01-30-10
"Valhalla"
If you have visited the farm in the last year you have almost certainly noticed my beautiful beehive, Valhalla. 01-10-10 "Winter" The weather is, once again, the story of the week. 01-06-10 "It's A Girl!" Well, it's official, after three years of waiting, Nellie, the milk-cow-in-training, has a heifer calf.
Nellie 01-04-10 "The Freeze: Day 2" We wake again to the cold. 01-03-10 "The Freeze" It is cold.
Named for Wagner's castle in the Ring Cycle, Valhalla has been my pride and joy for a year. My bees have been industrious little ladies, putting up hoards of honey all summer long and using it diligently this winter.
Now, with the daylight hours lengthing and the first flowers of spring in bloom (yes, our maple trees are blooming!), it was time for me, as Valhalla's keeper, to tend to their needs and expand their domain.
First, a little background.
In nature, bees build strong hives with lots of honey. When they strong enough, the queen of the hive gathers half of the worker bees and half of the honey and they leave, seeking new lodging and, possibly, world dominance.
The remaining bees rear a new queen and the process begins again.
Valhalla's nature is the same. Given a few weeks of nectar and pollen flow, Valhalla would have been strong enough to divide herself, leaving me, the beekeeper, out some 20,000 bees (plus or minus a few) and my share of the honey.
So, I decided to divide Valhalla ahead of her intended time.
Here is how that works:
We open the hive and find the queen (not so easy when you need the one queen in 40,000 bees!). Then we need to find brood (laid eggs that can become any type of bee).
We take that brood and we place it in a super (the boxes are called supers) away from the queen. Then we put the queen back into her super with her workers and we place a queen excluder (since queen bees are larger than other bees, it's simple to "exclude" them from part of a hive with a frame through which she cannot fit).
Then we put the whole hive back together, queen on bottom and brood on top.
We wait twenty-four hours. During that time, the nurse bees in the hive will come up from the queen's box to tend to the brood. Those nurse bees are capable of raising a new queen.
With the nurse bees tending the brood and Valhalla's queen on her own to lay more eggs, make more brood and build more worker bees, we split the hive.
In the case of Valhalla, who was very strong and had two full supers of honey saved from the winter, we were able to give each new beehive a super for living and a honey super for eating.
In this first image, you can see David (in his bee helment) and me (dressed like a space alien in the white suit) just beginning to open Valhalla.
Note that the queen is actually in the very bottom box, we will eventually "lock" her there.
The brood that will (hopefully!) become a new queen, are in the second box, and the top two boxes are filled with honey.
Twenty-four hours after these pictures were taken, Valhalla was diminished to half her size, just the bottom box and the top box, while my new hive became the two middle boxes.
Here we've made it past the two supers of honey and we are looking for the queen and/or brood. We did find brood in this box and, in the next box, the queen.
Queen cells (eggs if you prefer) take twenty-one days to hatch. If all goes well, by the first of March I should have two beehives. Amazing!
We bundled the gardens up in as much row cover as we possessed (our row cover is Agribon from Johnny's Select Seeds in Maine. We use lightweight row fabric that is frost protection to 28 degrees. A nice thought when we've had 4 nights of 25 or lower.)
Never the less, we wrapped the gardens in row cover and are hoping for the best. Every day, when the weather warms, we take a peak under a few covers, afraid to lift them for too long, not wanting to release any of the precious ground heat we may have preserved.
It is cold.
One evening our weather man cheerfully informs us that we are about to break the record for consecutive days of freezing temperatures.
Old record: 8 days.
If the current forecast holds: New record: 11 days.
Our plants are sad. Even the onions are suffering from this cold.
The animals are not fairing much better.
Four calves have been born this week (including the heifer of the lovely Nellie!). At night the calves sleep next to their mothers, pressed closely enough to make two bodies into one.
During the day, the calves sleep in the sun while their mothers consume endless amounts of hay. I watch the cows from my dinning room window, large ladies standing side by side in front of the hay rack, and imagine women doing their laundry and gossiping:
"Sure she's a beautiful calf but have you seen those hips?"
The goats are only slightly happier. Their kids are older, more able to handle the cold temperatures, and goats like to sleep in piles, all the kids curled up under the hay rack in the goat barn, warmth shared.
Goats, too, are familial. It is not uncommon to see mothers and daughters from three or four generations sleeping together. Unlike cows, somehow the goats remember family connections.
During the day, the goats make for the woods. Are their spring brows for them yet? Some twig or nub or sprout on which to nibble?
When I was a little girl, my Grandmother taught me to memorize poems.
"Do you ever wonder if horses and such
Like all grasses equally as much?
Or are some like spinach and prunes
And others like coconut macaroons!"
I never did learn the author.
Mostly our days are spent breaking ice from watering troughs, cutting, splitting and hauling firewood, trying new soup recipes, and feeding animals.
By mid-week, the weather people tell us, the cold front will shift and we'll be back into the 60 degree range of temperatures.
Until then, we tend the animals and hope the best for the gardens.
Yet to be named calf is solid black with big, sweet eyes. For Nellie, it's love at first sight.
Pictures coming soon, we are still in the throws of the longest cold spell anyone here can remember.
Sure, compared to a Maine winter this is mild but I don't live in Maine! So why do I endure the summer heat if I also get frozen toes in Januray?
Oh well! A note to the aphids that were eating my broccoli raab: Take That!
So, while we wait to warm up, and Little Miss waits for her first photo shoot, my friend Duane has offered this poem in praise of Nellie's new baby:
Just a cow
of the dairy sort
saved as a calf
by Gabe's kind hands
from a cruel veal bin
Grew up among immense
Santa Gertrudis beeves,
until mated with
huge resident bull
Boris - Bad Enough
On this frigid Georgia night
she dropped a heifer calf,
Nelly By
Ah, the lactation,
multiplicity indeed,
suckling for Nelly By
until the grass greens
The farmer's reward,
fresh milk, butter, and cheese
and a contented sigh
by Duane Robert Pierson, January 2010
I am, by nature, a morning person but something about the cold saps the energy out of me.
Don't get me wrong, I love the scene in "My Dinner With Andre" when Andre Gregory says to Wallace Shawn (who is expounding on the virtues of an electric blanket),
I wouldn't put an electric blanket on for anything....I mean, if you don't have that electric blanket, and your apartment is cold, and you need to put on another blanket or go into the closet and pile up coats on top of the blanket you have, well then you know it's cold. And that sets up a link of things: you have compassion for the p...well, is the person next to you cold? Are there other people in the world who are cold? What a cold night! I like the cold, my God, I never realized, I don't want a blanket, it's fun being cold, I can snuggle up against you even more because it's cold! All sorts of things occur to you. Turn on that electric blanket and it's like taking a tranquilizer, it's like being lobotomized by watching television. I think you enter the dream world again. I mean, what does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold don't in any way affect us? I mean, we're animals after all. I mean, what does that mean? I think that means that
instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars we're living in a fantasy world of our own making."
I digress.
I like the cold, I do. I (still) miss Maine and the change of the seasons and the snow and ice of winter (ok, at least in part because I snickered at the aphids and tomato worm larva that were freezing to death. Ha!).
But still...and yet...even so...it is cold.
The animals are cold. The goats hunker down in their pasture at night, they snuggle their kids next to them for warmth, they bow their heads to the cold and the frost...the goats sleep late.
The cows head to the cover of the trees, more grass for bedding, more cover from wind and cold.
The gardens are cold. In the mornings we walk past the broccoli, the cauliflower, the cabbage...all drooping their heads like the goats.
Very cold.
Our goat Marsha is dying.
How, you say, do we know? What do we intend to do about it?
How? I say. How? Simple. She has told us.
What do we intend to do about it? Nothing.
Nothing! You say?
Yes, nothing.
Marsha is old, she has lived her life.
Yesterday she did not leave the sleeping pasture, stayed all day beside the bale of hay, sleeping in the sun.
When I saw her I went to her and offered her feed. She is shy by nature and always grateful of extra feed.
She noted my offering, took a nibble or two and nothing more.
Today, when I found her, she was napping in the sunshine, with the cows. The goat herd had long left for the woods, for a day of browsing and nibbling.
Marsha was...Marsha IS content.
Tonight be forced her to come into the barnyard to sleep. She wanted nothing of it but we, we humans, we needed control...needed to manage something beyond our control.
So time passes on the farm. Always passing and passing.
What, I am asked, to do with 5lbs of broccoli, harvested and purchased just ahead of this freeze.
Broccoli? Broccoli is easy!
Cream of Broccoli soup!
Saute an onion and then add some garlic in olive oil.
Hear what I am saying here: garlic is ALWAYS smaller than onion; if you add it first, or even at the same time, the little stuff (garlic) will burn.
Then add broccoli, a little vegetable stock, simmer, add cream and cheese if you do such wild things. Oh heaven.
Roast it.
In the oven. With garlic and red pepper and olive oil.
Stir fry it.
You don't like cheap stir fry? No take out Chinese?
Not this broccoli!
Stir fry it lightly. Cook the rice well. Add a farm egg!
Put it on a baked potato.
That's right. Crazy.
Bake the potato. Split it open. Top it sauted broccoli and garlic, cheese, butter, sour cream, salt and pepper.
Another day passes. Life, death and dinner. Farm life. Tomorrow we begin again.
The blissful autumn we enjoyed has been lost and the cold air plummeted down from Canada with the vengeance of a scorned housewife.
Until last night, the coldest air we'd seen was just below freezing, a frost for a couple of hours perhaps?
This morning brought 25 degrees of cold air that left all of our vegetables limp. As we came back from the goat barn we lamented the loss of cauliflower, broccoli, dill, fennel and lettuce.
Over coffee and muffins we mourned the passing of Romanesco (one of the most beautiful plants we grow!), beets, chard, cabbage and bok choy.
Then, as the day progressed, the sun warmed and we were amazed as plants recovered in the warmth of the sunlight! Amazing!
Not gone the broccoli, cauliflower, beets and such! Not lost the beautiful Romanesco or, perhaps, the dill!
Sunshine is a wonderful thing!
And yet the day passed, the warmth faded, and now, at 6:30pm, we watch the temperature drop again and know that we have more cold yet to endure.
For New Years I made soup.
Billy Rose wrote:
The things I long for are simple and few;
A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you!
To that, now, I would add, soup!
It's cold! I come in from the barn with my fingers burning, my ears aching, my toes....
Alright, fine. I lived in Maine and there is a part of me that resents this whining, belly-aching over a freeze. A freeze! Not a blizzard, an ice storm, a snow storm...not an anything storm, a freeze.
I think, perhaps, I have softened in my years back in the south. It's cold.
And so I add to Mr. Rose's notes (although I take nothing away), I need soup!
For New Years I made miso soup.
I began with onions, a couple of them, sauted in oil. Then some garlic. Then some mushrooms (oh how I love them! How I wish I could grow them!)
Then things got crazy. I added broccoli stalks and sauted them too.
Then water (no broth here since we were going to add miso too). Once I had the soup cooking I added the miso and (more craziness!) carrots, daikon, broccoli, tofu and fun jen!
What, you say, is a fun jen? A fun jen is a farm favorite vegetable, a frilly green head that is a cross between a Chinese cabbage and a lettuce.
Lastly, to finish, a little soy sauce (careful with this because of the salt) and some chopped green onions.
Not too bad, farmer!
So we turn the page (and the temperature dial!) to 2010.
Pictures of my horse soon (he's officially been here a year now!)...ok, as soon as he doesn't look like a woolly monster!
And calves! Jane delivered our first calf last night, a shiny black baby girl.
It's a busy, busy time of year, I think I will make some more soup.