Bee Aware

We keep bees here on the farm. Well, we actually have someone who brought bees and leaves them here, giving us a smackerel of honey now and then. Why keep bees?  A lot of people don't realize that they are a vital part of our ecosystem, not just another pesky bug.  I have seen a dramatic difference in our crop production this year! I've got 20 apples on a first year tree, just planted in May. That's crazy!

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man" 

Albert Einstein

That's a pretty compelling reason, right? Of course, not everyone would agree with such a dramatic scenario, but bees are pretty darn important to our food supply, since they pollinate 70-90% of all the crops on this planet (I found varying numbers) and they are dying off FAST! Some statistics show that colonies worldwide have decreased by 80%!  If you take a minute to think about it, when we were kids, there were bees, butterflies, ladybugs, even Praying Mantis' all over the garden.  We didn't even think about it, they were just common. Now look around...what do you see? Not much.

Why? 

There seem to be a number of reasons. Some reasons cited HERE are genetically modified seeds, herbicides/pesticides and cell phones! This research is really interesting and sad, I hope you'll take a moment to read the whole article, since I didn't want to butcher the information by relaying it. 

What I take away from this article is HOPE. 

With some effort, we can begin to reverse the damage done to the bee population.  You don't have to have a hive in your backyard to make a difference (although, it's a pretty cool thing!).  You can start by eliminating chemicals in your garden.  Consider planting plants that bees are attracted to. Plants that have been hybridized for the "modern" garden are often sterile, having no food source for the bees. Bees also need water.  In order to keep them from drowning, put some stones in a shallow dish and set it in the garden. They can sit on the stones and drink away, safely.  And, as always, encourage your kids to know more about bees and why they're so important to us!   

Here are some great bee facts taken from the Queen of the Sun website. (This movie will be showing at the Live Oak Grange in Santa Cruz, August 30th at 7pm.)

1. Honey bees have four wings, six legs, two compound eyes made of up many, many tiny lenses and three simple eyes on the top of the head that are light sensors.
2. Honeybees perform a waggle dance to communicate the location and the directions to distant food sources that are 100 yards to 2-3 miles from the hive.
3. In one trip honeybees visit 100-1500 blossoms to fill their honey crop, an organ separate from their digestive stomach that is used to transport nectar.
4. Forager bees, steadfast and committed to their task, make up to 30 trips a day. Using their long, straw-like proboscis they collect nectar from the wild flowers and herbs of meadows. As Johannes Wirz says in QUEEN OF THE SUN, “Bees are the golden thread from flower to flower, keeping the world in bloom.”
5. The honey bee’s wings beat at incredible speeds! About 200 beats per second, creating the their un-missable “buzz”. A bee can fly up to 15 miles per hour and can fly a total of up to six miles.
6. Bees were not only one of the first sources for sweetness, but also for light! Beeswax candles were used by humans to provide long-lasting light in the darkness. Secreted from glands of the bee’s abdomen, beeswax is used by the honeybee to build the honey comb in the beehive.
7. In their entire lifespan, a worker bee only produces 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of honey.

8. The beehive is a “super organism”. All of the bees work together as a single entity. A lone bee cannot live on it’s own outside of the hive for even 24 hours.
9. In winter bees live on stored honey and pollen and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. Their “body” temperature in the hive is close to human body temperature, 95-97 degrees, regardless of the temperature outside of the hive.
10. Some big numbers to think about! In producing just one pound of honey, bees from the hive visit approximately one million flowers. The entire hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles. This is  equivalent to one and a half orbits around the earth just to collect one pound of glistening honey.

Pen Pals

This morning, when I opened my mailbox, I was reminded of one of the great things we have lost to technology, letter writing.    I got this beautiful drawing and letter from one of my 3 year old Farm Campers. (Mommy transcribed for her)

It's full of love and excitement, telling me about the frog we found here and relocated to her pond at home.  There is something so special about holding a piece of paper, reading these words.It's just not the same as words written by computer or text.

When I was a girl, we lived in San Diego, while my grandma lived in San Jose. We had an ongoing correspondence from the time I started Kindergarten. She sent me pretty stationary to use, and I would excitedly wait for the mail every day. On birthdays and every little holiday, my letter would come with a package. It wasn't ever anything extravagant, but I lived for the outfits she sewed for me, using fabric scraps from other projects. When I came to visit in the Summer, my Mom would become my pen pal until I got back home.

When I was in school, I remember a time that our teacher assigned Pen Pals for us. They were kids our age, out of the country. They had committed to improving their English by exchanging letters with us. It was a lot of fun and we were able to learn so much about their culture and lifestyle.  It was a great experience.

Of course, now, we can jump on the information super highway and find out about any culture or land we'd like.  We're busy people and don't often get to see our friends or extended family, but we can communicate with them through Facebook, text messages and emails. It's all instantaneous and very effective. But is it the best? The only way?  Over the years that my kids have been in school, I've noticed a serious decline in the language arts expectations.  Penmanship doesn't count anymore. Teachers are even overlooking grammatical and spelling errors and grading work based on the idea and the fact that the work was done. I have been told that this is because most people now use computers to write, and have spell check, so the details of knowing how to spell don't matter once you have passed the level of 5th grade spelling tests.  Ouch. What about the love of the language?  The flow of the words?  Putting pen to paper?

Now, I'm no hypocrite. I adore the internet and all it offers. I use it many times a day, promoting my business, chatting with friends, doing research...but I also have a firm grasp on spelling (I never use spell check, so of course now there will be errors in this post) and sentence structure.  Even when I text I don't use fake words. It just feels wrong to me.  I worry that we have a whole generation of kids who don't know the basics of writing, the excitement of holding a pen and pouring out your ideas or thoughts to a friend or the anticipation of a response to the last letter you sent.  And I'm not the only one...
This from Pewresearch.org:

"A considerable number of educators and children's advocates worry that James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was right when he recently suggested that young Americans' electronic communication might be damaging "the basic unit of human thought -- the sentence."¹ They are concerned that the quality of writing by young Americans is being degraded by their electronic communication, with its carefree spelling, lax punctuation and grammar, and its acronym shortcuts."

In the spirit of the "Slow" movement, I propose bringing Pen Pals back. Not Internet Pals, but the real thing. Have your kids write to grandparents, aunts, former teachers, friends.   A whole class could exchange letters with kids from another country or just another neighborhood.  An ongoing journal, between mother and child, will help to build writing skills and become a sweet memory book.  Let them dot their i with a heart and make big swirly letters.  Help them to learn to love writing and expressing themselves on paper. 
If we don't, who will?

Keeping it Real

"Food is an important part of a balanced diet."  ~Fran Lebowitz

Lunch used to be a simple affair.  Mom (or grandma) would call us in from playing, OUTSIDE, to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, glass of milk and apple. Period. There were no menu options and there was no complaining. (once, when I complained that I didn't want to eat my dinner salad, my grandma promptly poured the rest of the salad into my empty milk cup, put it in the fridge and it became my breakfast. We learned , quickly, not to complain about food!)
Once school started things changed very little. Mom was a fan of Adelle Davis, and we were sort of hippies, so I didn't even know about processed foods like Kraft cheese or Wonder bread.  We never drank soda or had candy, except the little bit of fruit shaped beauties in our Christmas stockings (which was SO special and still warms my heart to this day because my mom searched high and low to find them until I was in my 30's!).  Breakfast was usually oatmeal (the old fashioned way, big and chunky) because mom said we needed something to "stick to your ribs".  Some days she would make us a Tiger's Milk smoothie with banana to wash down our chewable vitamin C tabs (I always wished for Flintstone's).  Our school lunch was PB&J on whole wheat bread, usually homemade, an apple, and 2 cookies. Not 3. Not 4. TWO homemade cookies every time. We bought a carton of milk in the cafeteria to go with.

Every day, I watched my classmates blissfully eating bologna sandwiches on that fluffy Wonder bread, the perfectly wrapped Ding Dongs, or the creme filled Twinkies.  Rather than milk, they often had soda in their brown bags.

I'm not gonna lie. I resented my mom for making us eat healthy food. Didn't she know she was ruining my social life? Friends asked me, "why doesn't your mom buy real food?!"  I had no idea. I figured she just didn't care enough to throw down for the amazing bread that, "Helps build strong bodies 12 ways..." 

Nearly 20 years ago, when I became a mom, it all made sense to me.  As soon as I found out I was expecting, I gave up meat and bought organic produce.  When my son (and then 3 daughters over the next few years) started eating food, it was real food.  Not those scary little vegetables and hot dogs in jars. I took whatever we were eating and blended it until they were able to chew.  As a result, all 4 of my kids will eat most anything, have never had ear infections, rarely get the yucky colds that make the rounds at school, and are generally happy and healthy little (and not so little) humans.


During my Summer Farm Camps, I have been observing the kids and their lunches. What they like and how they treat their food.  I see the difference between the kid who thinks nothing of throwing pretzels at a friend, and the one who drops her PB&J tortilla in the grass, picks it up, brushes it off and eats it. The girl who lets out a happy giggle when she opens her bento box to find big fat strawberries, and the one who takes 2 bites of her sandwich, then throws it away, calling the rest "crust".  My favorite was the 5 year old who opened his lunch box, showed me the variety of whole and healthy foods inside and said, "see, I told you my mom was the best!"  

It makes me really sad to see kids lacking respect for their food. What it takes to grow, cook, and prepare it.  What it means to have enough money to buy it and spend the time packing it into that cute little lunch tote.  Even when I resented my earthy lunches, I knew how much it meant to be able to have it. That my mom wanted us to have the best she could offer and it was all packed up in that little brown bag, with love. 

As our kids start a new school year, I hope that we can find a way to help them appreciate good, healthy, natural foods. To appreciate having enough, and not wasting it.  And especially, to appreciate the person who packs their lunch, with love.

For lots of great lunchbox ideas, using real food, visit http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/

A Virtual Tour

Erica at Northwest Edibles had the great idea to get a bunch of people to give virtual tours of our homesteads, farms and gardens.  It's called the Nosy Neighbor Virtual Tour.

I found myself with so many pictures that a blog post just wouldn't work so my tour is here in my Facebook photo album.  I didn't want to duplicate pics, so be sure to look at the other album to see my chickens!

Have fun and thanks for stopping by my homestead!

Weekend Review

Two beautiful cabbages ready for this weeks menu!

 This is possibly the cutest vegetable I have ever seen!!  Mexican Sour Gherkin Cucumber. It should get about the size of a thumb nail when full grown. (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds).  

Reminds me of Gulliver's Travels!

This is my Pink Pearl Apple Tree...developed in 1944 by a Nor Cal breeder. If you haven't seen them before, Google images. The flesh is pink and when cut in half they are heart shaped. What's not to love?? I wholeheartedly recommend this
one for the coastal Santa Cruz area! Planted in April of this year, I counted 20 apples on it today!  Dave Wilson Nursery carries them and you should be able to order from your local nursery.
















A very hopeful sign...3 flowers on one of my Valencia Melons!!! 

Olivia is hungry. Olivia is ALWAYS hungry! And so damn cute. When I say her name she starts oinking and comes running to see what I have for her.

This weekend I have lots of broccoli, lettuces, and cabbage. I found out that pigs (this one at least) don't like radicchio!  Me either, way too bitter. When I gave it to her she took it over and dropped it in her poop corner. really. I tried a bite and have to agree, again. 

I asked the farmer across the road if we could have his field scraps and he was soooo awesome to say yes! He had 6 boxes full dropped at our gate!  The animals were in veggie heaven.  Olivia LOVES broccoli!  I love to watch her eat. The whole time I am thinking, "if you give a pig some broccoli..."

After dismal results with peppers last year, I decided it doesn't get hot enough here. So this year I am leaving them in containers in the greenhouse and it seems to be working, huh?

 

Same with basil...HELLO future pesto!!! I heart you!

 And this is the secret life of squash. I think it's called Honey Bear. It is producing like crazy!!! I got it at the Cabrillo College plant sale. It will be for stuffed and souped for Fall and Winter dinners. Mmmm.

Cheddar Cauliflower. I love the way it looks but am ALWAYS disappointed that it doesn't have a cheesy flavor! Duh!  I planted just a couple of them because they take up so much room for the yield, but it's really satisfying when you get a beauty like this. Even if for only one meal.

These are the Cocozelle Squash
that I harvested today. I have gotten at least 2 every day this week. I give them to everyone who stops by.  This is another plant I highly recommend for our area. The plants get about 3 feet across. I planted 2 of them and got 16 squash this week. Great yield for small spaces. And how pretty are they???

And these are Baby Round Zucchini
All four of them came off of a plant that is no more than 18" wide!!! Amazing! You can see (compared to the eggs) that they are a nice size. I love them sauteed with a little butter, salt and pepper...


Ok, now I'm hungry!!  I hope your weekend was as fruitful as mine.

An analogy, of sorts

I have roosters. A bunch of roosters.

Near the end of winter, I started up a teeny, tiny micro hatchery (me, 2 styrofoam incubators and about 90 eggs at a time; MICRO).  I have some really nice laying hens and a beautiful French Blue Marans rooster.



I was especially interested in turning out some Olive Eggers
by mixing Sir (the rooster) with my Ameraucanas.
Sooo cool! The eggs are beautiful!

On average half of what I hatch will be roosters. I am not a fan of the cruel and wasteful grind and dump method used by commercial hatcheries, but one can only have so many roosters!  And, since I sell my chicks straight run, people who support my small farm will end up with roosters, which I feel kinda bad about.  So I hatched (pardon the pun) the plan that buyers should take 1 or 2 more that they want, then when the roosters begin to show themselves. I will take them back. It's working out well.  Except for all these roosters!

Part of my homesteading plan is to stop buying commercial meat (and anything else that I can grow myself).  I don't really eat much meat, mostly chicken and I know how bad it is (thanks, Food Inc. For real) but I keep buying it because the good, local and humanely raised birds are out of my budget. Lame.

But wait...what about all those beautiful roosters I have? My feed bill is INSANE. They move too fast to be counted, but I probably have 20 roos. Some I hatched, some were unusual breeds bought straight run (Dorkings and Black Copper Marans), all are wolfing down the feed and taking up coop space that I need for hens.  So I should eat them. I will eat them. I don't doubt that I can do the deed and know they will be delish. As Joel Salatin says, "They have had a great life on my farm and just one bad day..."

My bigger problem is that...well...they're so pretty! And not aggressive (yet). I hate to "waste" them.  So I keep placing ads to see if someone wants them for their beauty and mating potential, but no takers. So, having exhausted that possibility, and since the first batch has started crowing, I think it's time to make use of them.

In the 4+ years I ran my organizing business, I stressed to clients that if they didn't use something, no matter how pretty or valuable it was, it was really worthless, filling up precious space and often costing them money (by paying for storage). And now, look at me. Over roosters for crying out loud!

 I realized that it's like my favorite shoes...
 I LOVE these shoes! I have danced my ass off in them, strutted into a room with them, feeling like Cat Woman. They're cute and not torturously uncomfortable and....ahhhhhh.  But they have been sitting in a box in my too small closet for the past 2 years. I barely even go out anymore, much less get dressed up like a hooker to do so! So I put them in the get-rid-of box with all the other shoes that don't fit into my farm life. It's a big pile.  It leaves me with Converse, Crocs and Sloggers.  Not sexy.  I keep taking them out of the box! I just like to look at them. Try them on once in a while and feel sexy!  I bet Fred would like me in them.

Like the roosters, they are so pretty that I hate to waste them, just sitting in a box, hidden away, when someone should be using them.  I have pulled the shoes out of the Goodwill box one last time. I know I won't wear them, but They don't live in the closet anymore. 

The roosters time is near. Like my shoes, they will be much appreciated and admired.

William Morris said it best,

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

Almost Sugar Free Jam for the Total Scaredy Cat Newbie

Yup. That's me. A huge scaredy cat newbie when it comes to canning. I did it last year, but was sweating bullets the whole time, worried that I would burn myself beyond recognition, make a shitty tasting product, or, worse yet, one that would fester on the shelves until I gave it to some unsuspecting friend and they dropped dead from food poisoning!   Since none of that happened last time, I decided to forge ahead with a new confidence this week! My goal was to make a sugar free jam. Lots of recipes call for artificial sweeteners or gelatin which I feel is worse, but after asking around the homesteading community (they know everything, collectively) I learned about Pomona's Pectin, made from citrus peel with no chemicals or artificial extras. I did use some suger, but compared to the 1:1 ratio usually called for, much, much less...you'll see.

I went to Silva's Organic Apple Orchard in Watsonville. They are a long time apple orchard but also have the best Freestone and Yellow Peaches you can get. Right outside their back door, honor stand, tree ripe...I just love going there and have been doing so for years. This time, I met Mr Silva for the first time. So, of course, I proceeded to make a fool of myself by asking him how many pounds of peaches would equal 2 quarts (because that's what my recipe called for, why do they do that?). He, like me, is a farmer, not a mathematician, so he measured, with his hands, the size of a quart bottle to help give me an idea.  It was so sweet!  So I bought 10 pounds to be safe and rolled back to my street to buy strawberries at Crystal Bay Farm.  I love it there! First of all, it's within walking distance of my place, except that hauling back the berries poses a challenge and, quite honestly, I am lazy, so I drive.  This day they also had bunches of beets, carrots and some smooth skinned avocados.  I bought 25 pounds of strawberries and a bunch of the other stuff and headed home.

When it comes to canning, I have found that the preparation is the most difficult part. Kind of like dating. Well, unless it's a bad date, but that analogy holds true here too. The prep takes just as long whether the date, er, jam, is good or bad. Which is why I am always afraid of messing it up, wasting the time and fruit!

It is always nice, and actually fun to do this with someone else.  Good conversation and laughs ensue. My girls helped me a little.

Ok, if you have never canned before there are a few tools that you really do need. A canning pot with rack and canning tongs. I tried it last year without tongs, using our BBQ ones instead...stupid. They are not the right tool for the job and I was just lucky I didn't get hurt.  I also got a canning funnel this time. Much neater when filling the jars. You'll see why this matters later. DO NOT go all in and get the "canning set". Extra crap you don't need.

Before you start prepping the fruit, fill your steaming pot and start heating it up. You will be shocked at how long it takes to get that thing boiling, which is where it needs to be when you drop the jars in.

Get your fruit, wash it (organic is queen, I just rinse the dust off of it). With strawberries, don't submerse them as they collect water and it changes their quality.  For the peaches, I tried dunking them in boiling water then cold water to make the skins "just slip right off" like I read about. This worked for the smaller and riper ones, but not for all. If you do this it has to be for 4 minutes or so. I think in the future I won't bother because once you start cooking the fruit, it diminishes the good stuff. Just peel them.

Next, you need to cut the fruit up. I like my homemade stuff to look homemade. I like my jam chunky, and the whole time I am cutting it up I am humming this song.  Now you will be too!

My recipe called for 8 cups of berries. I kept track and can tell you that stemmed and chopped you will need 1/2 flat to make 8 cups (or 2 quarts).  Put the berries into a pot and start cooking them. I use a medium heat so that they don't burn on the bottom. I used 1 cup of sugar, I know you could use less, or honey or some other sweetener, but I'm a scaredy cat, remember?  Mix 4 tsp of the tan Pomona's Pectin powder into the sugar and stir it up.  Why? I tried just dumping the pectin into the berries and it clumps up like glue. You need for it to mix evenly around the pot, so even if you only use enough sugar to be a carrier, do it. Take the calcium powder and mix as directed. Add 4 tsp of calcium water to the pot, then the sugar/pectin mixture. Stir thoroughly often, until it comes to a boil. Let it cook 3-4 more minutes, then turn it off. A layer of foam will settle on top. This is normal, but you need to remove it. Just scoop it off with a spoon. Why? I wondered too...because foam is full of air. Air contaminates your product. The more air you leave in the jar, the shorter the shelf life. This is also why you only want to leave 1/4 inch head space on top. Feed the foam to the kids. They love it.


Now, you should have your 1/2 pint jars washed and ready. This recipe makes 10 jars. I take the jars with the tongs and dunk them into the steamer pot, which should be boiling by now. One at a time, then put them on a clean towel upside down to drain the water out. Take the lids and rings with your regular tongs, and dunk them too.Now everything is sterile and heated to a level that it won't shatter when it hits the boiling water.
Use your funnel to fill each jar to 1/4 inch from the top. Wipe the rims off with a damp cloth. If there is jam on the rim it will affect your seal, which could allow bacteria to get in. Put the lids on then screw the rims on to just tight. Not super tight. The boiling will take care of that.  Put the jars into the rack and submerse in boiling water pot. There should be at least 2 inches of water over them. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove and set on a towel. You should start hearing the lids popping shut. You can also check them to see that the little dome on top is flat, not bumped up. Then tighten the lids down the rest of the way and let cool.  While mine was cooling, I noticed that the chunkier parts were on top and jelling, but the liquid in the bottom was looser. So I turned the jars upside down to finish cooling and they mixed up perfectly!

I also made a yummy Peach Jam! It's a little looser and will be awesome for ice cream or in yogurt.  But it worked well on toast. So well that there was an empty jar in the table when I got up this morning!
Recipes below...


 This was a zero waste project!  Since I still had 1.5 flats left, I froze some

Made Strawberry/Peach Jam


And fed the scraps to Ginger and the pig,
who were both really, really happy.

 When John came home and saw this

He got a little tear because it reminded him of his grandma. Not in a creepy way.

Almost Sugar Free Strawberry Jam

1/2 flat strawberries

1 box Pomona's Pectin

1 cup sugar (or other sweetener, less will work too)

10 half pint jars

Prep and cook berries, add 4tsp calcium water, stir.

Mix 4 tsp pectin powder into sweetener, pour both into boiling berries and stir well. Bring to a 2nd boil.

Remove foam from top. Fill jars and put in can bath for 10 minutes.

Almost Sugar Free Peach Preserves

5 lbs peaches (measured when they are whole) this will make 8 lbs or 2 quarts when processed.

1/2 cup lemon juice (prevents discoloration from air)

1 cup sugar (or other sweetener)

1 box Pomonoa's Pectin

9 half pint jars

Prep fruit, cook until boiling, add 8tsp calcium water. 

Mix 6 tsp pectin powder into sweetener. Pour into fruit and bring to 2nd boil, stirring well for 3 minutes.

My peaches didn't form a foam, but if yours do, remove it.

Fill jars and can bath for 10 minutes.

I used this recipe for the strawberry peach jam. It made 10 half pint jars.

For lots of canning inspiration, check out Punk Domestics.  Their motto is "yes you can, can!"
And for tons of great tips for beginners, The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food, tells you how to preserve pretty much anything in your spare time!