Like Three Seasons in One Day

There have been many changes since I posted last, so here's the past 10 months in a rather large nutshell...

The bad news first: Sara Fezziwig Chicken passed away quite suddenly on September 1st; the temperature had climbed into the 90s, and she apparently died of heat stroke. It was quite a shock to find our beautiful golden queen chicken lifeless on the ground. Sara wasn't even 3 1/2 years old, but chickens who are raised for meat or eggs are sent to slaughter much earlier than that, at about a year and a half. Sara had the longest, happiest life we could possibly give her. We're so grateful she had one more summer with the run of the backyard, after her long winter spent indoors in 2010-11, when her best entertainment was chasing raisins, ripping into bunches of kale we hung up for her, visiting the rabbits, or pecking playfully at Sergei's toes. Here's Sara and her sister Sophia, at 10 months, on a beautiful March day in 2009.

In October, cancer with a small "c," a basal cell carcinoma, was removed from my face. That's the type of skin cancer that kills practically no one as long as it's caught early, and mine was. They took it off, and that's the end of that!

Then on April 11th, we lost our little Natasha kitty to kidney problems. Steve adopted her at age 6 months or so in 1997, so she was at least 15 years old. A week before, Tashi was still racing around the backyard at top speed. Even if she spent most of the rest of her time curled in her heated bed, she was only very ill for the last few days of her life. We keep trying to remember what a long and happy life she had.

We miss Tasha terribly, and so does Sergei, who now sleeps with us every night, right up on our pillows. Very cozy and warm on cool nights. Another change has been that, in January, Steve's cousin Matt moved to North Carolina. It's been quite an adjustment not having him around any more after ten years, but he's glad to be back in those beautiful mountains. Here's Matt with Sergei perched on his shoulders, since there's no pillow available!

Charm and Peridot are doing well, snuggling together, merrily digging at old phonebooks, nibbling paper in their tube, and arguing over barley biscuit treats.

Peridot

Charm










They very much enjoying being petted. Some rabbits like being held, some don't, and while both Charm and Peridot like being held and cuddled, they're terrified when they sense I'm trying to pick them up, and race away. Problem is, rabbits need their nails cut every 3-4 months, so it's something that I must keep working on. And get help with their nails in the meantime. Every time I start to get discouraged about this, I remind myself that my knees actually have calluses from being on the floor with them so much!

Here's Carlie, who now shares the coop and yard with Anne and Emily; she looks much like June, but has a completely different personality. We call her our little aviator---Carlie's always looking up and flies to get where she's going at every opportunity---and she's a big talker, and has more than once been the first to sound the alarm at the sight of a hawk.

Our 50,000 bee girls and boys survived the winter very well, and Steve has been successfully treating them for mites, so they are healthy. About month ago, they swarmed, but Steve successfully coaxed the swarm into sticking around our yard, so we now have two hives.

Steve's mom and my stepfather Andy are doing okay, facing health issues that being in your 80s bring. Old age is not for sissies, as someone has noted, and they're both proving that. I don't believe I've ever posted photos of the cats that my mother rescued from the streets of Omaha, and who have now followed her over the bridge: Bonzi, Chatty, and Roo.

Reality Check

Here's Natasha surveying The Back Forty (Feet), sitting near the 360 degree swivel table Steve made to put the solar oven on...

Some things have not gone well on our little homestead recently. First, all of our poor bees died over the winter. We don't know if it was because they had mites, or if there wasn't enough sun behind that bee enclosure, or because there weren't enough consecutive warm days this winter for them to get outside to eliminate, or because the hive got too moist inside. Most likely, it was a combination of all of these things. It's not CCD, that's for sure. Lots of people here lost their bees over the hard winter, including our next door neighbor. And it wasn't that they didn't have enough honey. We had not touched their honey, as they wouldn't have had enough if we did. Now we have about a dozen huge jars of it; Steve spent a very sticky Monday in late March with a rented extractor, and then probably another four hours scraping off and cleaning the foundation sheets, (where they build up the comb for their brood), for the new bees, who are doing well. The new spot for the hive is sunnier, behind a beautiful woven willow gate and chicken wire fence that Steve made to keep the cats from getting too close. The willow branches are from our small willow tree that was so heavily damaged by the December blizzard that it had to be taken down; it had to go anyway, so we could put something that will fruit in, but we were still sad to lose it.










Then we discovered that the peach tree has curly blight. Its first year of blossoming, and so beautiful, but it's not well. The treatment, apparently, is to remove lots of blossoms (more than one would usually) so it doesn't use up all its energy fruiting, make sure to give it seaweed extract as fertilizer and water it if there isn't much rain, then treat it organically with copper next spring.

The back yard, frankly, is a mess---on any trip across the yard, you stumble on clods of bare dirt, scraps of wood, fabric, or metal lying about, or holes that the chickens have scratched up for dust-bathing, or half-rotted sheets of cardboard lain down to help curb the invasive ornamentals. It's easy to catch an ankle in a twist of baling twine or a length of cut raspberry cane or multiflora rose that hasn't yet made it to the compost or stick pile yet. I want it to all look nice and tidy, but am realizing that it's hard to do that and still take care of the earth properly. Practicing permaculture is a SLOW process, so we have to wait and make mistakes.

At least the chickens are all happy and healthy, and the bush cherry is blooming beautifully and looks good. We should have cherries this year. I forgot to get a photo of it, as it's in the front, unlike most of our projects. Steve innoculated more shiitake mushroom logs yesterday. The first set, which might not fruit again, were innoculated in the spring of 2007, and we never got around to posting to show how it was done. He bought spores through the mail, and then drilled holes in oak logs that he got from a big old oak that came down on our friend Glenn's land. (Oak is best because the shiitakes prefer it and it holds its bark longer, so it stays moist longer.) The spores get pushed into the holes with the innoculator tool, and then he seals the hole with melted paraffin. Turns out you can use beeswax, too, and we have lots of that, so he'll use it next time. You'll notice he set up shop in the shade; that's so the open holes don't dry out too much while he's working.

Pollinator's Eye View of Our Back Forty (Feet)

Before it gets too cold and snowy for photos of the lush green garden to start feeling like a distant memory, here's a bird's or pollinator's eye view of our backyard, aka the Back Forty Feet, a photo taken in late July, in full summer bloom. You'll see the chicken tractor over on the left, along with a wheelbarrow full of various invasive plants. Our year-old peach tree (which has doubled in size and produced only teensy little inedible fruits this year but should bear good fruit next year) is blocking the view of the chicken coop, which was in a good "summer" location at that point---not in too much sun and so as to catch the breeze. Keeping chickens cool is important. It now has wheels and can be moved more easily around the yard. Mulch under the peach tree is hay from the chicken coop.

There aren't as many flowers in our yard as we'd like, but there just isn't that much sun; we hope to add more eventually, though. There are stands of day lilies that threaten to take over, underneath the clothesline, mostly; Steve's cousin Matt worked very hard to dig alot of them out this summer. Here you can see Joe Pye weed in flower towering over the red raspberry bushes, just to the left of the chicken coop; the black and purple raspberries are to its right, and also over by the fence on the left side of the yard, just west of the fern garden. Back in the far corner on the left is the compost heap, with the shiitake mushroom logs nearby. (This winter, we'll try to devote a whole posting to the great 2007 innoculation of the mushroom logs.) Wild grape and a trumpet vine cover the back fence; domestic grape vines have been planted on the fence near the clothes line, but won't be producing for a while yet. You can also see lots of wild grape vines twining around the phone line that comes from the house (bottom right corner), but the oyster mushroom logs next to the garage (bottom left corner) are out of sight. The invasive wild rose bush at the far end of the clothesline posts will be replaced next year with a native rosebush that doesn't spread wildly and has good quality rosehips that are a good source of Vitamin C. We made a nice rosehip syrup a few years ago, and it was delicious. Somewhere back by the chicken coop and over by the oyster mushroom logs are two hazelnuts, just leafy twigs right now, but within a year or two, they should be producing well. Steve keeps a little herb garden in the area by the back steps, which you can't see (bottom left corner). We wondered for quite a while what all the vines covering the silver maple snag were, and finally identified them: While there is the lovely red and green Virginia Creeper, there's also (ack!) poison nightshade and some other pretty but invasive vine in our bioregion, so we've been removing those. Tricky without pulling other things out... On the bottom right border along the fence there is a forsythia bush, also solomon's seal, bloodroot, may apples, wild ginger (which we have yet to try), bluebells, jack in the pulpit, and at the foot of the snag are crocus and trilliums.

And what's in the garden, which is the whole bottom right quarter of the photo? Zucchini, sweet potatoes, squash, Swiss chard, broccoli, and probably some other things. Our other gardens plot is a community plot a couple of blocks away, and that's where Steve grows potatoes, tomatoes, peas, sweet corn, peppers, onions, and other veggies. The garden deserves its own post...in the winter, when we've got more time...

In the other (far right) corner of the yard is the honeybee hive, our newest addition! When our friend Eric, who knows about these things, moved away at the end of June, he sold us one of his honeybee hives, and our neighbors have one of the others, just on the other side of the fence. Steve built this little fenced-in corner to protect curious felines, and the screened portion is so the bees' flightpath isn't blocked by the fence. They've made honey, but there's only enough for them for now; we hope that we can safely share some of it next year. From Eric, we've learned that honey bees aren't as important as pollinators as native bees, like mason and leafcutter bees. These wild bees help increase crop yields. If you look very carefully, you'll see just to the right of the silver maple snag, high up on the fencepost, a wooden block that is nearly hidden in the leaves. This is one of our two homes for leafcutter bees in our backyard. For more information about how you can help native bee populations and become active in pollinator conservation, go to The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation's webpage on pollinator conservation:
http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/
Yes, I am lame and lazy for not making this a link, but you can also click on the post title to go directly to that page.