Don't worry, Bees happy!

Here's part of the garden so far. This is the cooler side, that gets a little less sun than the other, so we planted onions, beets, carrots, chard, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi & potatoes here. For some reason, the carrots got off to a slow start, but they are kicking into gear now. There is also a very fragrant rugosa rose in the background, and a clump of rhubarb, both of which need to be moved someday.
We're growing less beans this year (and canning all of them) so decided to try the old-fashioned teepee method. We used bamboo, which is relatively smooth, so the bean tendrils take a little longer to start climbing.

Reddale potatoes in flower. When all 3 kinds are blooming, it looks more like a flower bed than a potato patch. It's just about time to start sneaking new potatoes, but hopefully we'll manage to save a few to get bigger.

Some of the mixed greens we harvested this weekend. I think we ended up with 5 or so pounds of red & green oak leaf lettuce, romaine, and baby-leaf spinach.

See if you can spot the honeybee working over this mound of thyme flowers.

Here's another bee checking out valerian flowers. Valerian is NW native plant that usually grows in mountain meadows. One variety is domestically grown for its roots, which are used in a calming tea. The flowers have a lovely fragrance too, and the plant self-seeds into a bit of a privacy screen. Our front border bed is about 2ft wide and over 70ft long. We're constantly adding plants that we think the bees will like. Luckily they like herbs, so the thyme, valerian, sage, lemon balm, mint, oregano, etc. are very popular.

The blackberries are just starting to flower, and the bees are taking full advantage. This is their main nectar supply, and they're no longer using the sugar syrup we've been supplementing them with. Our blackberry patch is about 40 x 50ft, and buzzing with all kinds of pollinators on a sunny day.

See if you can spot the bumble bee visiting a sage flower. We planted the sage for cooking use, but they are very striking when they bloom. And also very popular with the bee crowd....

If you have lots of clover in your lawn, you have a great excuse not to mow too often. Mowing the clovery parts of our yard takes longer because we try to go slow enough that the bees have time to move away from the mower's path.

On our hive check this weekend, we were lucky enough to see some baby bees hatch. With all the activity in this picture, it's hard to spot the newborns, so I circled a few. there are more hatching, but kind of obscured by the nursery attendants. It was also time to put the honey super on, so as it fills, the bees are making honey for us to harvest. A very exciting milestone!

And here's Stew, showing off his incredible talent!

Surprise snow storm!

Not that snow isn't to be expected in February, but generally we get a bit more warning than we did with this one. The rain/snow mix that started mid-morning turned into a full-on snow storm by evening. Nothing too terrible, but the north winds brought the temperature down to the low 20's rather quickly, and we spent the evening making sure all our critters were warm & cozy.

Speaking of warm & cozy, Magnus has the newspaper basket staked out for his naps. Somehow he convinced a human to make a privacy screen, since he's constantly hassled by photographers.

The picture below is a preview from this weekend's upcoming blog post about beer as food & medicine. I came across some amazing and hilarious advertisements from Rainier Brewery from the early 1900's. Further research uncovered a lot of information about how important beer has been in terms of health & comfort over the years, and how motivated modern breweries were to find loopholes in the Prohibition laws.

On the gardening front, we just ate the last of our onions, garlic, Reddale potatoes, and buttercup squash from last year's harvest. This year we should be able to grow and store a lot more, though we still have plenty of Island Sunshine potatoes, canned green beans, pickled beets, pears, dill pickles, dried apples & pears and applesauce to tide us over.

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I'm sure most folks have been following the recent economic headlines with all the failing banks, bailouts, TARP plans and so on. With so much information coming at us so fast, it's easy to tune it out, even when we need all the help we can get to make decisions for our households.

One blog has made a world of difference for us at Seven Trees. If not for the explanations and analyses I have read at Calculated Risk over the past few years, we would have never been able to do what we needed in time to finance the new garage (and get a better loan) before lending rules were tightened. Those rules have changed many times since, as have a lot of other economic factors, and I highly recommend giving Calculated Risk some of your time. And don't forget to check out the comments with each post. The people there manage to have a good time while contributing even more worthwhile information about the nitty gritty of what is happening to our money.

Another Seven Trees pictorial weekend!

Here's Crichton, demonstrating the shopcat pose. Sometimes Newt hangs out here, and sometimes they hang out on the window ledge and look outside.Gemini is just outside the window above. He likes to trim the weedy area where the garage site scrapings were piled. Someday we'll try digging a root cellar into the little hill piled up, off the picture to the right.
We've been hearing a ruckus around 4am some mornings, and just assumed Maggie was roughhousing before we open the cat door for the day. Imagine our surprise to discover that he's been playing with real mousies. Newt (who knows how to open the cat door when it's locked) has been bringing them in for him.
One view of the new shelter. The back corner will have trim, and an angled piece will go above the open half of the side walls to make it look nicer and keep a little heat in.
Here's another view, with no side wall. And the front will have a little bit of siding across the top, down as far as the 2x4 nailing girt. This should help divert some of the winter north wind, but we'll probably eventually add a partial wall in front, from top to botom.
One more view, this time with pony. We'll run a gutter across the back too, but not just yet...
We've been working like crazy to get chores done and some food stocked up for the surgery adventure coming up in 2 weeks. I've made & canned bean with bacon soup, chili, and split pea. There is a batch of congee in the freezer too. The garden is kicking in more finally. Lots of Reddale potatoes, a few Island Sunshines (super tasty), kohlrabi & carrots. We picked our first cuke tonight, and tons of little ones are on the way.
Look at this stressed out kitty! He can't seem to lie down without losing all muscle tone. We call him Boneless Chicken.

The obligatory porch-pony shot. Gem is learning to come to the front door for a treat when we ring the bell, but the back porch is the place to go for chicken scratch and muck boots. We went for a 1.5 mile drive yesterday and he almost broke a sweat. I think we'll be heading to Everson for a latte in no time! The vet gave him a clean bill of health today, but not without being sedated and having his teeth floated. Crichton and Magnus are getting along better. They played (and fought) in the hay bales yesterday while we painted siding.
Maggie scored the high ground, much to Crichton's annoyance. We still find "leftovers" from when they bring varmints behind the bales for snacks.

This Sunday we go get Ryder. Our critter count will be complete then, save for a beehive and weaner pig next spring.

Cheesy!

Here's a batch of "Stella cheese" underway. I start with a gallon of milk, and heat it to 90F. Then I add whichever culture I'm using, usually mesophilic or fresh starter from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. After I add the culture, I put the lid on and put the pot in a blanket-lined cardboard box, to retain the heat longer.

The proto-cheese sits for a couple of hours to let the bacteria do their thing, then I add 1/2 tsp of rennet, and put it back in the box for another hour to let the curd set up. I use a giant butter-knife-looking tool called a card knife to slice the gelled milk into roughly 1/2" lumps, which then sit for 10 minutes. I gently stir the curds for another 20 minutes to help get the whey out and to "toughen" the curds a little so they don't dissolve back in to a soggy mess.

I pour the curds & whey into a cheesecloth and hang it up to drain overnight. Most of the time the chickens get the whey. The extra protein & calcium makes for much better eggs production. This week I'm using the whey for an experimental batch of blaand, a very ancient Scottish "wine" made from fermented whey. Needless to say, detailed recipes are scarce, so I'm improvising.
The final stage of the Stella-cheese process is to take the big lump of cheese out of the cloth the next morning, cut it into cubes, sprinkle them with coarse salt (we use Kosher) and let it sit til the end of the day. The the cubes go into a bowl and into the fridge for snacking. It tastes like a cross between feta and cottage cheese.

Here is a pot of our first Reddale potatoes of the season, soon to be boiled and eaten with butter, salt & pepper. Yum! This variety of spud has done really well here, and we plan to keep growing it.
And here's Magnus, finally feeling better about losing his sister, relaxing in a sunbeam....

Cats and tatties

Magnus and Mercia with their laser eyes.

Mercia relaxing.

Magnus being a flat cat.

Must be treat time for everyone to hold still this long.

Snap the picture monkey, and I am sooooo gone!

And in other news... the recent steady bout of 20 degree weather has done in our Reddale seed potatoes that we'd harvested and kept over from last year. We'd made a makshift cold storage on the back porch, but the steady cold finally froze them. They'd done great until now. We seriously need a root cellar or house cold room for just this reason. Have to see when/where we can get something better built!

News flash! Tater madness has begun!!

It wasn't that long ago I was hilling the Reddale spuds and found one the size of a peanut. Last night revealed an amazing discovery - the spuds are ready for harvest! The Buttes are still too small (since I want them to grow up to be giant bakers) but I dug a couple just to try.

In other news, as part of the Learning2.0 thang at work, I am learning about tags. I'm sure faithful readers (and fellow bloggers) have noticed there is a space to add labels relating to each post's topics. There are a few major sites that now track blog content, one of them being Technorati. Technorati automatically indexes tags on Blogger (call 'labels'), Flickr, YouTube, and many other popular sites. Check it out, there are some neat features if you want a new way to look for fun internet stuff.

Stay tuned for more updates this weekend. We have watermelons the size of peas, complete with tiny stripes! Potimarron squash like yellow golf balls! Siberian and Beaverlodge tomatoes.....well, you get the idea.