We had a medium sized Hickory tree that was leaning towards a future home site. We decided to fell the tree and I milled the logs into 2.5 inch slabs for air drying. I plan to use the Hickory for table or counter tops. It ended being approximately 260 board feet of Hickory milled for […]
Sarah planted 2 different Luffa varieties this year. We have never grown them, so we didn’t really know what to expect. She wants to use them in her soap making. We are still experimenting on how best to finish them for use….so far so good though. comparing a dried luffa with the skin removed to
We harvested about 18 lbs. of grapes from our 2 Mars grape vines. We decided to make red wine with it. We’ve made red wine one other time from grapes given to us, but this is the first time from our own grapes. Just like with blueberries the birds will let you know when it’s
Here are some pictures of our summer gardens. We are just starting to harvest many of the tomatoes, peppers and squash. View of the main garden from the top. Picture taken about a month ago. Our 3 Layens horizontal hives down in the little orchard are finally full of honey bees. Sarah did a wonderful
5 weeks ago we caught a swarm in one of our 7-frame Layens swarm traps. This morning we transferred the colony from the trap and into our 3rd 20-frame Layens hive. Never again will we wait so long between catching the swarm and transferring the colony into a full hive! The swarm trap was so
Another Swarm Trap of Local Honey Bees Installed Read More »
Water glassing eggs is an old method to store fresh eggs without any refrigeration. They will stay good for up to 2 years when preserved this way. During Spring and into Summer the chickens are laying lots of eggs each day, but as the days get shorter in Winter they will slow or even stop
Lumber prices have increased exponentially since the Spring of 2020…when COVID-19 starting wreaking havoc in the U.S. We are starting to build a little cabin this summer so I’ve been interested in plywood/OSB prices. I can mill any boards I need, but it sure would be nice to use sheet goods on the subfloor, exterior
We had one of our honey bee hives swarm. I was working in the garden and could hear them buzzing much, much louder than ever before. I went to investigate and saw a cloud of bees at the top of a nearby pine tree. They massed around the queen on a branch for a couple
Sarah has been doing seed swapping on Facebook recently, so we have many new varieties to try. Tomato seedlings waiting until our last frost date before planting out.