am examining the medium in the middle. The deep is on the bottom.
Ok. Inside supers we have frames. Hives come in 8 or 10 frames.
I use 8 frames because I'm a girl and I have weak girl muscles so my hives are all 8 frames (expect for the two 10 frame hives I just added but...we'll talk about that later).
I know, it doesn't seem like a big deal until you have 60lb supers four feet in the air and then...well...trust me on this.
Moving on.
This time of year we have a honey flow.
The truth is (ok, I'm going to scream something here and I'm sorry in advance):
BEES DO NOT WANT TO STING YOU. THEY ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN NECTAR, POLLEN AND WATER.
Got that?
It's true, some hives are more aggressive than others.
It's true that Africanized bees are moving into our territory and complicating things.
But bees, my Italian bees (yes, domestic bees here in the States are mostly, by and large, Italian) do not sting unless 1. in defense of their hive (aka, I just tore the entire thing apart and they are really angry) or 2. they fly into you (had this happen more times than I would like to admit).
Right. Honey flow.
Things are blooming and bees are toting (that's beekeeper speak for bringing in the goods).
We can control what they bring home but only to some extent. Sure, I'd love to make sage honey but let's face it, the 20 blooming sage plants I have are not going to provide enough blooms to make even a taste of sage honey.
On the other hand, the bees I'm keeping in the swamp, they are working on tupelo and gallberry, here in the south that's big business, that's Champagane honey.
So, bees in supers with frames that hold brood (eggs and larva that make baby bees that make big bees) and honey.
Got it?
Perfect.
You're ready to begin.
Oh. There is one more thing.
We're basically bee farmers. We cultivate and nourish and tend and...and love I suppose.
This time of year, when the bees are the busiest, that's a weekly routine.
We need to check our bees every week to make sure that our queen is laying eggs and our hive is raising bees and those bees are making honey.
We need to know that we have honey and space for more.
Running out of space would be like running out of coat hangers in the closet because someone took them to work and didn't bring them home.
I digress. I apologize.
So we inspect every hive every week.
Ready to begin? Perfect!
When can you be here?
The cows have all calved, the calves are fat and sassy (they run in packs across the fields and chase anything that ventures into their territory - the dogs, the horses, the tractor!).
The cows are content, they graze the nubs of parched grass, stand around the racks of hay, nap in the shade of the oak trees, chewing their cuds and looking like washer women gossiping on their lunch breaks.
So we arrive at the middle of spring and time for a bull.
Not since Boris Bad Enough have we kept a bull on the farm, choosing to lease on for a season and then send him home again.
Two notes here: 1. Boris was Bad Enough that neither the farmers nor the Glynn County Police Department are eager for a repeat of his presence
(You may recall his antics of frequently going "walk about" in the middle of the night, finding himself at the intersection of the farm and the overpass for I-95? I digress...)
2. We enforce planned parenthood on the farm. No bull, no babies.
But with Boris a rather distant memory, we decided that perhaps it was time to invest in another bull, a really, really nice bull.
So we made the hour drive to the farm of Jonnie Harris.
Mr Harris and his son Paul raise lots and lots of cows and they had lots and lots of bulls for sale.
We knew we wanted a Hereford bull.
Hereford are a British breed of cattle known to be very hardy and to produce excellent beef. We knew they would make an excellent cross with our Santa Gertrudis cattle.
So, from Mr Harris's pen of 20 bulls, we selected the one we liked the most and, in short order, loaded him on the trailer and brought him home.
When we arrived at Sapelo we figured we were giving our new purchase the greatest gift of his life. Instead of a small pen of 20 competing, young, hormone driven males, we were offering an open pasture of 24 available, single, interested ladies.
We pulled into the pasture and opened the trailer door.
Unfortunately, life sometimes surprises even the wisest of farmers.
Our "ladies" took one look at their new companion and, whether out of too much interest or not enough, decided that a high speed chase would be in order.
All we could do was watch, mortified, as 24 momma cows chased our expensive bull around the field and said expensive bull ran.
What else could he do?
He ran and ran and ran.
At first we laughed, oh we had a good, long laugh, but it didn't last.
There is something very not funny about watching 1700lbs of very expensive bull running away from the very cows he is supposed to be courting.
In the end, it was all too much for Jonnie, he jumped the pasture fence and spent the first night of his life at Sapelo Farms in the woods.
Oh yes, that's correct dear reader, Jonnie Cash jumped the fence and HID in the woods all night. We looked for him, we hunted, we searched, we begged and pleaded, but he wanted nothing to do with the Sapelo women that evening.
By the next morning, however, he'd reconsidered his situation and decided that food, water and a healthy supply of love were all good ideas.
He somehow managed to jump back into the pasture and assume his role as head bull (ok, only bull but still...).
And so a new chapter begins.
Yes, I think that is the best word: Addiction.
Sitting on my desk as I type are three new beauties that have held my attention, rapt attention, for weeks now.
"Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America's Best Chefs, Farmers, and Artisans," "Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods," and "Cooking in the Moment: A year of Seasonal Recipes," all three make me want to run to the garden, rip up a bulb of fennel, a few handfuls of kale, some fresh dill and...well...cool...and eat too.
I love cooking. I am not as talented as some of my friends (I certainly lack their knife skills!), but I love being in the kitchen.
For me, cooking and farming, reading cookbooks, hanging around the wine store, tasting cheeses and meats and anything new, those things all go hand in hand.
I find great joy and happiness and satisfaction in food and in all things food.
Few things make me happier than sitting in my kitchen, sipping a glass of wine or a very cold beer after a very long day, and cooking.
Oh I'm easy, I'll happily cook or help cook or wash dishes.
I take pleasure in peeling potatoes or washing carrots, I delight in the task of shucking corn.
Most of my days are spent in the gardens so when the task comes to one of moving that food (nourishment - is that a stretch? For me food is nourishment in so many, many ways) when the task is to move it from garden to table, I am a very happy farmer.
I am (mostly) a simple cook.
Oh I own a pasta machine and have spent happy winter evenings rolling out pasta or any other intensive task you can imagine, but mostly in my house we cook simply.
Two nights ago for dinner, feeling worn out from the day, I picked three handfuls of kale and two bulbs of green garlic.
In the house I drank Dogfish Head Brown Ale (a wonder, this beer!), sauteed the green garlic in olive oil, added the kale until wilted, salt and pepper.
In the meantime, I toasted a few slices of bread and sliced some Sweet Grass Dairy Asher Blue Cheese.
When the kale was wilted I added balsamic vinegar and a little salt and pepper before tossing the kale on the toast and the cheese on the kale.
Happiness.
Simple.
Heralding a summer's early sway
And all the bulbs all coming in, to begin
Thrushs' bleeding battle with the wrens
Disrupts my reverie again
Pegging clothing on the line
Training jasmine how to vine
Up the arbor to your door, and more..."
It is not jasmine but a Coral Vine that trails up the railing to my door. A historic, "pass along" plant, the Coral Vine will not bloom until late, late summer. When it does it will provide food for the bees when few other plants are available.
For now, it is only shoots of green, just beginning, just a few inches up from the ground and grasping at the edges of my porch.
On the line (oh how I love this song!), our laundry laps back and forth lazily in the wind.
This week there was rain, one and a half inches of gorgeous wet stuff that fell from the sky and instantly changed the outlook of the farm.
"Just add water," I joke, but it is true.
Overnight there is green. The pecan trees bud and sprout leaves, the flowers in the garden burst into bloom, the gardens race on in a frenzy of spring growth.
("Not to fast," I want to whisper, "April is the cruelest...."
Best to not intone it. Best to stay silent and quietly hold my breath.)
On the farm there are roses and baby goats and baby calves.
(And one fierce mother hen has cleverly hatched three chicks of her own, she defends them against any predator -- real or otherwise -- with a vicious beak and talons of claws. Poor Bingo is pecked and beaten until she retreats. Then she looks at me in confusion, "How," she seems to ask, "did a dog get beaten by a chicken?")
These are the last babies of the season, from now on we have only to rear what we have produced.
In the bee yard, David's young hives blossom and grow. It is too soon yet to tell about my experiment of a hive, my hope of grafting a queen bee with a toothpick (details in a previous post).
So here we are, all hope and promise and youth, boundless in our joy.
spring has come early this year, everything is ahead of schedule, we are happy with ourselves and the world.
On this day I wander the gardens, scratch the horses, laugh at the antics of the goats.
Perhaps things are earlier, warmer, greener than last year.
Perhaps things are not quite as we had planned them to be.
Then again...who needs to go according to plan!
(Gabe's Note: The next week, and the ones to follow, are going to be...perhaps not according to plan.
David will have shoulder surgery on Thursday. Because of this, we will move his hives home from the bee yards so that we can watch them.
For a while, we'll be one man down -- as it were -- here on the farm.
Updates as they come. Wish us well.)