Steamed Pumpkin Pudding and an Arctic Express

Magnus is able to annoy Newt, even in his sleep. The kitties spend about 23/7 indoors, now that the woodstove is cooking about 23/7 as well.

We tried a new pumpkin recipe tonight (scroll down a bit for the recipe), and it's a winner. If you don't already have a pudding steamer, this recipe alone is reason to go buy one.

The howling north winds are as tough on the bees as our more common Pineapple Express. The Fraser Valley can sometimes take over our weather in the winter, giving us days of bone dry, frigid gales. At least we're lucky this one isn't bringing snow. We put some old roofing panels to use as baffles, and it seems to help. You can see downed branches from our last windstorm to the left.

Gemini has a thick, soft, woolly coat to keep him warm. The humans, on the other hand, have to dress up in some creative outfits to work more than a few minutes outside.

The hens are keeping their feet warm in the straw while they get some sunlight. There is a heated water bowl in the background, and each coop has a heater on a thermostat. They still don't look very thrilled with this weather. Once Doug & Buddy are gone, we'll be starting on their coop upgrade/move to the barn.

Even the garlic is trying to keep warm! Hopefully the wind will leave the straw in place, if not we'll have to lay some chickenwire over it.

............

It's garden planning time...the seed catalogs are getting dog-eared from overuse. The 2010 garden should be lots more productive, and lots less maintenance involved. Fingers crossed!

Congee and critters

Look at this lovely use of an old laying hen! The soup above is called congee. Also known as jook and chao ga, it's an Asian version of comforting chicken soup. My personal recipe is this:

One soup chicken

One 'stalk' of lemongrass

Three 2" pieces of fresh ginger

1.5 cups Jasmine rice

Cilantro

Lime

Salt & pepper

Put an old laying hen (previously butchered) into a soup kettle and cover with water.

Chop the lemongrass into 1.5" pieces.

Scrape most of the peel off the ginger and add.

Add salt to taste, maybe 1 tablespoon.

Simmer 24 hours on the back burner, not letting it come to a boil.

Take out the chicken and remove meat from bones.

Strain out lemon grass and ginger.

Put chicken meat back in pot and add rice.

Bring to a quick boil, then simmer until rice is porridgey.

Salt & pepper to taste.

Garnish bowls of congee with chopped cilantro and squeeze a wedge of lime into it. Heavenly!

This kind of soup can't be canned, so I freeze it with a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of cilantro in each container.

Magnus is taking advantage of chilly nights by the woodstove. The squash are in curing before being stored in the pantry for the winter. They like a week or so of warm temps, then they will last for months in the cool dry pantry on a wire rack. The Uncle David Dakota dessert squash are all they're cracked up to be. Highly recommended!

Gemini is obviously starving to death, and needed to come up on the back porch to beg for dried apple slices through the kitchen window.
After a hard day's work at Seven Trees, humans and critters need to relax.....Gemini doesn't really like beer, but he can't help being nosey.

Harvest frenzy continues...

We procured a lovely steel shelving unit for our harvest drying rack this weekend that was quickly put to use for curing veggies.

But right about the time we thought things were settling down Monday the neighbor stopped by. Seems he'd gotten a call from a friend about a shipment of grapes that weren't able to get where they needed to, so they were looking for someone that would use them. Since he has grapes already, we got a delightful special delivery... wow!

Lots more than we expected! A closer view of the beauties. We'll juice them and use some for jelly. If there are no takers on sharing some of this bounty, then we will start a batch of zinfandel wine as well. Good neighbors... well they make good neighbors!!

In the meantime, Newt, who always tries every object out as furniture... gives this drip hoses a test for comfort. She lays on them often, so maybe they retain heat or something to that effect. She's an odd cat, if we haven't said so before.

While Newt goes experimental, Magnus, the intrepid house-cat, "lols" on the living room floor. He seems to have no penchant for testing anything uncomfortable, preferring to lounge on soft things like fluffy rugs, fleece blankets or his human's bed.

Smart kitty!

And an update. Neither of us got a call about winning that draft horse filly. Sigh...

Presenting her majesty, the Queen!

The bees are already so protective of their hive that when we went to refill their food Thursday night, we both got stung. No more skipping the veil & smoke!
Most of these cells are filled with babies, and being capped off. Some of the perimeter cells have honey & pollen in them.

And here she is - the queen! She looked really active and healthy and was in one of the outer frames, hopefully getting ready to lay more eggs.

We added another deep hive body so they can stock up enough honey to see them through the winter. The shallower box on top is where the food goes right now, and later this summer it will hopefully be filled with honey that we get to harvest. You can also see our most important tool, the smoker, on the ground to the left.

As usual, Magnus shows how classy he is. No shame.

And a little home movie of the hive, doing their thing on a Saturday afternoon...

Honey Bee Installation Day

Here's the hive in place with everything painted. We took a few days to observe and see what kind of sun it would get in this spot and it seemed the right amount from all we'd read... best sun/shade mix with appropriate wind breaks, via our trees.

Of course as soon as you get anything built these days some pesky job site inspector shows up, in this case, Newt. She scented some plants in the area with a few face rubs, then pawthorized the new structure and moved on. Whew!

While the hive has been ready for a bit, today was actually Honey Bee installation day! Carniolan honey bees to be specific. Carniolan's are the second most popular honey bee after the Italian. We went with Carniolan because they are more cold hearty, are good at defending themselves against insect pests, are resistant to some bee diseases, and are very gentle with bee keepers. Latter being very important to us newbies! The first thing we did was prep the hive zone, above.

We brought the box of bees with their queen home in the back of the subaru, and left them there to stay warm, but out of the direct sun while we got setup. Here Doug is close to the fence checking out what we are doing. I am pretty sure he wanted to know, "What is all that buzzing???"

Next we sprayed the bees well with sugar water, so they'd be full and happy when we set them free.

One last thing before we released them was to change the cork holding the queen in her excluder to a mini-marshmallow. The queen and bees are shipped together, but with the queen in the excluder, so the bees will be exposed to her pheromones and accept her prior to release. If they don't have some time to get to know her first, then they might kill her. The bees actually eat through the candy plug to release her, taking a day... even two, or so we'd been told. The delay also gives the bees some time to draw out comb, so the queen can get right to laying when she does get eaten free.

This is 3 pounds of honey bees in a shipping box.

This is 3 pounds of honey bees, in the hive, on the hive, in the air, on the ground, in and on the shipping box, and on the photographer. The lighter color stick like object is an entrance reducer, which we had opened further so the bees could better find their way in the hive. After dark when the bees settled we put it in the opening to make it smaller for a time. This helps keep the new bee colony safer from pests and warmer, until they get established.

Here's a video of the bees getting poured into the hive. The queen is in her excluder already hung in between frames as we pour them in. Please note that within a couple hours of installing the bees, we discovered the marshmallow [that should have taken the bees at least a few days to eat through] intact, discarded about 18 inches in front of the hives opening. Apparently the queen was released TODAY, and with author-i-ty! We have to wait almost a week, until we get to peak again to see if our queen made it out alive. Stay tuned!

Last, but not least, some pictures of our baby Magnus, after his own tail. This is best done hanging upside down while on the cat tree. See that pesky tail... I'm getting you!

Getting a bit plump these days, he soon lands with a thump on the shelf below. Usually not head first. Usually.

That tail was probably sour anyway...

Bee-ing ready for bees!

Here's a few pieces of the beehive that we purchased at Beez Neez apiary supply in Snohomish, WA. with most of the primer coat of paint.

These need to be ready to go in just a short few weeks when our bees arrive, a variety called Carniolan which are supposed to be very gentle. Let's hope so!

Above are the deep supers. Just below is the outer cover.


The cover is insulated, made special for our climate, to help the bees winter over.
Below are the deep supers, a shallow super and part of the base assembly.
These are painted the same color the main part of the house will be, if all goes as planned this summer. This is the same color that our small barn and run-in are painted.


Hive stand and bottom board as well as the lid are all painted to the new trim colors our house will be painted this summer.



This is the painting supervisor. Newt made sure I did a proper job on everything for the entire painting project.




And like any job the bedroom has taken us longer than intended, but should be worth the wait. This weekend most of the trim got finished up. Painting the top trim was slow and arduously completed with a small artist brush and a steady hand. Also in this picture you can see the new light fixture/fan. This'll be handy come summer!

Last, but not least, Magnus demonstrates his patented tail chasing abilities in the kitchen!

What a cat!!

Weekend project runs amok!

Re-doing the south bedroom was supposed to be a 3-day weekend thing. Install a ceiling fan, replace all the switches & outlets, shampoo the carpet, paint & make new drapes.
It took most of Friday just to get everything out of the room. Gemini was doing yardwork, when he wasn't busy chasing chickens, cats & dogs all over.

Here's a look at the entire bedroom, spewed out all over the living room. Chaos!

The minty-celery green was just too pale for that room. It gets full sunlight, even in winter, and needed something dramatic.

Same corner with partial paint & new ceiling fan. The trim, including the tiny bit around the ceiling edge, will be a dark bronzy-brown.

Another view, partially done. The room is so small that it's hard to get a picture showing perspective. The closet will stay the light green color, as a memento, and because it's a pain to paint it. There was a spiffy beaded curtain with a bright yellow sunflower painted on, but we'll replace that with a plain dark wood beaded one.

Painting done but for the trim. We just got the bottom trim done so we could shampoo the carpet and start putting furniture back in. We ran out of weekend, so we'll finish the trim painting and get the drapes done hopefully this coming weekend.

The kitties enjoyed a slumber party during the mess.

We also secondaried our first-ever batch of grape wine. A neighbor gifted us with buckets & buckets of grapes last fall, and we made jam with some and wine with the rest. Wines made from North American wild & hybrid grapes are often said to have a "foxy" quality. Whatever they call it, it's pretty darn tasty! We'll try more in about 6 months.

Our batch of chicks should arrive this week, and the bees not too long after. The garden is underway as well. Busy times, but we're planning to check out opening day at the Bellingham Farmer's market April 4th, and seeing Dan Savage at WWU later that evening.

Meatloaf a la Spring

Couldn't resist sharing a picture of our tasty Sunday dinner. Equal parts ground beef & pork, chopped green olives, onion, egg, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper & A-1 sauce. The mashed potatoes are from last year's Island Sunshine potatoes (so far the best variety we've ever grown) with plenty of sour cream mashed in. Leftovers are just as tasty as the original dinner!
The picture above is of Copra onions, a popular storage variety that we're trying out this year. Last year's onions finally ran out in mid-March, and these should be even more prolific with an early start and heavily compsted soil. We started seeds under a lamp in the house, then moved them to the greenhouse, and finally out to the garden last weekend. Hopefully they will settle in enough to weather late frosts, but we can always start more if need be.

Territorial Seeds says this about them:

"When all your other stored onions have turned to powder, you'll still be enjoying Copra. Our best storage onion and the unequaled leader in hard storage types. Adapted to long-day areas, it is a medium-sized, round, dark-yellow-skinned onion with ivory flesh. The thin necks dry quickly. In storage trials, Copra was as sound and flavorful in the spring as when freshly harvested in the fall. High in sugar and moderately pungent, Copra makes excellent French onion soup. "

Those pretty spuds above are a brand new variety developed by Wood Prairie Farms called Prairie Blush. It has won a Green Thumb Award from the Mailorder Gardening Association as one of the top six introductions for 2009. It is a mutation of Yukon Gold with a little denser, moister texture, aside from the lovely pink blush. If you want to read just how this tattie was discovered and developed, check out this fascinating article, One potato, two potato, three potato ... SCORE , from the Portland Press Herald.

We've pretty much decided on our favorite spinach variety after a few trials - Baby Leaf Catalina, from Renee's Garden seeds. The flavor stays sweet, they don't bolt as fast as the other varieties we tried (Bloomsdale), and so far they aren't bothered by any pests. We've got some starting under the lamp indoors, along with the first chard & lettuce seeds of the season. As they sprout, we'll move them to the greenhouse to grow more before planting them out. Then we'll keep starting more veggies as the weather warms up. Next on the list after greens are white and purple kohlrabis, broccoli & beets.

And as usual, the cats of Seven Trees are incredibly excited by the whole gardening experience...I don't know how Magnus gets into those pretzel positions!