Installing Bees

4 hives in front of the persimmon grove



Cluster of bees inside the package

2 hives by the blackberry patch

Mr. Tabb in the mint with his carpet that he drug out of the garage.

Mr. Tabb sleeping in the flowerpot by the door.

I haven't had the opportunity this week for any inspired cooking because there is so much happening I feel I can bearly keep my head above water, but it's all good. I get ready to complain, and hesitate, because it is a lot of good stuff that is happening at once. However, the whole balance thing that I try to practice is difficult, especially this week. To illustrate how I feel, imagine a see-saw and I'm standing in the middle straddling both sides trying to maintain balance--teeter here, teeter there...oooohhh ba-la-nce. You've been there, right?

It started 3 weeks ago with Booker our outside dog running over to the neighbors house a 1/2 mile away after we would leave for work in the mornings. He somehow figured out they had doggies over there that would play with him. Mr. Tabb started off just bringing him back and dropping him off at the end of the driveway. He started calling us and asking us to come get him. He was really nice about it because he has a beagle that would go 2-3 miles away and visit the neighbors so he understood. Plus, it helps that Booker is so sweet. Then Booker decided that after we went in for the evening, he would go over and hang out on the Tabb's porch. So, the calls came after 9:00 pm. Night driving is not my favorite thing, but I had to go get him.

Two Fridays ago, Mr. Tabb called to inform us Booker was over there and someone had dropped a beagle that afternoon. We went over and Booker had already befriended the lonesome fellow. The stray beagle had a sore back paw and was skin and bones. We packed both of them in the truck and back home we went. On the good side, Booker has not gone to Mr. Tabb's since. On the bad side, we couldn't figure out where our cats went. Now we know. Booker and the beagle who has been named Mr. Tabb since that's where he came from have been chasing them all over the property; not to hurt them but just for the sport of it. The barn cats have gone to the Amish across the street, and Cornelia Corncat has been living in the woods behind the house. Bootsie the old cat has smacked Booker and Mr. Tabb in the face so they leave her alone. The other 3 have never learned to stand up to the 2 knuckleheads because they have always had free run of the yard. David has been working with Mr. Tabb but it has been really hard because, well, he's a beagle and very stubborn. Neither of us have ever had beagles so this is all new. One observation: he has peculiar habits such as the desire to drag his bedding outside of the garage, play in the rain, and sleep in my flowerpot. So the beagle drama is ongoing stress.

Sunday was a horrible day weather-wise; windy, rain, sleet, snow flurries. And, as luck would have it, I had picked up 6 packages of bees Saturday. I had to install them Sunday afternoon because they had traveled up from Georgia and were already showing signs of stress. In my Iditarod suit and 'mad bomber' fur-lined hat, I slipped my beesuit over all of it and looked like the Michelin Man. I rode my bee mobile (John Deere Gator) to the back end of the 'boot' as we call it and set up my hives. When viewed on the aerial property maps, that 15 acre section resembles the shape of Italy. There is a grove of persimmon trees and wild blackberries so it just seemed like a nice place for hives, plus we are seeding the area in wild flowers, grasses, and bee forage. Four of the packages were strong, but two of them seemed a little weak. I may lose those two; no guarantees with bees. In the pictures, the screen boxes at the hive entrances are what the bees travelled in. I have to pry the tops of pull out the queen cage and hang it between frames then shake the packages, as they are called, into the hive boxes. Some bees always stay behind, so I prop the packages at the hive entrances. When the bees smell the queen's pheremones inside the hive box, they will crawl/fly into the hive box on their own.

Finally, all the packages were installed and I was able to get back home. At home, I went to the garage and started seeding trays with tomato seeds, over 200 seeds which sounds crazy, remember, though, I have acres of gardens this year. In the quiet of the garage, it hit me. I had forgotten to put the sugar syrup buckets which the bees feed from in the hive boxes.

Monday: David had a heart catheterization in Louisville. We left the house at 5:00 am to make the 6:45 appointment. The day was taken up with that. Good news is all arteries are clear.

Tuesday: Got 2 yorkies ready for vet trip to get their teeth cleaned and Mr. Tabb to be nuetered. Thank God for Joyce the pet sitter who was going to drive them to Elizabethtown for the procedures. Went back to the farm and put the syrup buckets on the hives. Had to release one of the queens in one of the weak hives. I'm worried about that one especially because the queen was moving slow and the bees were really weak. Probably will lose that one. Went to work and realized I had over 50 folders to invoice. Blood pressure and heart rate went up immediately, when will I get it done? That night, I put the finishing touches on a Beef Council recipe for their cook-off. Deadline is midnight, but I beat it by 4 hours.

Wednesday: April Fools Day. Went to work and finished 2 folders. The rest of the day was a wash because David was too busy engaging me to figure out pranks to play on the office staff. I left at 3:00 pm and went to the grocery store to buy office supplies. I saw Easter coloring kits and grabbed a couple. Ran back to the office and unloaded the office stuff, went to say good-bye to David. He grabbed me and said I couldn't leave because he had just set up the prank of all pranks of the day. Bonnie ran out of the bathroom screaming and laughing. He had taken the dye tablets out of my Easter kits, unscrewed the faucets, and stuck a red dye tablet in and then screwed back the faucet. When Bonnie turned on the water, it was red. So, I tossed the remaining kits, what good are Easter coloring kits w/o the colors? It was fun though, and it was good to see him laugh.

Thursday: Drove to Louisville to pick up my car that was in the shop for scheduled maintenance. I dropped it off on Monday while David was in recovery. Had to be back at the house to wait for the Directv repairman who was schedule between 12 and 4. We have only been able to watch BBCA for the last 2 weeks. Of course, he didn't show up until about 2:30. Could have been worse I suppose. Set up emergency supplies for the tornadic weather the weather folks have been warning about all day. Good news, no tornadoes. Bad news, there are 10 more bills to invoice. More good news, David said don't worry about billing until next week.

Friday: My brother comes to town this afternoon which will be so much fun. He is the company's IT guy so he has a lot of work to do, but we always make the most of it after-hours. He will be deployed for a year so he wants to make sure everything is ship-shape before he leaves. Initially, it was scheduled as an Iraq deployment, but then it changed to Ft. Benning. Again, thank God he is state-side.

Saturday: He doesn't know it yet, but I am kidnapping my brother and driving to our other property to assess the bees down there in Taylor County. When we get back home, we are going to spend the day at the new property which he hasn't had an opportunity to explore. I want him to the trapper's cabin ruins and I will take our metal detector with me so we can search for ruins of a whiskey/moonshine still at the base of the bluffs near the trapper's cabin. It's marked on an old map and I can't wait to see if I can find pieces of it. David doesn't know it yet, but I ordered a book about building a still. I know, it's illegal, but I thought it would be nice to have one on that site, strictly for educational purposes. Refer the ATF to this blog if anything happens to me so they know I was not up to any tomfoolery! (smile) Of course, when the book arrives, David will flip his lid. I can hear it now, "you're gonna get us both locked up!"

As you can read, it has been wild around here, all good, but still stressful, and really no time for recipe testing much less preparing a proper meal. I came close last night though with spaghetti and meatballs, salad, and garlic bread with blackberry/cabernet sorbet for dessert. The meatballs are from a previous post. I do have one little recipe if you can call it that. I hope you try it because it is delicious.

Honeyed Blueberries

1 small container of blueberries

1/4 cup honey

Wash blueberries and place in a medium bowl with the water that is clinging to the berries. Drizzle honey over top. Gently stir. Let set for a few minutes. Stir again, then eat as is or spoon over the top of anything you like ie cheesecake, yogurt, cereal, ice cream.

This is so deceptively simple, yet the magic that happens when the blueberries and the honey comingle is delicious.

Cracklin' Crisp Chicken and Gardening Overload

The finished plate


Just off the Viking Elliptical Cooker


Half way point...


The resting bird


I actually prepared this chicken recipe a few weeks ago, but we are going to grill another chicken tonight because neither of us have been able to forget the cracklin' quality of the crispy chicken skin.
I just know I can tell you my naughty little secrets, we (more me than he) ate all of the shatteringly crisp skin and then were too full to actually eat the meat. I fixed the plate for the photo op and we picked at it, vacuum sealed the remaining leftovers, and went to our respective corners to pay our penance. Lent had just started and both of us had sworn off meat. Now let's not get too crazy, after the "skin sin", I modified my plans to "no RED meat" which I promptly screwed up the next weekend when I fixed bacon, downed a couple slices, thought about what I had just done and then justified it as 'bacon equals pork, the other white meat'. Yeah, that's it. Does breakfast meat really count anyway? Thank God Jesus wasn't tempted with crispy chicken skin or breakfast meat. Salvation would have never been the same...
Anyhoo, if you love crispy chicken skin but have a hard time achieving it, this recipe has a trick: baking powder. Trust me, there are no weird flavors or aftertastes. The science behind it is this: Chickens are processed in water, and there is a lot of water in the packaging; therefore, the chicken skin absorbs a lot of this moisture. By putting baking powder on the skin, it actually pulls moisture out of the skin which then evaporates. The baking powder melts, goes into the skin, pulls moisture and after a few hours comes back to the surface where it simply, because of the dilution process, just disappears too.
This recipe can be prepared on the grill which I like because of the smoky flavor it takes on. I used a vertical apparatus that enables the bird to "sit" on the grill grate. You could do the "beer can" routine. Probably tonight we will try a new grilling gizmo that my husband ordered called the 'turkey cannon'. It seems small enough to accomodate a chicken. I'll let you know what we think of the cannon later.
Gardening overload is happening. The pawpaw trees are suffering at the farm. The deer are determined to dig them up and nibble the roots, plus the recent frosts have bitten the tender tops. I think they will pull through. My friend, Mike is plowing my 4 gardens at the farm. Each garden is an acre plot. David, for my birthday present, bought me a John Deere 5101 (translation: Bigass Tractor) with a seven row tiller. Since that set us back about $50K, I have to wait til next year for the convertible seedbox which means I have to use my manual seeder in each of those gardens. I can't wait to see the neighbor's face when I till those gardens with my JD, and then step out of the cab, load up my seeder, and start walking down the garden's length, hilarious!
An acre is 208 feet, squared. I thought my gardens at the house were about a half an acre. Oh how wrong I was. They are probably not even a 1/4 of an acre. For these gardens at the farm, since I couldn't mentally picture an acre, David and I, on the windiest day in March, of course, used a tape measure to walk off each plot. I'm sure the neighbor was rolling on the floor laughing at us being wind-whipped while walking off the plots with a giant tape measure.
Beside trying to get the garden seed ready for these huge gardens, we are having the pasture fertilized and grass seed sown so I had to decide on my grass seed mix. Since I have bees, I wanted an assortment of forage for them so we went with short blade fescue, perennial rye, alfalfa, white clover, and yellow clover. Then the 15 acres that cuts through the woods will be turned into a wildlife area and that seed is comprised of the former plus shasta daisy, rizome sunflowers, and prairie grasses. Next year in the main pasture, using a no-till method, I can cut in red poppies, sunflowers, among others.
I started seeds a few weeks ago under my grow lights in the garage. I always plant something "experimental". I call it experimental because I try to pick something unusual that I haven't seen in other gardens. This year it is artichokes. I read an article last month about some gardeners in Maine that grow Imperial artichokes with great success. I was able to get some seed which has germinated reasonably well. Not as well as I had hoped, but I do have some seedlings. The Green Globe artichoke seed came up much better than the cold-hardy Imperial so it has already been different than I had expected. Green Globe is the variety that California artichoke farmers grow. Artichoke seed only has about a 70% germination rate that is why the Imperial has confounded me already, only 60% germination vs 90+ with the Green Globe. I will take a picture in the next few days so you can see the difference in healthiness. Both varieties were planted the same day.
It has become a mission to plant these seedlings because David told the guys down at the farm supply what I was growing and they laughed him out of the place. "Artichokes don't grow in Kentucky!" He came back home and told me what they said, and at that moment I decided that was the plant I was going to follow on my blog so the whole world, or at least you and I, could laugh back, "Oh yes they do!" I can't stand narrow-minded farmers. Of course, I could fail, but in true gardening spirit, I'll move on to the next interesting plant.

Cracklin' Crisp Chicken
1 whole chicken, 6-7 pounds, giblets removed and discarded
5 tsp kosher salt (if using table salt, 2-1/2 tsp)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp black pepper
Place the chicken breast-side down on the work surface. Using the tip of a sharp knife make 1" slits below each thigh and breast along the back of the chicken. Using a skewer, poke several holes in the fat deposits of th thighs and tops of the breasts. Tuck wingtips underneath chicken.
Combine salt, baking powder, and black pepper in a small bowl. Pat the chicken dry and rub this mixture into the skin coating surface evenly.
Set chicken breast-side up on a rimmed baking sheet and refrigerate, uncovered, 30-60 minutes ( I went 2 hours). Position chicken onto a vertical roaster.
Heat grill to medium hot. Place chicken on grill and close the lid. Roast for 45-60 minutes. When the chicken leg moves freely, the bird is done. Remove from grill. Let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes, it makes it easier to remove the vertical roasting apparatus.

Pawpaw Patch

Amish plow horses, I think they are Percherons.





I haven't tilled my garden in 4 years because the Amish neighbor comes up with the horses and turns the soil with his old plow. No carbon footprint here!

Pawpaw Patch.

The pawpaw trees, or should I say, sprigs arrived Thursday afternoon while it was sleeting. Just my luck. The mulberry and quince were 3' tall and bareroot just as I expected. I knew the pawpaw trees were going to be small because anything larger than 12" doesn't transplant well, but still the shock of seeing them was, well, shocking. Of course, just as I blogged a month ago, David was pessimistic. "How will they survive?" "They're sticks!"

Today I will drive down to the farm and plant them. He and I do agree that we will intersperse them at the woods' edge. The directions advised that for the next year and a half partial shade during the hottest parts of the day were crucial. If we had planted them orchard-style, we could have blocked the sun with pine boughs or netting, but with 126 acres of pasture, we feared that the wind would destroy any structures and probably the pawpaws too.

If you remember, I have never seen an actual pawpaw tree, but have read about them. They used to grow in the woods, and a nickname is Kentucky Banana. The fruit is gaining recognition with heritage growers. Organizations such as Heritage Foods (www.heritagefoods.com), and RAFT are seeking pawpaws when in season, and are charging premium prices for a box of pawpaws.

I went down to Sonora Florist on Friday to pay for an arrangement and to chitchat with Violette. We got to talking about my little pawpaw trees, and she just busted out laughing, "There's a pawpaw tree behind the church", waving her hand in the direction of the church across the street. "And, I've heard, there's another a couple miles away". She went on to say, just as I had read, that she heard pawpaws needed two trees in order to pollinate, but the one behind the church bears fruit often. She confirmed they have a banana taste, and are very seedy. I just rolled my eyes. Just my luck, I spend a small fortune buying pawpaws, and they are in my backyard. I went on and told her about the mulberry, elderberries, and the quince. She had tasted them too.

Now, I have tasted the elderberries, and the quince, but have never stopped to taste the mulberries even though they grow wild along the roads. First off, I'm nervouse about them being tainted by pollution from cars, and farm machinery. Secondly, they are juicy, purple-staining berry. When the trees drop their fat little berries, people get fed up with them because the juice can stain a sidewalk, and I'm not kidding, they drop a lot of berries. I can't imagine having one near a driveway.

I bought the mulberry tree because I had read that the birds would go for the mulberries and leave the other fruit alone in the orchard. I guess I'll find out if that is true. Violette thought it sounded plausible. Maybe what I need to do when I have these ideas about native fruits and such, is go down to Sonora Florist and run them by Violette. I could probably save myself some money. Just like last year, when I searched high and low for pie cherries. I went down there, of course a week after the season ended, and lamented to Violette. "Mama has a tree in her backyard that was just loaded". Just my luck. I'll be the first in line this year, though, tell Mama, Violette.