Harold's Anti-Caterpillar Invention

If you recall in my last post, I mentioned how we have those awful tent caterpillars and we cannot use pesticides because of our honey bees.  Well, my "redneck genius" husband rigged up something that really works!!!  No caterpillars in our apple tree now, and no worry about using pesticides.    Check out the photo below.  He took a plastic gallon jug, like from milk or water, and cut it in half.  Then he split the side and punched holes on each side of the cut (like shoelace holes).  Then he wrapped some 1/2 inch foam around the tree (like a piece of carpet underlay)  and secured it with a piece of tight wire, with ends long enough to lace through the holes in the jug.  He fit the jug real tight against the foam, but the foam will give a little as the tree needs to grow.  Then he sealed up all spaces with PL400.  So - the caterpillars climb up the tree from the ground (that's how they get there from elsewhere), they hit the curved part of the jug and cannot figure out how to climb back down and around and over the jug!  They get stuck in the little space at the top of the jug and fall back down.  Meanwhile I have seen birds eating them off the ground.   Unfortunately I can't save my raspberry bushes this way, but at least we saved our apples!  Before we put this jug thing on, we used a strong spray jet of water to wash them all off the tree (the tree is small enough at this point that we can do that).  So I guess we are smarter than the average tent caterpillar, eh?  That's why we are at the top of the food chain. ........
     Spent several hours today mowing with my new mower/tractor.  And worked in the garden.   More than 5 hours total in 84 degree heat.   Uff da.

Redneck Caterpillar Trap - it really works!

Happy mower Patty - smiling, like she had good sense or something.

Beelzebugs

The Minnesota bug season is here in full force!  Suddenly some of the worst offenders of all - those big black "circle flies" - are here.   If ever there was a bug sent by Satan, those circle flies fit the bill.   They never leave you alone.  Round and round they fly in your face, ears, hair, and follow you everywhere.  Nothing deters them either.   You can douse yourself in DEET and that might work for a few New York seconds.  Oh ya, I've heard about that "Dawn dish soap, vanilla, vinegar" thing - flies eat that up like candy.   They thrive on that!   Add to this pest, the ticks, gnats, deer flies, mosquitoes - all of which are out in full force now.   The only good thing is that ticks don't like hot temps, so this week it's supposed to get in the upper 80's and that will help.
       We also have those tent caterpillars, fuzzy green worms that are eating my apple trees, raspberries and cabbages.    A person is supposed to destroy the tent full of worms, but I can't find their tent.   I think they come from someplace else.   And with a million trees around here, how could I even begin to search??  According to the internet, a person is supposed to "put a bucket of water next to the tree, and the worms will be attracted to it and drown".  Ya, right!  That doesn't work at all.  The only things attracted to the buckets of water are my farm cats, trying to catch the occasional bug that does fly in there (no worms, though).   I even have some tiny little bug that is eating holes in my turnips!  Nothing else, just the turnips.   We also have potato bugs arriving daily.   We can't use pesticides because of our bees here at Honey B Farm, so I'm left wondering what to do.
     How does that famous Minnesota phrase go?  "We live here for the quality of life".  That person obviously never spent much time outdoors.  Must have been a person who just sits on the screened-in back porch, up north at the lake cabin, dreaming about the good life while sipping coffee...................

Updates on Everything

Since I haven't posted anything for about a week, I thought I'd post some updates.   We have been very, very busy the last week or so.  Between the daily trips to Fargo for Harold's radiation treatments, yard work, and garden work, and fixing things and house work and chores, there is just no time!  At least we aren't bored and wondering what there is to do!  The garden is coming along well in spite of little or no rain (weeds always grow, you know), flowers are starting to bloom in my hanging baskets (I started those flowers from seed, takes a while for petunias to grow), and we have a couple more litters of kittens!   Remember Rosie and Catnip?  They are eating solid food now and Mama Barbette takes them out for little hunting trips in the tall grass.
      Harold spent a couple days repairing my little garden tiller - it needed carburetor work and had a plugged gas line.   We also started the Farmer's Market this year again on Thursdays and so we set up our honey booth for that.  I baked some 7 grain honey bread to sell along with that and some honey oatmeal cookies.   We did just fair, but things will improve as folks realize the market is up and going this year again.   Other vendors did fair also.   As the produce starts to come out of the garden we will do well. 
     It's a never ending chore to grow your own food!  I spend at least 4 hours a day out there doing something - watering, tilling, weeding, and later picking produce.  I usually go out around 7 or 8 in the morning, and quit about 10 or 11 (or until the bugs drive me out!) and then put in another hour or so in the cool of the evening.  We have over 10,000 sq ft of garden.   Soon I will add canning to my daily chores.  My Mom is coming out next month from Indiana to help with the canning.   She really enjoys that and is a great help.  She spends about 8 or 9 weeks up here helping out.   Every year we can up over 400 jars of stuff.  Harold and I always laugh that everything we eat comes in a jar! Or a freezer bag.  But at least we know what's in our food and it is all organic.   We cannot use any sprays or pesticides because of our bees.   Bees are doing well!  We have 10 hives now.  So - here's a photo tour of what things look like now.   Nothing real exciting I suppose some would say, but we sure do enjoy the simple living!

Tippy Girl's kittens, 3 weeks old, not happy about being held.

Daisy Mae's latest litter, about 8 days old.  Four white kittens?!

My "Troll Patch" garden of petunias and pansies.

Doesn't this little troll guy just make you smile?  He's so happy!

Me with my little earthquake tiller, better known as "the screamer".

Even the bottom part of the garden is coming along nicely.

Deer Be Gone

Every year when things start growing in the garden I put up my "deer cd's".  We have a wire that goes all around the gardens and I hang old cd's on twine or yarn from this wire.   They spin and twirl and catch the sunlight during the day and the yard light in the evenings and become like little strobe lights that scare the deer!   It's like big eyeballs flashing at night.   I hang these about every 6 to 10 feet apart all around the garden.   The deer cannot escape these twirling lights!  And for the most part, they leave those tender peas and green beans and lettuces alone.  The occasional deer gets brave and tries to go under the wire and eat, but not very often.   The only problem is that during a really windy day the cd's get all twisted up in the wire and/or the twine breaks.  So it's a constant maintenance thing.  I thought about wire and drilling a hole in the cd so it would spin better, but wire is expensive and I'm cheap!  Yarn and twine are readily available and easily replaced.   The cd's only last a season or two, then the silvery stuff on the back wears off and doesn't reflect anymore.   If any of you have some old cd's you don't want, could you send them to me?   Or save them and next time you see me, could you give them to me for the garden?  I would really appreciate that.   These days cd's aren't as popular as they used to be for computer stuff, so it's getting harder to find.   Notice in the photo that I also hang plastic white grocery bags on sticks in the garden.   These help also to deter deer, as they sway and rustle and the motion scares deer.   It all helps!  Those deer will NOT get my veggies!

My "Deer cd's" hanging around the garden 

Even blue-backed cd's will reflect the light

"........and Pretty Cabbages All in a Row"

After all the rain and wind we've had lately, the garden is a little slow.  But at least the cabbages are doing well!  I have planted 3 different varieties:  small early heads that get about 1 or 2 lbs each, medium sized mid season ones, and the big 10-15 pound sturdy  Danish Ballhead cabbages, which are the ones I use for making homemade sauerkraut.   In the photo below, you can see that some of our corn is just beginning, too.  Other garden stuff has sprouted but that's about it.   It's just been too cold and rainy.
     This year, as we did last year, we will be selling honey and veggies at the local Farmer's Market.   It begins on June 13.   I don't expect that many vendors will have a lot of fresh vegetables, but probably home canned goods and baked goods.   We will have honey and eggs to sell, and probably some honey cookies and honey 7-grain bread.  Every week a local chef is going to highlight a different vendor's produce and do cooking demonstrations.   This week, for the opener, the chef will highlight our honey!   So I hope we sell a pretty good amount of honey.   As the season unfolds, we should have quite a few veggies and herbs to sell.  We did very well last year.
     The busy season starts now!  There is so much to do in the garden right now as it seems that weeds always get a head start.  As the summer progresses, I usually end up putting about 4 hours (sometimes more) a day out in the gardens.  Add to that the daily processing of produce with canning and freezing, keeping up with the yard work, doing chores and baking, and spending Thursdays at Market.   There aren't enough hours in the day!  But we DO have all winter long to rest, and this winter was especially long!

Early, mid and late season cabbages.  Bok Choy is planted in the blank space.

Catching a Swarm

This morning before we left to go to Fargo for Harold's radiation, he noticed one of our hives had swarmed.   He tried earlier in the week to prevent the swarm by removing swarm cells, and dividing the hive, but it didn't quite work.  The hive swarmed anyway.   When a hive swarms, it takes the queen and almost 1/2 of the bees and they just fly somewhere and land on a branch of a tree and surround the queen.  This is their attempt to make a new hive.  We tried to use a vacuum system to retrieve the swarm, but didn't succeed and I got stung a few times in the scalp.  We couldn't do anything else about it because we had to leave, but when we got back from Fargo, Harold called our neighbor Josh who is also a beekeeper, and they tried to get the swarm out of the tree.   By the time they finished, it was almost 8:30 p.m. and so some of these photos might be a little dark.  But they got the swarm into a box and hopefully the queen is in there, too, and after a day or so we can put the bees into a new hive box.  Here are some photos of the challenge of trying to retrieve the swarm!   Never a dull moment when you are a beekeeper!   By the way, my head is fine now, but all afternoon I had a real sharp headache from the bee stings on the top of my head!

Here is the swarm in a tree branch.

After cutting the branch part way, Josh went up the ladder with a nuc box and Harold lowered the branch.

Josh carries the nuc box up the ladder

Josh brushes bees into the box while Harold holds the branch down. 

It's Rhubarb Time

One of the first fresh ingredients to cook with in the spring is rhubarb!  Every good country cook waits eagerly for the arrival of those juicy red stalks for making pies, cakes, jams, jelly, crisps and many other recipes.  We have some growing here at Honey B Farm, but it's not enough for making big recipes (like jelly) or freezing.  I got a nice batch of it from a friend from our church.  He has so much of it he begs folks to come out to his farm and pick what we want.   Tonight Harold also harvested about a dozen huge stalks from our own growth, too.  And rhubarb is good for you!  It is a good source of Magnesium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Calcium, Potassium and Manganese. 
     Tonight I made our favorite rhubarb crisp.  I also cooked up a bunch of it with some water to make the juice for a batch of jelly, which I will make tomorrow evening. 

A nice pick of fresh rhubarb, ready for delicious recipes

Tonight's dessert - Rhubarb Crisp and ice Cream!

In case this got your mouth watering for some good rhubarb, here's the recipe for the crisp.  It is my version of a recipe found in the cookbook, Pine to Prairie Vol II. 

 

RHUBARB CRISP

 

Get a 9 x 9 pan ready.  Cut up 4 c. of rhubarb into small dice.  Mix with 3/4 c. sugar, 2 T. flour, and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon.  Spread into the pan and sprinkle with 1 T. red jello powder (can use cherry or raspberry or strawberry).  This is optional, but it makes for a nice red color to the crisp.   In a bowl, work together with fingers or a pastry cutter: 

1/4 c. butter, 3/4 c. brown sugar, 2/3 c. flour and 1/2 c. oats.   Put this mixture over the rhubarb in the pan.  Bake at 350 for 40-45 min until bubbly and rhubarb is tender.  When just warm, serve with ice cream.