A Beautiful Day On The Shores of Two Squaw Lake

Today was an absolutely gorgeous, warm spring day!  This is the kind of spring day Minnesotans dream of!  I did a little work in my greenhouse, and then decided to take a walk through the woods around Two Squaw Lake on our property before the wood ticks get bad.   Here are some photos I took today.

Harold started the day off by tilling up one of our gardens for the first time this year with the Lo Boy tractor.  He will make several passes over the garden before we plant.  He also did our other garden, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

I am standing at the bottom of the garden and looking uphill.  Harold also tilled crosswise.

While Harold tilled the gardens, I hand dug one side (26 feet) of my greenhouse space.  This is always a job for the first time, as weeds from last fall and even late winter grow, and those weeds are grasses with long roots!  Next I will add some composted manure I got from a cattle farmer, and then plant more seeds here and set out some peppers and herbs and flowers.

The garlic I planted last October made it through the long winter and is up and growing nicely.  It's about 9 or 10 inches tall already!

Some radishes are growing already!  How do you like the cute little marker?  My brother in law bought a whole set of veggie garden markers for me one year that he found at a garage sale.  This is the only one left from the set he gave me 15 years ago!  I have been asking hubby to find a set of drawings on Pinterest and make me some new ones, but he hasn't done that yet. 

The spinach I planted 9 days ago is up and growing!

We have hundreds of holes like this all over the yard.  These are made by birds, especially robins, digging for grubs and worms.   I guess you would say I have "organic pest control"!  Here on our farm everything is organic and we use no sprays because of our bees.  So if the birds want to control grubs for me that is fine.   They're also aerating the soil so I don't have to!  How great is that?!

After all this garden work it was time to take a break and take a short hike down to the lake.

This is the main path to Two Squaw Lake.  The deer and the geese and other birds and animals all use this path.  The geese and deer love to eat the fresh green grass.  I always keep this mowed for good access. You can see lots of deer tracks from the deer walking in the moist soil at the bottom of this picture.  And of course the robins pick a lot of worms out of the soil here. 

You can't see it very well here, but I scared up 5 trumpeter swans.  I was hoping they would fly overhead so I could get a better photo, but they wouldn't cooperate!  There are lots of duck and goose nests in this boggy area. 

This is the lower end of Two Squaw Lake.  It used to be totally filled with tamarac trees back in the late 1980's when Harold first came to this property.

This is the upper end of the lake.  We own a part of the larger end on the right hand side.  Our neighbor owns the rest of the lake.  You can see a beaver house about in the middle of the photo.   Sometimes we see this little guy walking around on land looking for a new tree to cut down.

One of many paths to the lake.   It is always so peaceful on the shoreline.  The surrounding woods and the lake is always full of the sounds of birds.

This is an early wildflower in the woods - hepatica.   It can be white or dark purple or light lilac colored.   It's a tiny flower no bigger than a few inches high, but it grows everywhere.   It is one of the first natural foods for our bees.

Here is some purple hepatica.    The woodland floor is so colorful and pretty with hundreds of these flowers all over!  There is also wild violets and bloodroot beginning to show up.

More paths to hike right now.  This used to be a favorite sugar bush for us for many years for maple syrup making.  But many of the trees are down because of winds and bug damage.

Our house is on a hill overlooking the lake.  Soon all this dead prairie grass will be green again and I will be mowing the two paths of grass to provide a path for us to walk down to the lake, and also for the deer and geese.

The trees are nowhere near to greening up, but the buds are beginning to show.  Things will look a lot different in a few weeks!   

Earth Day Stroll

Today it finally warmed up here in the frozen north country!    Finally!!  It has been a very long winter, and spring has been very late in coming.   Up until today our road has been muddy and it's been windy and cold.  Not a good time for walking.  But it warmed up to 58 today and so I was able to get out and take a nice walk.  Nothing is really blooming yet, and the buds on the trees are just starting to look like they will pop out.  Up here, we're very much behind other places in the nation.  But for the next 7 or 8 days anyway, we are supposed to get temperatures in the upper 50's and low 60's, and a chance of some cleansing showers.   This will really make wildflowers and trees bud out!

Two days ago there was still a thin coating of ice on Two Squaw Lake.  Our resident trumpeter swans still managed to find a little water!

What a difference a few days and temperatures make!  Our resident swans took to our other lake, which we call Lake Harold.  This little lake iced out today in the almost 60 degree weather.

This is a general view of our Lake Harold.  We also own 7 acres of land across the lake on the other side. 

As I was walking on the road, I saw many, many deer prints in the soft sand on the edge.  I wonder why the deer like to walk in the sand instead of the road?   Maybe it's softer on their feet?  Or closer to the little trees they like to nibble on?   Every evening 7 or 8 deer like to come to our yard and work over small weeds, green grasses, and sometimes squash pieces I put out for them. 

All along the road are patches of swampy land.  Soon we will be hearing the frogs sing!  That's a nice sound in the evenings!

Walking back towards home and looking at a view of Lake Harold.   The road is mostly dry now, just a few places where it is rutted and muddy.

We also have a pair of Canada geese nesting on Two Squaw Lake.  They like to stroll around the yard and eat grass.  But they are rather skitterish and it is hard to get too close to them!

This is about as close as they would let me get to them before they started walking away.  My little digital camera has zoom power, but not that much as I would need!

My farm cats really enjoy the warm weather after being cooped up all winter!  They spent all day long hunting mice and chasing birds.  Now they're gathering for dinner time!   They seem to know what time it is even without a clock.  The long hair cat in the very back is a matted mess and she will NOT let me comb her out!   Long haired cats don't do well on a farm with weeds and woods.   The poor thing tries her best to keep the mats out, but mostly the hair has to just grow out.  I sure wish she would let me hold her and brush her!

Now that the weather is warm, I will be able to sit out on my porch in the mornings and have coffee and breakfast!   By the way, I grew those flowers in the old white coffee urn.   They are dried strawflowers and statice.  Aren't they pretty?   And they kept their colors nicely throughout the winter. 

And so, life is beginning to come alive again here in the northwoods!  I have been enjoying watching all the ducks and birds around the lakes.  We have beautiful hooded mergansers, mallards and scaups on Two Squaw.  Now that the lakes are opening up the loons will be coming back very soon.  I just love those loons!  We have eastern wood pewees building a nest under the eaves, as well as robins all over, building nests.   A friend of ours is going to bring us several wood duck houses to put up along Two Squaw Lake.  Those are beautiful birds too.   Harold said he heard the coyotes the other day.  Unfortunately everyone's game cameras here have seen too many of them chasing deer.  This could be why the deer population is down quite a bit.
     On this Earth Day let us all do our part to keep this earth clean and natural.  Recycle, reuse and conserve!!

Some of our New Bees Came Today!

We bought four nucs (a nuc is 5 frames of bees and a queen) today from a fellow beekeeper who works for a large bee company.  He helped us get these bees situated today before the rains came.  We also bought 2 packages of bees but they won't be here until probably early May.   It is still a little chilly up here in the north but the bees will be fine.  We might need to feed them until the dandelions come, but right now they are going to eat some of the frames of honey from the hives that didn't make it over the winter.  Each hive box now has 5 frames of bees and honey, plus 4 frames of extra honey for them to eat from last fall.  We will also treat for any mites in about 10 days.
     Here are some photos from this afternoon:

Our friend Josh waves to the camera!

Josh uses a smoker to calm the bees down and Harold cleans up debris and checks for a good hive cover.  The bee yard is a bit of a mess right now, as we did not get a chance to clean things up before the bees arrived.   It has also been snow covered until just a few days ago.

Harold and Josh inspect a frame of bees, looking for the queen.   The nuc boxes are the small white boxes with grey tape on them.

Josh inspects another frame while Harold covers up a finished hive.

Josh points out a queen with the hive tool.  You can just make out a bee with a red dot at the bottom left of the tool.   Each frame had a healthy bunch of bees - lots of bees to start a good hive colony.

Of course our ever-curious cats had to get into the picture!  Here is one of our female cats, Whitney, coming to the bee yard.  As you can see, the yard is still very muddy and just driving a car over the ground leaves good sized ruts.   The snow just melted a few days ago, so everything is quite soupy yet. 

 

And so, our bee business enters its 13th year!   These 4 hives, plus the 2 others we bought will give us a good start for the year.   If all goes well, we may be able to do a split or two and eke out a couple more hives.   We hope this will be a good year for honey!

"Sheltering In Place" Here at Honey B Farm

We've been confined to our homes for a couple weeks now during this pandemic.  Even though here in northern Minnesota we don't have the same amount of cases of Covid-19 as other areas of the country, our governor has issued a stay at home order and we are following the guidelines - for our own safety and that of others.   We are very fortunate to have the ability to take care of ourselves better than most, and life is peaceful out here in the country.   Nevertheless, staying home for several weeks is becoming a bit tiresome.   And listening to the news is alarming and stressful.   But we know that "this too, shall pass" and God will bring us through this.
     We had a bit of snow a couple days ago, but most of it has melted now.   I think that was winter's last hurrah! Warm temperatures are predicted for us in the next few weeks - well, for us Minnesotans 53 is warm!  The snow is even almost gone in the woods and we can see glimpses of green grass.   The other evening about 6 deer were in the yard munching on new grass.

Most of our snow is gone!   You can see stumps of trees in the foreground where the beavers have cut down small trees for their winter food.   Also a small patch of green grass!

Two Squaw Lake is still frozen.  It will be at least a couple more weeks before the lake ices out.  Our resident pair of trumpeter swans fly back and forth between the two lakes on our property trying to find some open water.  The edges of the lakes are thawed, but that's not enough for them to swim in.

I am SO anxious to get out into the greenhouse and gardens!  At least I have some greenery to look at in the living room.   All the plants are growing nicely and I will spend time this week transplanting several plants into larger containers and starting a couple more trays of cabbages.  We still are not sure if there will be a Farmer's Market this year, but we are hoping.  If not, I guess I will have plenty of veggies for friends and neighbors!

I have many trays of plants growing in the living room under grow lights.

Here are 7 trays of herbs and tomatoes.

Lots of pepper varieties, flowers and onions.

Another view.

During this time of staying at home, Sundays seem strange.  We aren't able to go to church, and it just doesn't 'seem' like Sunday to us!  However, our church pastor records a sermon and service and puts it on the church's web site for us to watch.   He preaches to an empty church but records his sermons.  His wife plays the piano, he sings, and also his daughters and him sing a special.   We will continue to have "internet church" for several weeks yet until we can get together again.
     I also try hard to make Sunday special by cooking up extra nice meals for a "Sunday dinner" for Harold and I.    Today I made homemade noodles.  Harold had chicken and noodles and I had my noodles in a Stroganoff sauce.  We also had the last of the butternut squash, fresh peppers, cranberry juice and home canned pears.   Dessert was pumpkin pie and/or Snickerdoodle cookies.   I used our fanciest dishes and a colorful tablecloth.   After dinner we called some friends to see how they were faring and then watched our church service online.   It seems to give us a better sense of the days and time if we make Sunday a little special.   Staying home day after day makes a person almost forget what day it is!

A big recipe of homemade noodles drying this morning to cook for our Sunday dinner.

Isn't this a pretty place setting?  I bought a set of 8 of these plates and dessert plates for a total of $3 at a church rummage sale several years ago.   They are Knowles china from 1942.   I always wonder who originally owned these plates, and what kind of meals and celebrations were eaten off of these plates.   Plates that are 78 years old would certainly have some interesting stories to tell!

The setting for our Sunday dinner together.  We grew the butternut squash in our garden this summer and it is the last one.  We had the squash in a cold back room and it kept very well.   It will be many months before we can taste fresh squash again!

And so this is the state of things here on the farm.   Harold has been busy making wooden toys to sell at a craft sale later on, and I have been sewing aprons and doing some spring cleaning.  In about 10 days or so I should be able to get into the greenhouse and plant spinach and romaine lettuce.   These two vegetables can take a light frost, and they survive well in the greenhouse.    Soon we will be eating salads again! I also will uncover the hay from the garlic plants.  They should be up and growing any day now.
     Let us hope and pray that this pandemic will end soon and that we can all get back to living life again as we want to.

The Self Isolated Birthday

Today is my birthday and I turned 72.  How did I ever get to be so old?  It seems like only yesterday when I was a young mother running after my twin sons and hanging diapers on the line (yes, I used cloth diapers!).  Today was a very quiet day because of all the corona virus craziness.   We are all told to stay home and not go anywhere, and everything is closed anyway!  In all my life I've never experienced anything like this.  In many ways, this is worse than during the war years because back then stores were open and people weren't told to stay home.
     So I'm having a nice quiet day at home with plenty of time to think about all that I have lived through in my 72 years!   And how things have changed from 1948!  I was thinking about the 1950's and how I remember my first transistor radio and how I loved that thing and listened to the top 10 tunes all day long.   I remembered playing "travel bingo" in the back seat of our car with my sister while we were on a family vacation.  And back then cars were so lovely with bright colors and white wall tires and tail fins and curb feelers!  I remember the 1960's and my college years during the Hippie days.   I remember when computers took up half a room and spit out cards with little holes that we were told not to "bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate"!  And computer print outs came on green and white lined  huge sheets of paper connected with perforations.   And every kid from back then could remember getting our homework or test papers printed on mimeograph papers that smelled weird, but all of us kids loved the smell.
     Oh, how times have changed!  Computers have changed the world, cars all look the same now, and the world has gotten smaller and crazier.   No longer does a kid have to "go to the library" for a school project and thumb through the card catalog file to find just the right reference book.    Even toys and games have changed - our old toys from back when never had batteries and never had all the bells and whistles of today's video games.   And just think of how telephones have changed!  From rotary phones with dials and a party line to cordless hand held tiny things we carry around all day long in a pocket!
     I could go on and on about all the changes I have seen in my 72 years.   But I am grateful for the years I have lived and I am still very blessed.   Many people never get the chance to live as long as I have.   So in spite of being isolated at home during this corona virus thing, it is a GOOD day!

My 72 year photo.  I am working a crossword puzzle, my favorite thing to do.  You might say I'm a crossword puzzle addict (or maybe aficionado or fanatic would be better terms?).  I work several puzzles a day to keep my old brain sharp!

    

Crazy World

I don't usually comment on politics, but I must say the past few weeks have been absolutely crazy!  The hype, hysteria and panic over the corona virus has been nothing short of insane!  I understand taking precautions, and I understand concerns.  But the hoarding of supplies that is going on is close to ridiculous.  Yes, I am talking about the toilet paper hoarding that's going on!  I keep seeing news reports of this happening, but didn't think it was hitting close to home.  Well, yesterday we were in Fargo for a doctor's appointment and at every store we were at that sold toilet paper, people were coming out of the doors with carts piled high with toilet paper! I'm not talking just a few rolls - but carts loaded with perhaps 100 rolls!  And right behind someone coming out the door, was another one also piled high with dozens of packages of the paper.   We went to a grocery store in another town, and every cart had rolls of toilet paper in it!  The shelves of paper products were indeed almost empty.   I don't know what this says about human nature except that there must be some sort of psychological thing going on.   I didn't see much in the way of FOOD in those carts, so I have to wonder what everyone thinks they will be eating in the next few weeks?  I wonder if the next panic buying will be cans of food or frozen foods? 
     Fortunately most people in my neck of the woods are always prepared!  Up here in the cold north country we always prepare for winter, for storms, and for the "mud season" (which is already here).   We are usually stocked with a great many essentials, and plenty of food supplies in our freezers and pantries because we often get snowed in, or the roads are impassable.  A good homemaker always makes sure to keep the family well stocked.    For those who are panic buying right now - I wonder if they are never prepared for more than just a few days?    Maybe that's the difference between city folks and country folks - I don't know.  But this whole toilet paper thing is getting almost too funny.
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While the rest of the world is in a panic, we are doing well.  The seeds I started a few weeks ago and up and growing nicely!   Every morning it's fun to see how the plants have grown, and reassuring to see the seeds sprouting.   I will be starting many more this weekend.  I like to stagger plantings so that we always have fresh veggies for our market booth, and fresh flowers to replace ones that get gangly or die from summer heat.

Some of the pepper and flower seedlings growing nicely. 

More of veggie and flowers growing nicely.  Soon I will transplant the seedlings into individual containers so that they can grow even better. 

This tray of Candy Sweet onions is doing very well!  The onions are about 4 to 5 inches high already.

Here is my basic set-up for growing.  As the plants get bigger, I move the grow lights up higher.   I leave the grow lights on all night long.  When daylight comes I unplug the grow lights and let natural lighting take over.   Then in the evening the grow lights are turned back on.  We still have plenty of snow on the ground.  I keep a couple buckets of melted snow water, to water the plants with, as it is better for them than regular tap water.  Soon the whole area will have lots of trays of small pots after I transplant seedlings.   Then I add a center board and have about 20 trays to water.   Sometimes I fit some on top of the lights and add extra boards there, too.  This set-up stays in my living room until late April.  Then I start moving plants outside for a short time, and then they go into the greenhouse to really take off and grow!   Most plants are set out into the garden by the third weekend of May or sometimes a little later, depending on the weather up here in the north country.

To ease my stress over the craziness of the world lately, I baked some bread this afternoon!   It's a cold day, it has been snowing all day long, and now the house smells wonderful!  I baked Potato Wheat Bran bread, one of our favorites for toasting.

Three loaves of Potato Wheat Bran bread fresh from the oven.

The world may be going nuts right now, but things are very calm and happy at Honey B Farm.   The Good Lord continues to bless us greatly!

Starting My New Garden!

It has been quite a while since I posted anything on here.  Some of you may have thought that I gave up my blog. No, it's just been a very long winter.  Nothing much has happened to write about, and husband Harold and I came down with colds a few weeks ago.  We haven't had any colds for over 3 years, so this round of cold virus really made us feel down.   We are much better now, and Harold just has a lingering cough.
     I am a little behind in starting seeds for my 2020 garden, but today I got my "soil therapy"!  It was so nice to dig in dirt and plant seeds.  Surely spring can't be too far away, right?  About a month, I believe.  Anyway, some seeds need a long time to grow, and there are long germination times.   So today I started various kinds of flowers, herbs, several varieties of peppers, leeks and sweet onions.  In a few weeks I'll start tomatoes and other kinds of flowers.   Then a couple weeks later, I'll start cabbages and some rhubarb seeds I saved.   As soon as it warms up enough to get into my greenhouse I'll start cleaning up in there and planting spinach and various lettuces.   From now until early May, my living room will look like a plant nursery.  Tomorrow Harold is going to set up my sawhorses and boards and grow lights in the living room in front of the big bay window.   It's always fun to see how things have grown overnight.
     Sometime in April I begin hardening off plants by putting them outside in the sun for short times.  When they are well accustomed to being outdoors, I put all the plants and trays in the greenhouse, and then they really take off!  Everything grows so well in there.  In May I begin planting in the main gardens.
     Here is what I did today:

I begin by mixing Miracle Grow Potting Soil with moist peat soil, in a 50/50 mix.  The peat soil is quite coarse and has a lot of sticks and stones in it, but has a lot of nutrients, too.  Miracle Grow potting soil is cleaner and dryer but doesn't quite have all that plants need for the long growing time indoors.     This is always the fun part - getting my hands dirty with soil!

For small batches of seeds I use 6 hole inserts in the trays. Later on when the plants are growing, I usually transplant the young plants into larger pots.

For things like green peppers, hot peppers and leeks I use larger inserts.  Then I choose the best plants from the sections and transplant the plants into bigger pots.

For sweet onions I just put the seeds into a full tray with no inserts.  Onions don't need much drainage and they are happy growing close together in a tray.  When they are large enough to take the main garden, I separate all the plants right at the garden as I plant them.  I started one full tray of Walla Walla sweet onions, and one tray of Candy sweet onions.  These onions sell very well at our market booth.  For other types of onions I just buy sets at the farm supply center.  I usually end up growing several hundred onions.

This is what I pick out of the peat soil.  I don't want all these large pieces of bark, wood, rocks and slate in my potting plants.  Peat is OK for outside in a flower bed where the sun and rain can break down the large pieces of debris, but in trays of seedlings this is just too much debris for seedlings to grow. 

All this seed starting might seem like a lot of work to some folks, but to a gardening buff like me this is enjoyable and relaxing!  Gardening is indeed a lot of work, but the rewards are great.  There is nothing better than taking a basket or two out to the garden or greenhouse and picking fresh produce for the kitchen and cooking.  I know that what I grow is organic, chemical free, and I always buy non-GMO seeds.  There is nothing fresher than just picked lettuces, or veggies only a few minutes old for cooking up for a meal.   My husband always teases me about growing flowers, though.   He says "you can't eat flowers" or "you can't make a pie out of them".  But he changes his mind when he sees our honeybees on all the flowers, along with butterflies and hummingbirds.
   Now I can hardly wait to get into the greenhouse, or out into the garden!  We still have 2 feet of snow on the ground and below zero temps.  It seems like this has been an especially long winter, one of the hardest in a long time.  Perhaps it was because our fall was so cold and snowy and rainy.   It seems like winter has been going on forever.