Wax Moth Schoolin

I am sad to say that Chris' beautiful 8 frame hive was left on the front porch too long without bees to protect it. Yesterday I was preparing for the final CSA when I went onto that rarely visited porch to grab the air conditioner we borrowed from a friend. I looked down at the hive and saw a pile a black dusty looking frass near the entrance. Crap! I brought it out onto the front lawn to inspect and it was just crawling and riddled with wax moths, cocoons and larvae that bored into the wood itself. The frames were stuck together with a sticky white network of webs and when I pulled them apart, I saw the damage. All the beautiful comb that one of our swarms had built was eaten and black and destroyed. We didn't realize it would happen so quickly.

I cleaned up the frames as best I could. Some will need to be burned. Others were black plastic Pierco Frames with larvae tucked into every little plastic notch and nook. I grabbed a stick and Kaitlyn and I poked at them and put all the maggots in a bucket to feed to the chickens. It was truly disgusting. Our mentor kept reminding us to buy moth crystals, but we are very much against using any poisonous material on the hives. So I am spending the morning trying to come up with a non-toxic solution to storing beekeeping equipment for the winter. During the season, a strong colony of bees will defend their space and attack the moths, clean up after them and regulate them. In the off season, we now have 4 drawn out supers to defend for them. Freezing kills the larvae. Temps of 20 degrees for 4 hours will kill them dead. But we won't experience 20 degree temps for a while. Heat will kill them as well. Temps of 120 degrees for 30 minutes. Other than those 2 techniques, you can hope the equipment is not yet infested and place pieces of window screen on top and on bottom of the stack of supers and duct tape the crap out of the sides. My thoughts are that this is our best, non-toxic option, but is risky since we are not sure if our current supers, currently parked in our dining room, are carrying one or two larvae or moths. I guess I can inspect every frame and then the box itself and call it a go.

One thing is for sure, I am getting too familiar to insect attacks. Organic farms are bug havens and eventually, they must tell all their friends!

The final CSA went well. The room was full of onions, garlic, herbs, honey, birdhouse gourds, potatoes, parsnips, greens, Italian bread, savoy cabbage, shiitakes and brussels sprouts. I am officially done with my season. I said goodbye to everyone. I felt tired. The kind of tired that is really about mind more than body. My muscles are huge, my back is strong, but I really can't say enough, without repeating myself, that this has been a stressful season. It felt long, even though I felt the cycles of weeks swinging around me quite quickly. You know how it is when you think to yourself, "Wow, I was just watering the plants last Sunday. I was just putting out the garbage last Tuesday." Even though we had a major drought, irrigation problems and a lot of insects and disease from the heat and humidity, it was still a good growing season for the nightshades. Most of my crops were stunted after the rain stopped. The soil seemed to be unable to hold water. It drains really well, but during a drought, that is not so helpful! I will take all that I have learned to make a decision about what to do next here on this farm. Part of me wants to look for a more affordable farm with more infrastructure. Part of me wants to move to a cabin in the woods. Part of me wants to get a real job so I can afford more infrastructure on this farm to start over again in a few years. Part of me wants to quit farming all together. Part of me wants to have a baby. Another part of me wants to save up for another adventure in the wilderness. For now, I will go outside and add compost and leaves to my soil and plant some spinach in the tunnel for the long winter. There is a fire going. Like the fire I tend inside myself, it is just warm enough for now.

Week Twenty.

This is week 20 out of 20 for the CSA and 25/25 for the market. What a feeling of bliss. It is harder and harder to get myself outside on the frosty mornings to dig in that dirt, I tell you. The garlic is cleaned, sorted and planted and the crops are mostly gone. The beets, leeks, celeriac and brussels sprouts are very small, I assume from lack of irrigation and poor nitrogen levels. Still, there is enough to give the CSA a mighty fine final share. I have still yet to pull up the annuals and cut back the perennials in the kitchen cutting garden. I'd like to add 5 raised beds to my list of things to do. I have yet to plant the spinach in the tunnel for winter. I have yet to till in the final crops across the street. The crimson clover finally took, but won't get big enough before the freeze. The greenhouse is slowly being dismantled and hauled over to Native Farm. The grass doesn't need any more mowing. The chickens are about to move into the market garden to tidy up the fallen tomatoes and leave behind a layer of free manure for next spring. The woodstove is fired up constantly and takes the chill out of the house. The hoses are freezing up in the morning. The last orange leaves are still clinging to the trees. The bees are sitting tight after we extracted 75 pounds of honey last week, thanks to Jim and Nancy. This farm is turning off, closing up and healing over. We are moving the bikes and canoe into storage. The yarn basket is on the dining room table. There are dusty books being opened. This is my favorite moment. Relief. It feels like I have been carrying around 2 full buckets of water for 7 months and finally someone has told me I can set those down now. Go ahead, set those down, dear one. You have done it again.

We decided to go out on a hike in the High Peaks this weekend, which included a loop trip through a foot of snow and ice covered boulders in our sneakers with Stella crying at every impassable object. We hiked 18 miles total in the Great Range and did 3 High Peaks and slept in the snow in our little Tarp Tent. It was once of those trips I would dub a Hatalsky Deathmarch. I get it in my head we can do something that we clearly find out early into the trip is nearly impossible because of one variable or another, but we push on. I think because Chris and I are very flexible from our thru-hiking days, we just go with it and try to make good decisions. We got down off the ridge top just before dark and found a little nook of a tent spot and crashed pretty hard with Stella in the middle between our two sleeping bags. That was the first camping trip we have taken as a family, all three of us, ever- and we LOVE camping and hiking. That just gives you an indication of how all encompassing farmlife can be. But, as Chris said, no one died or was hurt, so it was a great trip. I will post pics once this week's harvest is in.

For now I am making birdhouse gourds for the final CSA. I love growing things, but I also love crafty projects, so here I go. Now the only thing left to give my people is the sad news that I will not be doing the CSA next year. For various reasons, I need to rebuild or build infrastructure here on our property. It will do the soil good. I also vowed to find a way to run a 4th Year Fallow Farm from the beginning!

Change.

Harold and Maud

The potluck was great fun. We ate delicious food, I got to catch up with all the people in my life, we carved pumpkins and stood in the frosty darkness around a big fire until we were cold. I played with all the children, as I usually do. Lots of great people in one place, that's for sure. I had yummy leftovers to eat for a week, that is a bonus! I felt really proud of my hard work and the work of all the volunteers all summer. Frost came and took lives. But I was ready and let them go. Goodbye eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.

Our good friends Bethany and Dean came to visit for a few days midweek. They helped me clean up nightshade land and harvest for market and the CSA. Hard to believe they live as far away as anyone really could in the lower 48 states- the Olympic Peninsula. It is sad that most of my greatest friends are so far away. We ate some great food and even treated ourselves to a night out at Beekman Street Bistro. We were really happy and content and full of truly local food. Most of the other restaurants in Saratoga pretend to buy local. Tim at Beekman Street is the only chef who REALLY supports local farmers year round. One rabbit, one duck and one quail and a handful of mussels from Prince Edward Island were sad to see us coming! Thanks Bethany and Dean for bringing your work clothes and using them! You are welcome any time!

The current weekend holds- more garlic cleaning, visiting with Buddy and Linda, going to see a tap dance recital at Skidmore, and hanging out around the fire with some wine later on. This weekend is our last without more permanent houseguests. Our hikertrash friends Trouble and The Dude will be completing the Pacific Crest Trail today or tomorrow and will be moving in with us for a while. We are not sure how long, but we told them as long as it takes to find an apartment somewhere in town. I know they will be ravenous, as I recall the feeling entirely. I guess I am excited to nurse them back to health like I nursed Chris. They are emaciated and tired from 2,650 miles of backpacking. It is really just what I need to keep the soup on the stove right now.

Many times I find a song that perfectly describes where I am at in my life and right in time. I usually listen to the song about 500 times over the course of a month or so until I have memorized every word and note and tone and riff. I can usually cry or dance the first 100 times, depending on what kind of song it is. Then I just sing silently to myself for the next 100. Why had I not seen the movie Harold and Maud? How have I lived my short life without this amazing little film? Maybe because I didn't need to until now. Or maybe it found me. It was so I could listen to Cat Stevens I bet. One thing is for sure, I am going through some hard times in my little head and the only consolation for me is music. Always has been, always will be.

Trouble by Cat Stevens

Trouble oh trouble set me free

I have seen your face
And it's too much too much for me

Trouble oh trouble can't you see
You're eating my heart away
And there's nothing much left of me

Agh, I've drunk your wine
You have made your work mine
So won't you be fair
So won't you be fair
Agh, I don't want no more of you
So won't you be kind to me
Just let me go where
I have to go there

Trouble oh trouble move away
I have seen your face
And it's too much for me today

Trouble oh trouble can't you see
You have made me a wreck
Now won't you leave me in my misery

Agh, I have seen your eyes
And I can see death's disguise
Hanging on me
Hanging on me
Agh, I'm beat I'm torn
Shattered and tossed and worn
Too shocking to see
Too shocking to see

Trouble oh trouble move from me
I have paid my debt
Now won't you leave me in my misery

Trouble oh trouble please be kind
I don't want no fight
And I haven't got a lot of time

Frost Cometh!

There is a feeling inside a farmer or gardener every year about this time. The race is on. Can the sun ripen a few more peppers and tomatoes and eggplant before the ice comes to burst the cells within these summer fruits? The hardiness of all nightshades stops at 32 degrees. It is a magic number. Watch basil fall at 35, but the nightshades cling on. The prediction is for 31 on Saturday night under the clear skies which have followed 7 inches of rain. I am having my little annual potluck/pumpkin carving/bonfire. I have never had a nice day for this event... it has always poured. Finally, it looks like a beautiful fall day for me, but that means a cold cold night. So, even though I have a million things to do to prepare, I have to harvest every single chili, pepper, eggplant and tomato left on the farm and get ready to cover the basil even inside the greenhouse. The tomatoes inside the tunnel may make it, so I will leave them to fend for themselves. It is a final feeling. The end of something. It has nothing to do with me, I am just an observer, as it creeps in and takes lives. Boom. Dead. All the seedlings that Jessica and I started in March. Gone, all the little plants that Mom and I laid plastic for and planted deep with some North Country Fertilizer and Bone Meal. All the plants I tied up and reached into all summer to harvest. It's been a great year for nightshades and I was proud to stand with them at market. Rest in Peace little nightshades and Scarlet Runner Beans- the frost monster is coming to get you.

Good thing my friends Bethany and Dean are coming next week to help out. It is a huge project to clean up Nightshade Land. Off they go to the Pit of Despair or the bonfire. I look forward to taking stock of my soil and adding as much life back into it as possible. I would like to cover it with leaves, compost and 1 year old wood chips to give it a chance to rest and rebuild for next year.

As for the 50 people that will show up at the farm on the eve of destruction, I will try to show them the side of me that is relieved when the frost comes, instead of the pensive and sentimental side that is sort of melancholy. Off to errands and harvest!

Unsolved Mysteries- Solved!

The tomato resin that coats a tomato picker's hands and arms and makes my eyelids itch has a name and a purpose other than soiling every towel in the house!

http://www.growingformarket.com/articles/green-powder-on-tomato-plants

Tis a Gift

I am able to finally say I slept like a baby while 4 inches of rain fell on the farm last night. The buckets, wheelbarrows, duck ponds and rain barrels overfloweth. The dry and parched soil finally got a soaking. The well is silently recharging, all the veins and aquifers that feed it flushing themselves clean again. We needed this rain all summer. I waited. It is nice to wait for something so pure and simple, knowing that it would come, hoping that it would suffice.

Chris and I had a nice wake up yesterday morning. A baby Harris was finally born. We still know nothing of him. We know he is alive and well and so is Mum. We don't know how much he weighs, how tall he is, if he has hair, if he is of slight or sturdy build, what his name is, or what he smells like, or the story of his birth. It is hard for Chris to be so far away from such a momentous thing as the first birth in his family. We wish we could just fly over and be there. Congratulations Harris family!

The fall patch of veg is growing with great gusto now. I harvested the most lovely arugula I have ever grown yesterday. The brussels sprouts are sprouting sprouts, the cabbages are magically adding layer upon layer of leaf, the beets are sizing up, the leeks have turned blue again, the celeriac is swelling, and the lettuce and spinach is much more alive and heading up. A few Skidmore students helped me clean garlic today. I will be planting 600 heads this fall of my biggest and best Music. We sorted and chatted and reveled in how much garlic I have. Too much, yet again! I don't have a lot of jumbo, but I do have a lot of medium sized garlic. I still have a long way to go with cleaning and sorting, but it is at least a start.

If the weather holds, we may try to sneak the remaining 3 supers off the bees this weekend when the temps drop below 40 at night. It is a quick and easy way to snag bee-free supers without chemical repellants or a bee escape to steal them at night when the bees are in a cluster around their queen in the lower brood box. Hopefully this will work, because at the moment, I have sold out of honey and hope to have at least 100 more pounds out there to extract. It is one of the proudest moments I've ever had to stand behind my honey, knowing I am a part of the survival of the honeybee. If we are lucky, all 3 strong hives will overwinter again and we will have lots more honey to look forward to.

4 weeks left for the CSA and the Saratoga Market. 4 weeks. After 6 months of hard work, it is a relief to see the geese flying south and the sugar maples glow orange. Soup and squash return to the menu. Cooking begins to be a way to help heat up the kitchen on a cool morning. My hands are getting rough and chapped from the cold and wet. The chimney project is still on hold because of the weather this week. But at least the wood is stacked and the first fire is around the corner. I love the way the house smells and feels. Almost too hot. Yes, I know the pollution isn't the best, but we use so much less oil. My winter projects include the dining room, learning how to spin yarn, make soap, and continuing to make butter and cheese when I can. I am looking for a job, if wishing counts as looking, that suits me. I will slowly put together a plan for next year that will include growing and selling, but I am not sure what. My heart says I need to work on my soil and my infrastructure. I need to make sure irrigation is possible. I need to keep deer at bay. I need to build up and build out, but also slow down so that this farm is manageable and realistic and happy.

We are off to see a movie.... what a novelty.