Womens Wellness Weekend

I just got back from a wonderful time at the Virginia State Parks' Womens' Wellness Weekend held at First Landing in Virginia Beach.  This was the second one I attended and it did not disappoint.

We departed Friday morning on an excursion to Chippokes Plantation State Park.

We were greeted by a wonderful docent who was full of information about the property.

My favorite, of course, was the summer kitchen.

I felt right at home.

We had lunch at the Surrey House Restaurant, where I enjoyed a BBQ pork sandwich with some amazing onion rings.  I also tried the peanut soup, since we were in peanut country.  It was underwhelming but now I can say I've had it.

After a nice walk on the beach, it was time for dinner, complete with a Sangria Bar.  It was delicious!

I had planned to 'camp' in the back of my van like I did last year, but due to severe weather warnings, we were able to get an empty cabin, which felt like the Hilton!  There was a kitchenette, a warm shower, and real beds!  Needless to say, I slept like a log.

On Saturday morning, I taught a Make and Take Herbals class, and I was so busy I never got to take any pictures.  But it was a fun time making Calendula/Lemon Balm Salve and trying iced and hot teas made with different herbs.

As expected, lunch was as amazing as dinner!

The chef did a salad dressing demo and gave us a recipe for a Copy Cat Olive Dressing.  I can't wait to try it.

After lunch, I went on a Wetlands Photography Walk.  I got a quick lesson on how and when to change the shutter speed and aperture, and it was so great to be able to photograph the beauty around us.  This was an amazing tree that grew along the ground and then made a 90 degree turn to grow upright again!

Our instructor was a hoot!  He was out of York State Park up near Williamsburg and leads similar walks there.  I hope I can attend one!

 He dubbed me the "Angel of Aperture" because once I got the hang of it, I was giddy with excitement!

The trail we were on was called "Bald Cypress", and the Spanish Moss on the trees was just haunting.

We also got pointers on how to draw the eye into the photos.

 And we saw some pretty cool fungus, too!

The last class of the day was a "Lotions and Potions" class with Vickie Shufer, who is a local foraging expert.  I have gone on a couple walks with her at New Earth Farm and always learned a lot.  She's also just a delightful person.

We made a lotion with Mountain Mint, which is an antiseptic... and I got to smell a different kind of lotion she made with lemon verbena.  I can't wait to make my own!

 We learned about several herbs I'd never even heard of before!

 And we got to try some 'energy balls' made with a plant that has 4x the caffeine as coffee!

 We also got to make up some tea mixes using dried herbs.

Afterwards, we had another great meal and got to watch the sunset.  I got to practice my new photography skills.

 

Sunday morning, I took another class where I finally learned how to make the para cord bracelets that are so trendy right now.

I had a few minutes before Brunch to snap some more pictures.

I forgot to snap a picture of the amazing spinach and mushroom crepes with brunch, but they knocked my socks off.  I may have to attempt to replicate them soon!

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and almost feel ready to face my 40th birthday.

Almost.

Broccoli, the Super Super Food

Most of us know that broccoli is considered a superfood.  Here in Hampton Roads, it is a spring and fall crop... although I won't grow it in the spring anymore because there are so many cabbage moth butterflies/worms to contend with.  However, I do enjoy growing it in the fall because I have more room in the garden and it gives us fresh veggies just when the rest of the garden has pooped out.

Once I harvest the main head of broccoli, I leave the plant in the ground and let it produce side shoots.  These are great for salads and soups, and the occasional side dish in the middle of winter.

After harvesting the side shoots, I continue to leave the plant in the ground.  It will then produce tiny little yellow flowers which the bees absolutely love, probably because it's so late in winter/early in spring that there isn't much else in bloom.  

I love this picture because you can see how loaded down this little gal is... that yellow 'tumor' is actually pollen!

Eventually, I need to yank the plants up because they are taking up valuable garden space.  Yesterday, I did just that.  Normally, I'd throw them in the compost pile but I decided to give them to the chickens and see what they thought.  I kid you not, in a matter of just minutes, they had stripped the flowers clean:

So there you have it.  For us, for the bees, for the chickens... broccoli truly is a super food!

Bees, Bees, Bees...

In addition to serving as an on-line garden journal, this blog is also a beekeeping journal of sorts.  It's good to keep records because the older I get, the less I remember.  And when it comes to beekeeping, there's lots to remember.

We last got into our hives a month ago, and all was well.  We were just starting to see drone cells, and were very lucky to have both hives survive the winter.  40-60% of hives were lost here in VA, and no one knows why.

A few days ago, my neighbor and co-beekeeper Lisa saw a ton of activity outside one of the hives.  I suspected a swarm, as that queens' wings weren't clipped, but didn't know what we'd find.  We were also going to check and see if they were storing honey and whether or not we needed to add another box of frames.

The first hive we got into had drawn out some wax in the honey super, but there wasn't much stored.  We saw eggs, we saw lots of drone cells, and we even saw the queen (she is marked).  The hive wasn't teeming but with all the eggs and larvae, it's just a matter of time before numbers quickly build.  We did take some frames of brood/larvae/eggs and one frame of honey and put it in the Nuc box to make a new hive.

We also saw some bees being 'born'... crawling out of their capped cells.  Can you find them in the abpve picture?

The second hive was going gangbusters.  We had to remove some wonky wax, but they had pretty much filled the first honey super so we added another.  We also saw CAPPED swarm cells and not one egg, which means only one thing... the old queen had flown the coop as suspected.  We left a couple of the cells in the hive so that one of the new queens would hatch and take over.  We also took a couple of them and put them in the Nuc box, so that those bees would also have a queen rather than having to rear their own.  Once they are capped, it only takes a few days for the new queens to hatch.  In spite of the fact that they didn't currently have a queen, the bees were very docile.  I have high hopes for this Nuc, as the other queen (who was only a year old, I don't know why she swarmed) was a good layer and her girls have good, patient personalities.  The queens were raised by A LOT of bees, which bodes well.

In about three weeks, we will check back into all of the hives.  Why 3 weeks?  That will give the new queens time to hatch.  Six days after they hatch, they will go on their mating flights (and we'll hope they make it back safely.)  It normally takes about 20 days to go from a capped queen cell to laying eggs.  What if we get back in and there are no eggs?  All is not lost.  We will simply take frames of eggs from our queen-right hive and put them in the Nuc or the second hive (or both if Murphy's law prevails) and let the bees raise their own queen from those eggs.  This is why it's better to start with two hives than only one.  You can rob Peter to pay Paul.

Maple Syrup!

We just returned from a week back 'home' over Spring Break.  We were lucky enough to catch the tail end of maple-syrup season, and I brought several gallons of it back for friends who wanted their own taste of New England.

My brother and his wife, Cheri, live in this beautiful home on 80+acres in Southern NH where they run the Blue Y Farm.  The maple trees on the property have been tapped for years... the house is only a few years younger than this country! 

There is a lot of work involved in making maple syrup, so I thought I'd do a post about it so those here in VA can see what it entails.

First, the trees are 'tapped'.  This involves drilling a small hole and inserting a pipe with a small notch on it to hold the buckets.  When nights are cold and days are warm, the sap runs and fills the buckets.

Once, and sometimes twice, a day, the buckets are emptied into a large holding tank. 

The tank is then parked near the sugar shack, where the sap is slowly drained into the evaporator.

(You can see the roof of the shack in the far left of the photo.)  The sap is warmed as it flows through the copper tubing around the 'chimney' of the evaporator.

It is heated until it gets close to the boiling point.  You can see the steam evaporating the water.

Big Strong Brother then brings a batch to the kitchen, where Cheri finishes the process.

She brings the sap to a boil (which takes forever!) and then filters it to remove any impurities.

It is then bottled up into containers with covers that will seal.

It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, not to mention many (wo)man-hours to make it happen!!!

Learning Something New

One of my goals for 2013 was to learn something new... cheesemaking tops the list, but last weekend I hosted a Penny Rug making class at my house and we had so much fun!

For a long while, I wanted to learn how to make them.  Originating back in the Civil War, women would use pennies and other coins as templates to cut scraps of wool.  They would then sew them together to make mats to protect their furniture.

 

I was ecstatic when I located a local teacher who was willing to teach a class!  Her name is Abby Geddes and she is a delight.

We all got a good jump start on our own mats, and enjoyed visiting while we stitched.

I've since been buying wool clothes at the thrift stores, deconstructing them, and then washing and drying to 'felt' it so that I can make more penny rugs!

Here's my first finished project:

Future projects involving chickens and bees are in the works!!!

I'm a Chicken Mama!

Last Saturday, while Stephen was at home finishing up the chicken tractor, the girls and I trucked it down to Currituck to get ourselves some hens.  Lets just say there were a LOT of chickens in dozens of different tractors.  And the farmer didn't really know what he had.  So it took us awhile.  We finally ended up with a Rhode Island Red who is about a year old, a Blue Wheaten Ameraucana who is about 6 months, and a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and a Lavender Orpington who are 4-5 months old.

This one is Rosie, the Lavender Orp.  They are kind of rare chickens, so I'm looking forward to watching her grow and fill out.  Orps have great personalities, and she is already showing that she is a people person.

This is Clara Belle, the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte.  She is always the first to find the treats I bring out for them.  She's also going to be the beauty of the bunch.

This is Scarlett, the Rhode Island Red, who is definitely top of the pecking order.  She picks on the others when she's bored, so I have to make sure they have lots of weeds or treats to keep her occupied.

And this is Extra Crispy, the Blue Wheaten Ameraucana.  She's a sweetheart, but definitely an introvert.

We got them home with no problems, and they spent their first night in the chicken tractor in the garage, since the wheels weren't yet attached.  On Sunday afternoon, they were wheeled out into the backyard and immediately started pecking and scratching.  I don't think any of them had ever seen a single blade of grass in their short lifetimes.

Within a short time, the girls came running in with an egg from Scarlett.  They were so excited!

A few minutes later, they came running in shouting "there's something wrong with Extra Crispy!"  So I headed out to the coop and sure enough, the poor thing was straining to lay an egg, which she finally did.  It was a huge blue one which, we later discovered, was a double yolker.


On Monday, I spent way too much time watching them.  We got another egg very late in the afternoon from Scarlett and another one today from Extra Crispy.  Look at the difference in size between the first one and this one:

I am very interested to see the changes in their eggs now that their diets have been drastically changed for the better.  Their first were very thin-shelled and yellow.  Now that they have oyster shells, lots of chlorophyll, and a nice compost bin of worms, the egg quality should dramatically increase.

Here's the finished chicken tractor.  I wanted to paint a barn quilt on it, so I chose the "Hens and Chicks" pattern.  I love the way it turned out and all the credit goes to my wonderful husband who built it mostly from plans that can be found HERE.  He added his own little touches here and there, including ventilation windows on the front and back that can be closed up in really cold weather.  The heat is more of an issue here, which is why we chose to add them.

We have a garden, we have bees, and now we have chickens.  I think I'm officially an urban homesteader!

Chickens!

Last fall, while we were in the throes of getting hens legalized, I was fortunate enough to hear Pat Foreman speak at the local library.  She is the author of "City Chicks" and a very entertaining speaker. 

This is a picture of us, along with "Oprah Henfrey" taken a few weeks before that talk, at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello.  If you click on the picture, it'll enlarge and you can see the precious look on Oprah's face!

When I heard that Pat would be returning to the area to do a 2-day Intensive Workshop once the hens were legalized, I knew I had to attend.  Normally, I'm a cheapskate and don't part easily with my money, but having heard Pat speak and after reading the book, I knew I had to go.  Not only did I want to learn how to care for chickens before we got our micro-flock, I also knew it would be a blast to spend the weekend with Pat and her 'side-kick' Lisa.

And a blast it was.

We all met bright and early Saturday Morning at the conference center at First Landing State Park.

 It was a hands-on class.  From the get-go, we were immersed in hens!

Pat attempts to make a hen smile while teaching us Anatomy 101.

 The food was amazing... freshly prepared by "The Local Agrarian"

... featuring the only gluten-free dessert I've ever eaten that didn't taste like it was Gluten Free (they were some delicious brownies!)

We got to learn about raising chicks and their special needs.  It was also fun to play with them.  Notice how geeked out I am, in my chicken shirt and chicken hair accessory!

We also learned (and practiced) how to properly handle chickens and "Chicken Whispering" to calm them.  This was the most beautiful and laid back Rooster I've ever met.  He's a Dominique, which is a heritage breed featured at Colonial Williamsburg as well as my beloved Old Sturbridge Village.

Here he is perched on my shoulder.  We matched real well!

We learned about using chickens in the garden and composting.  We learned how to treat common health problems.  An umbrella theme to the class was how important backyard flocks are... they provide wholesome food and healthy soil while reducing dependence on oil and ensuring a local source of food in times of crisis. 

Overall, I am much more prepared to 'mother' our hens and I am very excited to get them.  It'll be another month before we are ready, but I'll be spending the day making calls to local Feed stores to see what breeds they'll have available to order.  (I don't want to start from chicks, or we could have had them by now!)

In addition, I met some new friends and that's always a good thing!

The coop is coming along nicely... it's almost all painted, so hubby will just have to put the roof on, attach the doors, and put up the protective screening.  Then I will add some curtains to the nest boxes to provide some privacy and we'll be good to go!

We are well on our way to achieving the first of my Homesteading Goals of 2013!