Mini Farm Update

As usual, production has been underway in several mediums at my home. Though outdoors, it seems that everything is asleep under a deep blanket of snow, there's movement there.

My first beehive is still alive. After going wild last spring, its queen died unexpectedly in July. Under strict orders from my bee teachers, I left the hive alone for a month, and was delighted to learn find on next inspection that a new queen had taken over. Then, in the fall, I couldn't find her or any indication that she'd been at work laying eggs. Once again, my bee teachers convinced me to let the hive go, and check for her again in the spring. Last week, I opened the hive to drop add a top feeder of sugar water, and was nearly covered with bees in moments. I take this as a good sign.

Materials arrived in the mail this week for a second hive, and a friend will be housing her eight bar langstroth with me while away for the next year in New Zealand.

Our chickens, after years of not giving us eggs during the winter months, have decided to earn their keep on our little farm this year as well. We've been getting two-three each day from our elder Buff Orpingtons and our new girl, a Silver-laced Wyandotte. Though the Easter eggers dropped a couple of blue eggs over the Holidays, they have held off from joining in the egg laying frenzy of our other girls.

Indoors, I'm spinning one bobbin per week. A couple of weeks ago, I finished six hanks of red, orange, and multicolor triple plied on my old Ladybug. I'm using a little to do a framed piece, which will remain under wraps for some additional time, until I'm ready to share. Otherwise, I'm midway through spinning a triple ply with shades of blue. I need to fill one more bobbin, then a week of rest before plying.

I'm also piecing a new quilt for my mother-in-law. She was quite attached to her original bed quilt, with ranging floral pattern, pieced in two inch squares. We did a day's worth of shopping to finally go online for a fabric evocative of the original. That chosen, I'm creating large flowers with the piecing. I'll share my progress soon.

The thought of flowers returns me to the outdoors. With our high tunnel in place, we are hoping to move up the planting schedule for our veggies by one month. This, of course, means that I must move up the schedule for planting seeds indoors, meaning some planting in February.

A look at our canning pantry and some of the failed crops of last year tells me that I need to switch up our planting strategy on a number of fronts. Firstly, we were blessed with too many squash. I want to plant some different varieties and definitely not any more than last year. Also, our eggplants (30 plants) were a complete bust. They didn't ripen in time. I thought our 36 tomato plants were too much, but a look at my pantry suggests that we need that many to get through the winter, especially the crushed kind.

This year, I want to try some beans and I'd like to do a bumper crop of onions, garlic and shallots in the second 24 ft by 12 ft plot that we didn't even hit last year.

Then, there's the perennial gardens. I have a new space around the patio put in last year that will be my next canvas. I can already envision some sedge and native grasses in that spot...