Homestead Happiness April Week 4

11:54 PM in 4, april, Aqua, happiness, homestead, week

Plenty of bee-related news has us kind of giddy this week.

Our new bee package arrived on Saturday.  The local distributor sold more than 1,500 packages, which meant it was a total zoo for picking them up, and that our bees will have some competition for the neighborhood flowers.  Still, its nice to see such an interest in beekeeping, and theyll definitely have first dibs on the dandelions in our yard!

The new bees are already taking full advantage of the pollen in our dandy-filled yard.  Keep up the good work, ladies!

As a side note, in preparing the hive for the new package, we ended up finding the old queen.  Turns out she didnt die in the great yellow jacket war of 2014, and we can rule out that they absconded last fall.  That leaves either CCD, or too heavy of losses from the yellow jackets to make it through the winter.  Should we start a portrait collection of our queens for future colonies to look back on and remember their storied history?  This was Elizabeth I.  Right now we have Elizabeth II.

The bees came just in time, too, because our strawberries are starting to bloom!  Weve got the squirrel cage set...now if we can just get all the mice trapped out of the adjacent shed before the berries ripen, we might actually get some to eat this year!  Also, to the fruit trees waiting to flower: ready, go!

We also realized that swarm season and hunting season are complementary.  So, if we put a ladder stand in one of our trees now as a support for a swarm trap, we can turn it back into a hunting stand later when we either catch a swarm, or when swarm season is over in July.  Either way, it will be ready in time for deer season! (Although we probably wont be able to hunt deer from the stand in its current location.)

What made your homestead happy this week?

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HAP November week 4 Happy Thanksgiving from THL!

5:48 PM in 4, Aqua, from, hap, happy, november, thanksgiving, thl, week

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We wanted to make a slight variation on our normal homestead Happiness-and-Progress posts and give a quick rundown of some of the things were thankful for.

First: you! THL broke the 50k all-time-pageview barrier this week.  While thats pretty small compared to most real blogs, its still humbling (and motivating!) to realize we have an actual audience outside our immediate family.  So, thanks for reading!

Second: a yard in which to do all our goofy experiments, and which also looks nice and scenic while being coated in gently-falling snow.

Third: Craigslist, which not only lets us find great deals like this trailer, but also lets us meet lots of friendly and interesting people in the process.  Its easy to forget when watching and reading the news, but theres a lot of good people in this world.  Theres also a lot of good free horse manure, and this little beauty will be hauling a significant portion of it to our yard.

Fourth: a not-empty freezer and pantry.  See also: item #2.

Fifth: the holiday season, with its abundant homemade treats.  Sugar high will be in effect from now through the new year.  Hooray for the holidays!

What are you thankful for?

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Homestead Happiness June Week 4

1:09 PM in 4, Aqua, happiness, homestead, june, week

Lots of developments on fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers this week made us happy.

The creeping bellflower, which is kindly filling in our less-maintained areas with purple June/July flowers, is in full bloom.

Its an invasive species, but other than being an aggressive spreader and difficult to eradicate, its not as bad as some invasives.  For example, this patch s a hotspot for bee activity.

The squirrels won round two also, picking 90% of our strawberries while they were still green, even with the quick and dirty strawberry cage in place.  So either the woven wire fencing has too large of holes, or were battling mice instead of squirrels.  (Or were battling jedi squirrels that can pick the strawberries using The Force...we know they exist.)  We made our quick and dirty strawberry cage slightly less quick but even more dirty by covering it with 1/2" hardware cloth.

Weve got an especially delicious-looking strawberry that no squirrel could possibly resist as a test probe.  If it gets picked, our problem is definitely mice.

It looks like we might actually get some raspberries in year two.  Only a handful, but hey!  You gotta start somewhere.

We were thinking we would get skunked on apples, plums, and sour cherries this year since there were only a few flowers on the plums (none on the apples and cherries) and we couldnt find fruit on anything.  But behold!  There are a few plums we had missed.  Were going to have four of them come September.  Quadruplets would normally be very exciting, but its a good thing we made so much jam last year!

Similarly, the Nanking cherries seem to have survived the winter ok and will be ripening soon.  Our likely-bird-planted versions compete with other shrubs and weeds in the shady areas of our yard, so we dont usually get enough of these to do anything with but make a light snack.  But theyre really good, so maybe we should do some plant propagation experiments to give them a chance to reach their full permaculture potential.

Finally, the corn is definitely going to be "knee high by the fourth of July" since its already thigh-high now!  Were currently devising squirrel-deterring plans for when the ears start to ripen.

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness and Progress February Week 4

8:22 PM in 4, and, Aqua, february, happiness, homestead, progress, week

Winter returned with a vengeance this week, dumping two 8+" storms on us, and never really stopping in between.  Its sunny today, but were supposed to get another couple inches overnight and tomorrow.

As a result, the homestead looks like this, and most of our time was spent getting to and from work.  However...

On Friday, a large round of robins descended upon our boxelder tree, probably to discuss why they were in such a hurry to head north.  Theres at least two dozen of them there, and probably more hiding behind the snowy branches.

Look at em all in there!

It sure doesnt look like spring, but theyre here!  A tell-tale sign that the actual spring is not far behind, which is good enough for this week.

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Butcher Block Counter From Reclaimed 2 x 4 Lumber

4:11 AM in 2, 4, Aqua, block, butcher, counter, from, lumber, reclaimed, x

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that one of our main goals this year was to finish the butcher block counter (and corresponding cabinets) we built to give our kitchen some extra horizontal work space and culinary device storage capacity.  Finally, after more than a year of testing it in-place, we slapped some doors on it and put a water-resistant finish on the top.  There are a couple naggly things to finish up yet, like deciding whether we also want to finish the cabinet doors, but by and large, we think the project is ready for blog-reader eyes.

This is what it looked like a year ago.  We made the top out of reclaimed 2 x 4s (yep, pine!) that we planed clean and glued together.  The end-to-end length is about eight feet, so we made each row out of a six-footer and a two-footer, alternating the two-foot ends (i.e., one row was 6-2, the next was 2-6, and so on).  Its about 16 inches front to back. Despite our best efforts, there was a stretch in the middle where they didnt line up perfectly.  It took us about a year to acquire a belt sander, which made the job of blending the slabs tolerable.

We also needed the sawdust from sanding to make some wood putty, of which a significant amount was required to fill in all the imperfections in the wood.

For example, there were a lot of nail holes like these.

After filling with putty and sanding, the same holes looked like this.  Theres a bit of discoloration around the nail holes yet, but they almost look like tiny knots.

Viewed from the angle of a typical adult human walking by, the now-filled holes look downright acceptable.  However, with a lot of board-to-board color variation like this, the sawdust used to make the putty doesnt actually match any of the wood colors perfectly.

Back in place in the kitchen, its time to add some water resistant coating.  We could have maybe foregone the finish, but Jake does a lot of drooling when Katies cooking.  Better not to risk it.

We used the Howards butcher block conditioner, which is a mix of mineral oil, beeswax, and Carnauba wax.  It definitely enhanced the wood color and soaked in pretty quickly.

Finished top.  Katie approves.

Theres a bit of a sheen to it, but not too bad.

Add some rustic-looking doors, and this thing is starting to get some personality!  Of course, if you build the doors while the top is off, they might not fit perfectly.

There, thats better.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the shelves.  Theyre reclaimed pallet wood from the two best pallets weve ever acquired.  The top was hardwood (aspen, judging by the scent when cutting it), the bottom had some nice blue-stain pine.

Finally, seal the edge with some silicone caulk to prevent water from getting back there and to prevent potential admirers from noticing the uneven ends.

Done! (as long as we decide not to coat the doors...)

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