The Bees are in Town

I'm late in posting about the most exciting thing to come to the farm since chickens: BEES! It's been over a week now with the bees. And it was an exciting weekend. Morgan, Jason, James, Neil, and Emily came up for a weekend of fun! I drove down to Vacaville and picked-up the critters to live on the farm. Three queens, each surrounded by 4lbs. of bees.

Part of the reason for such a late post was that I wanted the bees to get started before blabbering about how cool they are. The first two times I checked on the hives, 4 days after they arrived, and yesterday, I didn't notice any brood (new baby bees in larvae form), which the new hives desperately need to survive. However, I checked on them today and found brood in each of the three hives! I'm over the moon!!! This is great news.

While the great news doesn't mean the bees are completely out of the woods and on easy street, it does mean the chances of survival are much, much higher. This is because female worker bees (who do ALL the work) only live about 4-5 weeks, maybe 6; and it takes 21 days for a baby bee to go from larvae to worker. This is a pretty small window of success, dictating the survival of the entire hive. But now, with fresh brood on the way, the old bees now working their buts off will have a fresh batch of replacements. Reminds me a little of the bugs in Starship Troopers, but much cooler, of course.

The Garden

Like soldiers in the night the garden rotates its next plot

Part soil, part mulch, and clay loam

The goal is a jungle bound

But let's just hope for some earth

to give our bellies a joyous girth

Johntown Creek Waterfalls

In our backyard, behind Coloma over the American River and around Mt. Murphy lay a misty waterfall oasis. The moderate hike through newly ripened poison oak groves takes you over fields of splendid wild flowers, a couple of which I believe to be the Foothill Pretty Face and White Globe Lily (all below). There were two main falls, the more spectacular set of falls are further up the trail.

I can imagine Johntown Creek falls to be a welcome retreat during the awful summer heat -- though my guess is you'll need to visit them early in the season before the waning water flow and the crowds turn the place into spring break Lake Havasu.

Attempting to identify the wild flowers I see this season, I saw a lone flower just barely visible at the edge of the falls. I carefully slid down to get a better look and take a picture. I identified the flower as the Chickweed Monkey Flower, a flower that grows on wet mossy cliffs at low elevations from the western Cascades to northwest California. Another unsung treasure of living in the foothills of the Sierra!

Foothill Pretty Face.

White Globe Lily.

First set of falls.

The second set of falls, with Chickweed Monkey Flower popping out over the edge.

Chickweed Monkey Flower.

For Nerds: The Garden Cheat Sheet

For those that are interested, I thought I'd post the cheat sheet (below) that I use to log and account for all the things growing in the garden. It's still a work in progress -- the intent is that it'll be the template for each successive year. It tells me what family of crops to rotate where, the correct spacing of each type of plant, what seeds to save and how, and based on last year's successes and failures, what to do differently next year.

So far, the big take-away is that I attempted to germinate the cold-weary fruits and vine crops too soon -- for instance the tomatoes, tomatillos, and watermelons -- and will have to germinate them a little later in the season next year and/or hope that we don't have a similarly late cold season as this year's. --Though I'll thankfully still have more than enough to transplant in the garden come mid May.

Here is the Google Docs link. (Note: Google Docs doesn't have a text overflow feature, so the Excel upload comes out a bit funky. You'll see you have to open up each cell to see the text).

The Routine

With farm life (and by that I mean tending to a garden, an orchard, chickens, bunnies, quails, dogs, horses, and a cat) you'd be quickly overwhelmed without finding new ways to simplify -- well, if not overwhelmed, at least without much of a life outside of it.

I have only begun the rudiments of a farm. The dogs, horses, bunnies, and the cat need to be fed twice a day. The greenhouse and the garden need tending to everyday. The chickens' eggs need to be collected, and their food and water checked. When the bees arrive, they'll need attention to about once every two weeks or so. And this isn't considering the time required to plan and implement seasonal events like planting, harvesting, seed saving, honey extraction, and new chicks. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining; all these living things provide much joy; like all things worth having, they just need caring to.

For me there is much satisfaction in beginning to understand the huge wealth of knowledge required to care for flora and fauna in an organic, natural, and simplified way, and turning that knowledge into action on the farm. I know I have only revealed the tip of the iceberg -- yet, the complexity of the biological processes taking place are astounding, compounded further by our desire to use those processes for our benefit.

At this stage, almost six months into this (ad)venture, I am happy. The curiosity in the routine provides me as much enjoyment as the playfulness of the animals and abundance of life around me. I don't know: it could just be because it's spring time!

Friends and family, it's a great time to get your butts up here! There is always room for more beds, the nights are warm, and things are alive and growing everywhere!

P.s., I just planted all the frost tolerant annuals in the garden these past couple days. Let's hope they survive. It would be a sad day if it all gets wiped out tomorrow by gophers or birds or some other critter... If not, in a couple months there should be mountains of fruit and veggies to enjoy until winter!

It's Coming Alive!

The first veggies of the season are now officially planted in the garden. Those pictured are peas -- Amish Snap and Green Arrow -- that will hopefully, delightfully run up the twine forming nice arches. This whole gardening thing is definitely an experiment. I have no idea if these plants will like the soil they're planted in; whether they'll actually run up the twine; or if they do, whether they'll block the sun to the others.

However, I very much like the trellis design. The a-frame design prevails again! You may remember that the chicken coop was an a-frame. The trellis was made using one 2''x6'' by 14', of old wood fencing of which we have a gaggle. Twine is then run from the top beam to metal piping (preferred) or secured to the ground using old wire clothes hangers.

Planting these veggies in the garden for the first time reminded me of how a mother might feel when she first lets her child play outside without supervision. Outside the greenhouse it's a dangerous world, where deer, rabbits, gophers, birds, and other living things could easily wipe out months of growing! Yet, I think with life, and with these veggies, you just have to leave it up to chance. Let the world do as it may. C'est la vie.

Rototiller Partay!

With the last frost estimated to be less than a month away (my elevation is 2000ft., and at zone 8a - or so they say) and with a brief break in the rainy weather, it was about time we got off our behinds and till! Aliyah and I got up at 6 in the morning to pick up our worker friends, Kacey and Robert, the rototiller, and oodles of coffee and doughnuts.

The space we chose to till amounted to a 50' by 30' foot area, estimating that we were tilling not only for the current year's crops but for next. Using the rototiller is extremely evasive to the natural micro-organisms living in the soil, and thus not something to do every year. Ideally, this garden will turn into a no-till garden that relies purely on green manure planted between the growing season, compost, and mulch from the nearby oak trees. But with our virgin clay loam sod being very compacted, the rototiller was a necessary evil to prepare the soil for gardening.

You'll also notice that there is white webbing fencing surrounding the plot. This is meant to act as the primary dear deterrent. It's actually electrified and made with an unit that had been laying around the old house for years. We'll see if it actually does the trick and keeps the dear away!

Oh, and we also added 5 cubic yards of mulch, courtesy of the county of El Dorado Fairgrounds, which was amended to the soil by hand to add nitrogen and balance the ph. This complicated the tilling process and made work a lot harder.

I wish we could've put the dogs to work! All they did was nap and occasionally beg us to throw sticks.

Bee Update

While we're having these massive rainstorms and a late spring, I thought I'd give an update on the bee hive plan. After reading more about bees and going to a few great bee classes offered by the UC Davis Agriculture Extension, I've found it is increasingly more difficult to keep bees. Varroa Mites will be a major concern, as well as numerous negative environmental factors such as local pesticide use and California buckeye growth in the area (our state tree is poisonous to bees). 

With these considerations in mind, I've decided to look further than my local bait hives for obtaining a colony. First, I broke down and bought a Nuc of bees. A Nuc, short for nucleus, is an already established five-frame set of bees. This means that the bees will have already built out the comb, the queen will have already laid her eggs (brood), and have a strong egg laying pattern. All this is important because female worker bees only have a 21 day life cycle and thus there needs to always be a strong crop of replacements ready to take over.

Second, I bought a 4lb. package of bees (with a Russian queen potentially more resistant to Varroa Mites). The big downside of a package of bees is that the bees are not familiar with the queen, since they were only recently placed with one another, and the bees haven't begun to build out any honey comb. As a result, the bees will then have to start from scratch once they are placed into the hive. However, since I'll have the Nuc, there will be ways to equalize the weaker hive with the stronger one, by either giving brood cells (a whole frame) to the weaker hive or by switching the hives' location so the bees from the strong hive mistakenly fly into the weaker hive with their pollen/nectar/water stores. I'll also be able to compare the two hives giving me more information about each of their strengths and weaknesses.

And then there's always the possibility of snagging a feral (wild) colony with the bait hives. Once the good weather returns and the bees go into swarming season, we'll see if they choose my hives as a home. I give it a 75% chance. A couple of weeks ago before the storms came in the bees were all over the hives, so they've scoped the area out and know of its existence, and will go back -- or so the theory goes.

The Chicken Coop

Today, with the addition of hen-laying chickens (pullets), the place is really starting to feel like an organic farm. Using leftover wood and scrap materials, we constructed a box coop with a 13'x21' a-frame run, enclosed all in 1" chicken wire. The a-frame was quite fun to put up, assembling it on the ground and then lifting it up all at once. For this reason, I recommend the a-frame design for small shelters or enclosures.

To get the chickens, we drove out to Nevada City to meet a french woman and her daughter who had a pretty cool operation. They were raising all sorts of breeds nestled quaintly in the woods, and we were able to get pairs of several different kinds, non of which I can remember the names of, except the sex-links--I wonder why. We got eleven!

The names of which are:
Cookies (black and white speckled)
Cream (white and black speckled)
Butter (light brown)
Nut (light brown)
Spaghetti (dark brown)
Squash (dark brown)
Bobby Craig (black, lightly speckled)
Johnny Cash (Brown with white splotches... and a guitty)
Snow & White (two white hens with red mohawks, who peck).
And the last is called Dinner.

The sun is setting, the chickens are in their coop, the bees their hives, and me my trailer, all content. Time for dinner. Not chicken. I wonder when they're going to start laying eggs. They could tomorrow!

Germination Station

Using the 1.5" potting block, I planted many seeds in the greenhouse: lettuces, arugula, radishes, broccoli, squashes, tomatoes, beets, corn, watermelons, tomatillo, and kale, to name a few.  I wasn't sure how it'd go, but after a couple days all the arugula sprouted.

With half of the seeds coming up after only about 6 days, the germination rate looks to be about 90%, which is fantastic. Thank you Seed Savers Exchange for the awesome preservation of seed.

Now, the next step is to build a fence for the garden, till the area, add the super duper compost from the old house, blood meal (or equivalent), and oyster shells, before setting in the veggies. No rush though, I have 6-8 weeks until the last frost, which I'm been told to be safe is around mother's day.

Bees

A week ago or so, I put up three bait hives to try and attract a local hive of bees. It took a little bit of planning, but I put the hives about eleven feet up in the air, which is where they apparently like to set up shop.

And just these past couple days bees have been all up in the all three hives! Even though it has been off and on raining. It didn't rain today, though it threatened to in the latter half of the day, and the bees weren't out. Maybe they know something about the weather we don't. But really excited to see so many bees on all the hives at the same time.

The next question is if they'll call my hives home, or if they're just scoping the place for food and what not. If they do, I hope I'm around to see it. They'll swarm together in a big clump to protect their queen to bring her over to the new home.

The Greenhouse

Today it is snowing, but just last week it was 70 degrees.

The greenhouse surrounded by river rock (and a couple dragon eggs)

With the narcissus bulbs showing early signs of bloom and the recently transplanted pear tree showing full buds, I decided to give the greenhouse a test with some old seeds I had laying around. I had recently read romantic stories of greenhouses covered with snow, but with lettuce growing cozily inside, and wanted to try a go at early season greenhouse growing.

I also wanted to experiment with the new potting blocks I ordered for the occasion. Potting blocks are these metal contraptions used to make a soil mold in which to start seeds. The great thing about these thing-a-ma-jigs is they potentially last forever, aren't made of plastic, and allow for more soil per area than traditional plastic cells. And, they are adaptable to various sizes, which means a small soil block can fit inside a larger one and so on (think of a Russian nesting doll but with plants). As soil, I used a batch of humus (decomposed horse manure) that had been marinating at the old house for years.

Nestled among the old seeds, I came across a couple goji berry seeds! So I planted these as well (not pictured).

The mini and the 2 inch potting blocks are shown here. When the seeds sprout, I will experiment with the 4 inch block.

You can see I experimented with both the plastic cells and the potting blocks.

Livin' off the land.

As some of you may now know, I've moved to Garden Valley, California, to help my mother with some things and to start my dream of livin' off the land. At this point, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it has something to do with stepping out of the commercial distribution of food, making it on my own as much as I can off the land I'm provided with, and simplifying my existence. (Very existential I know!)

The dream may very well have begun when, during law school, I moved back from Boston Massachusetts to sunny California, a state in which the land provides us with so much bio diversity. I know my dream materialized more definitely during my first trip to Whitethorn, California, seeing first hand what can be done with land to call your own.

Not for nothing, my extensive travels to major cities all across the globe also must have nudged me to find an existence not in the world's metropolises but on its fringes, in places where nature flourishes and it is said people grow from the salt of the earth.

This blog was created upon receiving the wonderful gift of 30 ties on my 30th birthday, and wanting to share my life and the ties with those I loved. And so, it's fitting this blog evolve to share my experiences with trying to live off the land in Garden Valley, California.

Look forward to more posts as inspiration comes. Love, Ryan.