beekeeping = dangerous business

 a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at our beekeeping week

Here you will find a DO NOT DO list for beginning beekeepers... like us...

1.  Do not go into the hive more than necessary.  These are, as a fellow beekeeper put it, bugs in a box.  They are wild things; we pose a threat each time we go into their world by possibly introducing pests, possibly crushing bees or their handiwork, possibly dropping a heavy frame of honey and bees (like I did last night), possibly (probably) alarming the bees unnecessarily which possibly (probably) incites them to stinging protective measures.

2.  Do not forget to tuck your pants into socks, thick socks, not thin summer cotton socks with cutesy verbiage on the sides.  (my ankles got 7 lovely stings, right through those cotton socks...)

3.  Do not forget to tuck all of that pant leg/heavy sock mess into some ankle boots or wellies.  (my husband received one sting last night just above the top of his shoe and through his sock; below is what it looked like this morning in the ER...)

4.  Do not leave tools, camera, sugar-syrup pitchers, debris, or even dead or dying bees strewn about the bee yard area.  The pitchers will be filled with hungry bees in moments, that tool you left will be rusted, your camera will be a total loss, and those bees become land mines.  (my sweet doggie, Scarlett, stepped on a stray bee this morning and ended up at the vet after I pulled the stinger out of her pad; now both bee stung patients are resting...)

5.  Do not try to mark your Queen while sweaty, cranky, and crammed into your smallest bathroom with your mate, particularly if one or both of you has never done this before.  The Queen will wear the results for a long time.

6.  And most important...

Do not forget for a moment

why you started this great beekeeping adventure.

Do not let the setbacks

keep you from a lifetime of joy and grace.

Do not allow the stings

to keep you from protecting and nurturing

these wondrous creatures.

July's gifts of grace and abundance...

May brought changes... a "retirement" of sorts... but really just a retreat from working in the world and a homecoming to urban homesteading and well-being full-time.  It is abundant provision and grace from God that allowed this change and I am ever grateful.

June brought so many activities... finishing up this or that, getting the gardens going, building bee relationships, visits with friends.

And now July...

The gardens here at Flannel Jammies Farm are bursting with goodness!  We are daily harvesting so many varieties of tomatoes, lovely cool cucumbers, green beans, eggplant, Swiss chard, blueberries, peppers, and herbs of all varieties. 

The front walk herb garden has a permanent resident: the tiniest of bunnies, munching happily on green goodies and hiding under the hawthorne as I come to harvest herbs for supper.

Our sign waves ever so slightly in the warm breeze.

And the bees!  We now have our first hive full of bees and a nucleus colony we just received.  These amazing bees fascinate me morning and evening, each day.  Working together in harmony, they create a safe haven to raise young, they store up golden goodness to get them through the winter, and they reach out into the gardens, pollinating the plants for our daily harvest.  With precision and efficiency, these bees build perfect hex-pattern comb and fulfill each life-cycle task with no laziness, no complaining, no selfishness.  They are a gift in my world, teaching me so much about God's wondrous creation and about living in community.

And speaking of putting away stores for the winter, we've been canning and freezing and dehydrating here, too.  Pickles and beets and jams and relishes and corn... oh! the corn...  I think of those bursts of flavor we'll enjoy in the cold and dark of winter each time the pantry doors open, and I am filled with thanksgiving.

Celebrate July, dear ones.  Give thanks for the harvest.  Play in the rains and laugh, laugh, laugh.  Share the gifts you have been given.  Sunday blessings to one and all from Flannel Jammies Farm...

happiness = small batch canning

I have the big, blue, speckled waterbath canner.  I am also blessed to have a huge and heavy All-American pressure canner.  So spoiled, I know.

But Flannel Jammies Farm is, well, an urban farm... on 1/5 acre... total.  Our gardens are beyond organic and we do grow intensively and all year.  Sometimes when I'm harvesting beets or carrots or cucumbers there just isn't enough harvest for one of those big canners to make an appearance.  That's the perfect time for small batch canning!

There's no shame in canning 3 jars of jam instead of 13, if that's what your harvest warrants! 

Back to cucumbers, though.  We grow mostly pickling cucumbers, a little row of them in a 4'x4' raised bed, climbing up a leaning handmade trellis.  As the sun crosses the sky, the trellised cucumbers shade Swiss Chard and cilantro beneath in the brightest and hottest part of the day.  This time of year I'll harvest 5 or so cucumbers a day, maybe more.  After a couple of days, I've got enough on hand to do a small batch of pickles! 

So I start with about 14 pickling cucumbers, scrubbed clean, blossoms removed.  Aren't they pretty and green? 

I cut them into spears or crinkle cuts or chunks.  I love pickles... crave them, snack on them, eat them with potato chips after a rough day.  Any-hoo...

I pack them into jars and cover them with the pickling liquid, sealing the jars carefully, and get them into my trusty small-batch canning basket and lower that into a large stock pot of boiling water.  After processing, cooling, and seal-checking, they glisten in my pantry until ready to devour!  A few days later, I'll have enough to do another small batch... or maybe there will be a couple of really good days and I'll have enough for a big canner load.

Here's a link to a quick and easy Flex-batch Kosher Dill Pickle canning recipe from Ball's Fresh Preserving website.  It's the first pickle recipe I used when I started canning.  And here's another recipe from my sweet friend, Lanette, at Homesteading on the Homefront; it's similar to one that I use often...  Bread and Butter Pickles.  A tip: use Pickle Crisp or Kosher Dill Pickle Mix with Pickle Crisp for that satisfying *snap* when you bite into a pickle!

(thanks so much, Rose, for the adorable timer!!)

Bumblebee Moving Company...

As you know, we at Flannel Jammies Farm recently became beekeepers!  We are blessed to be part of a wise and wonderful group, the Beekeepers Guild of Southeast Virginia, who helped us trap a swarm of honey bees and bring them home to live in our sweet English garden hive.

But before we got THAT swarm call, we received another swarm call.  We excitedly raced to the given address with the jotted-down details:  a small swarm, in a small handmade birdhouse nestled in a garden, at the home of a retired widow (the gardener had been stung that morning and she wanted the bees to be taken away).

We came to a stop in front of the house and met the gardener, who gave us the same details.  We walked over to the garden and discovered... bumblebees, not honey bees!  About 2 dozen VERY ANGRY and stinging bumblebees were entering and exiting the dearest little birdhouse, created by the widow's late husband.  Our guild normally does not remove bumblebees, but my husband and I could see that the homeowner was anxious to have them removed, and we were already landlords to LOTS of bumblebees at home in our vitex tree and around our garden.  We smiled at each other, knowing we could help, and removed the bumbles, birdhouse and all, and promised to return that dear birdhouse to the homeowner as a keepsake from her late husband.

Now what?  Well, we brought the birdhouse full of bumblebees home and set it up in the bee-and-butterfly bed at Flannel Jammies Farm, just under the blooming vitex tree.  The inhabitants happily played with the new neighbors, buzzing from bloom to bloom.  Until yesterday.

It was time to move them to their new home, an old and crazy-looking birdhouse we had in our shed that we'd install exactly where the previous one had been planted.

BUT... we knew these bumblebees were still peeved (I'd been shooed away earlier in the day while picking blueberries!)... we knew they'd built quite a tight little nest inside the tiny birdhouse... and we knew that the birdhouse was a particular treasure of that sweet widow and it had to be returned to her unharmed...

The hubs and I donned our bee suits, lit the smoker (repeatedly and used it way more than needed), gathered our tools, and headed out to become laborers for the Bumblebee Moving Company.  Here's a semi-long (9 minutes) and maybe a little slow-moving (tedious work, this) video of what ensued, just in case you're curious about what a bumblebee house move would look like!

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, 

you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, 

kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Colossians 3:12

garden update...

We've been so busy (buzzzy?) getting the honeybees settled into their new home that we've forgotten to keep updated on the garden progress.  (bee stories to come!)

So it's early June here at Flannel Jammies Farm and so much is happening!  We're harvesting daily... lettuces, Swiss chard, sugar snap peas, beets, carrots, strawberries, garlic, and so many herbs.  Here are some photos from around our little urban 'farm'...

 Oh, the tomatoes to come!!!  So, we always grow too many and we tried to cut back this year, but who can resist a favored variety?  A few that we're growing this year are Juliet, Super Cherry 100, Yellow Pear, Purple Cherokee, Green Zebra, Mr. Stripey, Lemon Boy, Mountain Pride, and Brandywine.  (I'm sure there are more varieties out there... the hubs is very sneaky about tucking them into oft-ignored corners of the garden.)

Peppers are always wonderful performers in our garden.  This year we're growing green Bell, Anaheim, Cubanelle, and Jalapeno.

The Sugar Ann sugar snap peas are enjoying a second flush of delicious pods.

Carrots (Danvers Half Long, Chantenay Red Core, Cosmic Purple, and Parisienne) are finishing out the season happily next to just-getting-started Calima bush beans and Romano bush beans.

The cucumber trellises are filling in nicely with pickling varieties and a Market More (on the leaf-shaped trellis).

Potato towers are going gangbusters with Carola and Rose Finn Apple Fingerling varieties (and, again, with some rogue already-sprouted-in-the-kitchen potatoes slipped in by YouKnowWho).

There are also eggplant varieties, a couple of squashes out by the road, asparagus, onions, and Swiss chard.  The radishes, kale, and spinach are done for the summer season, but will return again in Autumn.

The bee and butterfly bed is growing and beginning to bloom with lilies, black-eyed Susan, Shasta daisy, lamb's ears, coneflowers, bee balm, butterfly bush, and blueberries, with vitex, sedum, and nandina nearby.  Oh, and we're growing our own wine bottles, of course (wink!).

And speaking of wine bottles, a new crop was just planted (creating garden borders for the small veggie beds in the front/side yard).

The woodland garden is lovely, green, and my favorite variegated, lace-cap hydrangea is blooming!

Part of that woodland garden is a tall, tall river birch tree.  It's so pretty and whispers and sways in the wind, but the hubs is allergic to it.  So much so that every time he works in the woodland area, he has terrible allergy symptoms for a couple of days.  That birch is scheduled to go, sadly.

Thanks for wandering in through the garden gate...

we are blessed

by working this green earth,

by the grace-filled rains and light from the Lord,

by the pollinating friends helping things to grow,

and by your visit today.