Hot and Cold.

Today, I am gonna change gears from what I normally talk about, to talk a bit about my training.  Yesterday after some very intense plyometric exercise in the heat, I was too hot and could not cool off. I took a short cold shower when I first got home which helped for about two hours but my core temperature kept creeping back up and around 10 o'clock, I was just as hot as I had been right after the workout. I needed to do something. Cold baths never work for me cause the initial shock of getting into the water was always enough to make me not want to do it in the first place.
 However, last night I developed a method that helped me to get into the water with no shock period. I started by turning my shower on to room temperature. It was at the coldest it could be so that I could still step into it with out any shock. At this time I also put the stopper in the bottom of the tub. Over the course of five minutes or so I turned the temperature of the water down as low as my shower would go. The whole time running cold water over as much of me as possible. Then when the tube was about half full I switched the water to the tub fossett. I pulled back the shower curtain and laid down in the tub with as much of my upper body under water as possible. With in minutes my entire upper body was submerged and I was shivering. 
I am really excited about this process cause I feel I can consistently do it. Perhaps soon enough I will be able to start adding some actual ice to the bath once I am submerged like that. 

A Shift in the Matriarchy.

I have really busy with some projects. Like I said I got some bees from my friend Mr. S. Yesterday, I finally finished the upgrades to my top bar. I built a lip under the top for the bars to rest on. This will help the lid close more snugly. I also screwed two bars in that will keep the sides from bowing out again. That will also help the lid. I moved the bees over from the box Mr. S is letting me borrow in into the top bar. 
When I was moving them in I noticed the queen cell that was on one of the frames was empty. I know its too soon for her to have hatched. The night after we moved the bees to my house it got down to 36 degrees F (2.2 C). I think that cold snap killed her. 
However all is not lost! Yesterday evening, I went to "Fun in the Bee Yard" with COBA. This time I went prepared. Mr. S gave me an insulated lunch box with a plastic bag full of warm water and a bunch of soft bedding. This way if there were any more queen cells they were knocking off this week I could put them in this bedding and take them home. There were three in the same hive as last week and two of them were in pretty good shape. The third was small and didn't look healthy. I drove home with the windows rolled up and the heat on. It was terrible but I wanted to keep my girls warm. When I got home I took one of the frames out and shook off all the bees on it. I used cutting edge technology to install the new queen cells. Then I tucked my girls in for the night. I will check them again saturday. 

Cutting edge technology. (Twist ties)

This morning I started a new project. Well I started it last night, but the work started this morning. I am trying to build a smoker using Cider cans. These are some pictures from the project so far. I a currently taking a break from it cause its frustrating to get that many cuts on your fingers. Soon I will post the plans and instructions on how to do it your self. 

The New Suburban Paleo Beekeeper.

Its been a while since my last post. In that time I have been working on lots of things. The biggest news I have is that I have bees! The friend who I have been helping with his bee, I will call him Mr. S, and I went back to his bee yard on friday. It was cold and windy out. We were going to check on the progress of his new hives and to try and find the two queens we didn't see last time. The first hive we opened I spotted the queen almost immediately. It was the first time I found the queen before the more seasoned bee keepers with me. In the second hive we checked on there were eggs. Even though we didn't see the queen directly, the presents of eggs evidence enough that she was there. At this point Mr. S told me that he had brought some frames with brood and even a queen cell incase we found nothing. Since those frames weren't needed at this bee yard, I could have them!
We drove them over to my house and put them in the spot where they will be living now. I realized once at my house that my top bar needs some work before it will be ready. For now the bees are going to live in their nuc box until the top bar is ready for them. I am so grateful for my good fortune. I will have pics up soon of my girls. 

More bees than I can count.

1002, Four digest of page views, exciting stuff.
Other than watering I have not been doing much in the old garden. I have however, been doing lots of work with bees. Yesterday, I helped my friend check on his package bees. We only found 1 of the three queens. That means that either the queens were being elusive and we just didn't see them, they left the hive or the other bees killed her. In a few days if there is still no queen the next step is to add some brood (developing bees) from other hives and the other bees will make a queen with that.
Just now I got back from a night at the COBA bee yard. I got to open and inspect a hive with a "mentor" guiding me through it. It was a lot like what I have been doing with my friend for the last week. However, there were 14 swarm cells. That is cells that would hatch into queens so the old queen could leave with half the bees. Sadly I had to kill all 14 of the queen cells. In the end the hive would not have survived had they swarmed. But it still broke my heart to kill them.
I talked to my mentor after the hive inspection. He gets a lot of swarms and in the next day or two depending on the weather I am gonna get a swarm out of a tree with him. Soon I will have more crazy stories to tell you.

Buzz

Wow,
Written Saturday
Today was a long day. My day started today at 5:45. I spent four hours this morning hacking the lilacks I choped down yesterday into smaller peices. Then I hit parkour class.
After class I went over to the house of one of the guys I had met through COBA. He showed me around his bee yard at his house. Then we got some supplies and took off to his other bee yard. He's second yard is acutally just about a mile from my house, as the bee flys. The bees he keeps there are probably the one pollenating my  community garden. There we installed three packages of bees.

Written Monday (I wrote yesterday but it didn't save)
That picture is one package. Its a box about 18 inches long a foot high and four inches wide. Inside are a few thousand bees a queen and some sugar water. To install a package of bees we broke off the top door and pulled out the can of sugar water. At this point about 50 bees get out and start buzzing around us. Then we pulled out a small cage with the queen in it. That cage has a quark in it. You can either leave the quark and come back in three of four days and release the queen. Or what we were doing was replacing the quark with two or three mini marshmallows in three or four days the bees eat through those and release the queen. At this point in the process about 200 of the bees have wandered out and are buzzing around us. After marshmallow quarking the queen we broke off the whole top of the box and shake the box over the new hive. Here there are now 1000 bees all buzzing. Last we took the can of sugar water and put it over the frames hole down. Then we put another hive box over that to protect it and placed the lid on. After all that I would step about 30 feet away and take some deep breath. All that was one hive. We had three. Most of the day there must have been 10,000 bees less than 20 feet from me.
I wouldn't say I have a fear of bees. I was stung as a child and I have always kept a healthy distance. This was a nerve racking experience. By the end I was very comfortable. I was wearing sweats and a tee shirt the whole time, no hood, no gloves. I did not get stung even once.

This is some poorly focused honey on my fingers. I have never tasted more delicious honey. 

There were some bits of honey comb that had broken off one of my friends hives that he gave me and I tied them onto some of my top bars. This will help my swarm get started when I find some. 

Sad thoughts on a Great day

I want you to look at that bee long and hard. That is a dead bee from one of the hives my friend lost this winter. From what I am hearing from beekeepers 50% of hives were lost this winter. Joseph Stalin said "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" Its hard for us to think about how many bees might have been lost this winter. This bee is beautiful and I want to take a moment thing think about her and all her sisters that are no longer with up. She was a worker bee. She will not be missed. She will not be remembered. We humans ignore the fact that we are dependent on this species. When the bees are gone we will lose lots of the food we are accustom to. I don't know where I am going with this thought but I want you to think about her. Think about who she was. Think about what caused this hive to die when they had the honey they needed to survive the winter. 

The Tool Maker

Yesterday, I started work on an irrigation system for my garden. As I said before, I had a hose with a whole in it. I laid that hose around my garden and added many more holes. Now it can water about 40% of my space with out me doing anything. Today, I went back to finish the job. Last week I pulled a hose from the trash. Today, I did the same method to that new/trash hose as I did my first one. I then attached the second hose to the first. Sadly the water pressure was not enough to make the second hose work. I think more than 150 feet of soaker hose is a bit much. I also found a hole near the beginning of the first hose that is way to big and just acts like a wild sprinkler. I need to tape that one and figure something else for the other 60% of the garden if the second hose won't work from the first.
Beyond that my plants are looking good. I may have found somewhere to get some more polls for my fence. Everything is watered.

Thoughts on Sweet Potatoes.

I planted my sweet potatoes!  According to most sources sweet potatoes take between 100 and 110 days to be ready for harvest. That means that they may be ready as early as august 24th. Most places I can find on the internet say that the first frost in the fall will be in the first week of October. That gives me a window of a month. A four tire stack they say will yield about 25 pounds of potatoes. I haven't found to many other people growing sweet potatoes in tires. I think it can work, but I don't know if the results will be at all similar. If however, the results are similar that would be about 250 pounds of sweet  potato. I estimate I can eat about a pound of sweet potato a day so I will still fall short with these yields. This is all theoretical until my fall harvest
Last year I got a bunch of little tiny sweet potatoes. I didn't get them in the ground till about a month after today last year. In the heat of the summer I go really lazy about watering them as well. This year I got them in right on time. I think I will keep some extra shoot going at home. In the unlikely event of a late hard frost I will be prepared. I also want to find some ways to make watering more easy. I think I will take the busted hose that I have down there and make it into a soaker/irrigation system. I will do this by adding a bunch of new holes and laying it directly into the tire towers at about the second story. I am hopeful that the harvest this year will be larger than last year. Both in total volume and in size if individual potatoes. 
110 ten days from today I will rip down one of my sweet potato sky scrappers and see what happened in it. Depending on the result in that tire I will know what to do with the other tires.

Planting!

Today I planted! It was the first time this year that I got to plant live plants, as opposed to seeds. I put in all 6 of the tomatoes that I got at the plant swap saturday. The five smaller ones are brandywine tomatoes. The guy who was giving them away said they were some of the best tasting tomatoes you can find.

I got some marigolds that are now prettifying my entrance.

My salad greens are still coming along though they did end up kinda clustered. I need to find a way to spread/thin them out.

I put in more carrot tops I will know if it works in about a month and a half. If it did I will have tons of carrots. If not I will have tons of compost!

I just painted my new adirondack chair. It still needs to be painted on the underside. Then it will need a second coat. After all that I will put a few strategic screws into it to really hold it together super-tight.

 I have almost run out of places to plant in my garden. I still have the tires to fill with sweet potatoes, which I will do tomorrow. Then I will only be able to reseed places as the plants in them mature or fail to grow. This is a really exciting development. Last year I only planted about 1/3 of my space and though my space was 1/3 larger than this one. That is still 1/3 better than last year. 

Self Reliance

Today I built a chair. There is nothing so satisfying as building something with your own two hands. A year ago this was an enclosure for a dumpster. At 3:30 this was a pile of scrap wood. 

At 6:00 it became an adirondack chair. I used the blue chair on the left as a model. 

I am gonna put this new chair down in my garden. 

I am personally really pleased with how well this chair turned out. I built it in about two-and-a-half hours. With the collecting of the wood and de-nailing it maybe took four hours. My mother was so impressed with my craftsmanship she has asked about paying me to build some new ones to replace our old ones. When I was done with my new one I did my best to repair the old ones. They may last another season. But they don't have many more sittings in them. 

The challenges I faced included the wood sometimes dissolving as I tried to drive a nail into it. In some cases the wood was so old and rotted, that it just turned to mush. Even with that I managed to get enough good useable wood from the scrap to finish the chair. 

I think part of what I am trying to accomplish here with this New Suburban Paleo Farmer is being an all around skilled human. I can run, jump, climb, grow things, cook, and build what I need from what I have in the environment. The first step in sustainablity is being self reliant. We live in large communities, which is good. We should be able to depend on the people around us. However, if for some reason those people are nolonger able to provide us with that aid, we should be able to reliay on our selves.  

Plants and Pancakes!

 Yesterday, early, I went to the COBA annual pancake breakfast. I volunteered there, I must have made 60 pancakes. It was very serial cooking these things that I don't really think of as food anymore. People seemed to like them though. I met lots of cool beekeepers. There was also a plant swap going on at the breakfast. I didn't have anything to trade but I was there at the end to clean up. As a result there were lots of plants no one took. I got some Ghost chilies, tomatoes, spearmint, oregano and assorted flowers. I need to start getting some of these things in the ground.

My car is a Mess! And I have tomatoes in my cup holders!

This morning for Mother's Day, I made paleo pancakes. I used the recipe here. It went terribly. I ended up with sort of dumplings and a million dirty dishes. I used a purple sweet potato, cause I like different colors. The meat of the vegetable was a good reddish purple to start. When I added the baking soda it turned sort of cobalt blue and when it cooked they turned a dark green. The batter did not hold up to any flipping and I had sort of flat wads in the end. They also weren't that tasty. I love sweet potato so I will eat it all in the end, but I do not recommend this recipe.
I have to go plant stuff. See ya.

Yeah. 

Up Coming Projects

Over the past four days I have had an exam and two job interviews. I have been busy. Tuesday, after the first interview, I got a bunch of old wood. There has been this pile of old wood behind the library from when they rebuilt the dumpster enclosure, for months. I asked the maintenance people at the library and they said "go ahead!" As I was loading the wood I saw really huge pallet in the dumpster. 
I took the wood home and de-nailed it. I want to try to build an adirondack  chair with it and put it in my garden. One of my goals this year in the garden is to make the space as comfortable as possible. In years past there has never been much reason to spend time in my garden. Never anywhere to sit, I have never tried planting flowers either. This year I am doing lots of flowers and just trying to make it pretty down there. 
The morning following the wood collection I went back to the dumpster and got that pallet. I had to tie it to the roof of my car. I took it straight to my garden. This thing is huge. It was 7 feet long, made with 2x4s and a bunch of plywood. I spent two hours yesterday de-constructing it and I am still not done. I am not sure what I am doing with it yet. Though I am thinking Project: Black Rain. Things are still coming along in the garden I have tons of sprouts coming up. 

Promise

I planted some flowers in my huge tire today. 4 o'clock flower, moon flowers and morning glories. Also I planted some seeds from butternut squash we eat last night. Then it started raining and I ran away. Seriously soon I will do a real post with content that matters. 

Quick Update 5-6-2013

I am sorry I haven't been posting much. I had some friends in from out of town. Earlier today I had an exam. Tomorrow, I have a job interview. I am a bit overwhelmed.
I have been eating pretty well. I want to do a post soon about some of the new foods I have been trying or getting access to. My garden is looking strong. Even with the schedule I have been getting down to water and things are growing well.

Today in the Garden.

I went down to the garden this morning. It was just after eleven and it was already hot. The first thing I noticed was that things are really starting to perk up. The carrot tops I got a few weeks ago have little shoots coming off them. I was beginning to think that experiment was a failure but I am hopeful again. Also the little carrot tops look like tiny pine trees which is really cute.

I also noticed my sprout seed radishes are coming along. The ones that were partally shaded by the big tire I got were doing best so I put some of my extra tires around the others to see if it helps them.
I have lots of other sprouts coming up all over. I also planted another salad green bed.