My season working with a bee mentor

I completed a season working with a bee mentor! It all started last year in October when I went to Minneapolis and completed bee keeping 101 at the University of Minnesota with my friend Samantha. The class was fantastic and it was attended by 200+people. Having bees up here was one of my goals when we moved to our property. It was more of a romantic day dream....that and having sheep and spinning yarn. The sheep part is for sure NOT going to happen anytime soon.

I came back home all ready to buy bee gear and a box of bees. I stopped myself once I saw how expensive it was all going to be. I thought, maybe I should listen to the advice from the instructors and work with a bee mentor to see for sure this is what I want to do. I started asking around up here for names of local bee keepers to see if they had any interest in being a mentor but no one wanted to give me names or the names I did find, they said no flat out. That's fine, at least they are direct with me. There are plenty of bee keepers but they are sort of a private group. There is no local bee keeping group. I ended up taking a Master Gardeners Class and I was finally put in touch with a gentleman named John that works at the extension office. He agreed to work with me! yay!

So in May I met him at his bee yard to open up the hives from winter.

First time in a bee suit.

 I got to see how he closed up the hives for our long Wisconsin winters. The amount of honey he left in the hives, the pollen patties and the sugar water feed he used. I was able to see what a strong hive looks like, what a weak hive looks like, I am able to identify a queen, larva, brood, pollen, capped cells, wax and honey. He even had some bee nucs to add to a hive.  The term “nuc” is short for nucleus colony. A nucleus colony is just a very small colony of a few thousand bees and a queen. I got to feel the pain of getting stung in the head a couple of times too, no allergies either.  He showed me his log book where he keeps track of how each hive is doing. Each hive is labeled and logged every time he checks on the hive. He logs how many frames and boxes are being used by the bees, if he sees larva or brood (the term brood is used to refer to the embryo or egg), If the queen dies, if the hive swarms or if the hives gets a mites or a disease. 

Pretty much anything that happens to the hive gets logged. 

Nuns and over wintered hives.

We do have bears up here and he went over the electric fence with me and how important it is to have 9,000 volts. 

old honey to feed the bees

 Later in the season I got assist him and his wife with removing the honey super frames from the hives. Its sort of a long process of getting the bees to leave the honey supers. You have to fit new hive caps with this felt and this be spray that has a smell the bees do not like that makes them leave the honey super for the frames and boxes below. You wait about 15-30 mins then remove the cap and check to see that most of the bees are gone. It also helps to have your smoke can going too.  Some of the bees get really pissed off in the process. The honey frames smell so good, fresh honey warmed by the sun. Depending on how much honey are on the frames, each honey super can weight 30-50 pounds. Bee keeping is not for the weak. John had to make sure my bee suit was zipped up tight and he even went as far to duct tape my ankle and wrists of my suit just in case.

The next day I went to his honey house (workshop in his garage). He had the wood stove going to keep the room nice and hot to make the honey flowed easier. He removed the frames from the boxes and used an electric heated knife to remove the capping wax. He handed them to me and I loaded the honey extractor. It looked like it held about 25 frames but I did not count. The frames fit into little slots vertically.

electric knife

capping wax

frames spinning.

A honey extractor is a mechanical device used in the extraction of honey from honeycombs. A honey extractor extracts the honey from the honey comb without destroying the comb. Extractors work by centrifugal force. A drum or container holds a frame basket which spins, flinging the honey out. With this method the wax comb stays intact within the frame and can be reused by the bees.

honey extractor

Honey is poured through this strainer then at the end of the line was his wife bottling all the honey into 1 pound jars to be sold.

At the end of it John gave me a bottle of honey and a chunk of bees wax. The wax smells like summer and sunshine. I am so grateful to be able to be apart of this. I almost don't want to eat the honey because it means so much to me. But this winter I will be enjoying in my tea.

TWO Years in the Woods

WOW!!! Our family has survived TWO YEARS in the woods! I actually love living up here and all my friends I have made. Since August is the anniversary month of giving up city life, parting with half of our crap and living 100% debt free, I thought I would go over the pros and cons of living in a tiny home.

As many of you know from reading my blog, we live in a 400sq ft house, with maybe an additional 150 sq ft sleeping loft. Our house is not on a trailer like you see on the tv shows but attached to blocks on the ground. Here is my list:

Pros:

• No mortgage! This is fantastic because it allows us to be a single income family which lets me raise my son and not a stranger at day care. This can also be annoying on days filled with melt downs but overall it's very positive.
• Less house to clean. Less junk to collect. Living in a small space makes you become a master organizer that takes advantage of your wasted vertical space and get rid of excess toys and junk way faster due to lack of space.
• Forces us outside more. When you live in a small space you become  very close as a family because you are never apart. I always know who is watching tv and who is on the computer. To have our own space we must go outside and enjoy nature in all seasons. I have even started to love winter. 
• Save money on energy. We can illuminate our house with one light because its so small. We heat with wood and its small enough to cool with a small a/c unit. I have fallen in love with going outside and splitting wood in the winter. The rhythmic motion and sound of the maul cracking the log is very relaxing. I have become stronger stacking and hauling wood into the house. There is still the first fire of the season where I pack in too much wood and get the house up to 87 degrees and have to open all the windows. The loft stays an even 60 degrees all winter which makes for perfect sleeping temps.

Cons:

• No basement. This is annoying because I have no room for a big deep freezer. We have a tiny second freezer but we could really be saving some money by buying meat in bulk or hunting more game. 
• No washer and dryer. Every Sunday I haul all the laundry to town and wash it. Its very depressing sitting at a laundromat listening to radio church service so I go to the coffee shop and I do sit and enjoy a cup of coffee. As a parent of a two year old when we moved here, I can tell you that potty training is less than enjoyable if you have to haul poop and pee soaked clothing and sheets to town.  
• Lack of storage. I do not have enough room for my pantry items. I enjoy canning veggies, jam, meat and soups. I have a terrific electric pressure canner so I put up a couple of jars of soup or meat every time I make a big batch. I store all sorts of back up food so I do not need to drive to town if I run out of salt or fish sauce. Or if we get snowed in we will be eating good for weeks. I had my husband build shelves in our loft but I keep filling them. Now I am short on space to store all my hand made soaps.
• Tiny house =tiny bathroom. The saddest part.....I had to sell my beloved claw foot tub to make room for the well tank. If we had basement it would go down there. I think my favorite hobby is sitting in the tub with LUSH bath bombs, drinking prosecco and reading horror novels.

All and all I am happy with this place and the land. (not the snakes). I enjoy living within our means even though it can be frustrating not being able to get brand new cool stuff all the time. I will say in the future I would love to add an additional room for my husband I to sleep in and a bath house or a sauna. I was thinking a traditional Finnish sauna with a woods stove. I would also like to install outdoor plumbing and really get my mushroom log set up going.

Porch

We learned some new skills! My husband built a deck. 20' x8'. My dad was pestering us to build a deck for a year and a half. We both thought it was going to be too much work and that we really didn't need a deck. You know what? It is actually very nice to have it now that it is completed. It took a few weeks of working on it in-between rain storms. The deck posts had to have holes dug 4 feet so the freezing and thawing would not buckle the deck. My son had a wonderful time being lowered into the holes and digging with a hand spade. He also built quit the construction road system for his trucks to haul the dirt away. Our soil is in layers of sand, rock and clay, which makes it pretty annoying when you are digging and you hit a rock.

This deck is more like a porch off of the front of the house. Its very nice to sit on in the morning and look at the trees and drink tea. Come evening the mosquitoes get so thick that the porch is no longer enjoyable without a thick spray down of bug spray. My husband was so desperate NOT to take my son to a birthday party, that he agreed to screw the deck boards on in a rain storm to get out of it. We came home from the party and the boards were on and our power was out.

Our power stayed out for 3 days. We were able to keep the house going with our battery inverter on our Jeep battery. It was not strong enough to run the fridge so when the power came on I ordered the larger size. We did keep everything charged up, had a fan running and the tv running for Netflix.I bought some blocks of ice and put them in the fridge and freezer to keep things cold. The only thing we lost was my son's beloved popsicles. My friend had me over to shower and I was able to give my son a bath. Other than that it was no big deal. I cooked all meals on the grill and we used our stored water supply to drink since the well pump was not working. We have a composting saw dust toilet so we did not need water for that. I did switch to paper plates while the power was out to save on water for doing dishes. I have been increasing my stored water supply since this last outage. I think I am up to about 15 gallons of water on hand.

Along the front of the porch I would like to plant herbs and some flowers for tea. We also found out there is a birds nest right above the chairs that the babies are pooping down on to our seating area. It's really cool watching the humming birds come to the feeder and fight each other over the food source. 

I'm enjoying stepping outside to use my grill, before I would have to walk down stairs and across the yard to cook anything. This came in very handy when our power was out for three days and the grill was our main source of cooking meals.

Here is the jerk bear that is getting in my trash and tore down and dragged my bird feeder away. Now we will have to wait to feed our bird friends until fall. If you look back at our finished deck photo you can see that the feeders are reachable now because of the deck and I do not want to promote the bear being that close to my house.

The 4th of July holiday we spent digging up rocks and hacking away at tree roots. One thing about moving to the woods that I was not expecting was that each year the frost pushes up rocks. Sometimes its whole rocks and sometimes its just the tops of humungous boulders. Then you hit these things with the mower and it breaks. We must keep our small plot around our house mowed to keep the ticks away. Nothing pisses my husband off more than spending money over and over again on lawn mower parts. Mower deck parts are very expensive too. I found out $300.00 was his limit. He spent 3 days digging and digging, hooking up straps to the jeep and dragging these huge boulders around and off to the side of the yard.

The smaller rocks he either carried by hand or used the wheel barrow. I chopped on some roots and some small stumps. I HATE that job and to me I would rather pay someone to do it than to sit out there in the heat and have a stroke hacking away. I also attempted to burn a stump out and I failed. The fire went out after 5 minutes. 

I even managed to set the gas can on fire which had to be put out with the fire extinguisher and dirty looks form my husband. Oh well live and learn.

master gardener!

 What a busy few months. This spring has been filled with non stop projects and class. After 3 months of classes and 24 volunteer hours I am officially a Master Gardener Volunteer for Wisconsin!

I learned so much in that class. The soil texturing and soil testing analysis was the most interesting part to me. I could go through soil samples all day and try to figure out how much clay is in them. Part of the class is we got to get our soil tested from our yards. Mine came back 5.2 on the acidic side. I ended up planting two blueberry plants and an elderberry. All three are thriving. My baby apple tree and my grapes from the last post have yet to leaf out though.
My husband has his permaculture design certificate so I sort of learned along with him about permaculture a few years back but no one really knows what permaculture is up here so this Master Gardeners certificate gives me more credibility when I request to volunteer and work with the kids in the school garden.

Now I am back to working with the elementary school kids to get their school garden planted. I also worked with another elementary school about 20 miles away. This year we planted an entire bed of herbs. Other beds of tomatoes, peppers, squash and more of a focus on root vegetables and less on lettuce because of the condition the lettuce is in September when the kids come back to school to harvest the garden.

When I plant with the kids I like to bring up how to cook the food we are planting and ask them about if they have tried it and how they like to help cook in the kitchen. Most kids up here have some relatives that are farmers but a lot of the kids are still very poor and do not have access to healthy foods and they are suffering by being over weight. This same group of kids comes back next fall as 4th graders to harvest the garden and weigh all the produce.

A friend gave me about 45 pounds of lard form her Hungarian breed pigs. I spent two days rendering lard and pouring it into jars. This lard is a fantastic bright white color. I am all stocked up now for soap making. I also use lard for tamales and pie crusts. 

I began working with a local bee keeper that works at the extension office that I connected with through master gardeners. He has been bee keeping for 10+years. I have been able to see what a hive looks like that came out strong from being over wintered and a weak hive and what he used to overwinter the hives. We added new bees to hive boxes and watched them make comb, lay eggs, larva, make drones and I got to see a queen. I t was very interesting to see how relaxed a hive can be and how pissed off another hive can be. It really is great to work with a bee keeper and not just go by what was taught in my class. I like being able to ask questions and get answers in the same day.

I did get a pretty good bee sting in my head, and it hurts just as bad as I remember. I learned a hard lesson, not to undress out of  the bee suit next to the bee yard. NOW I walk pretty far away and remove the suit and leave it in a bin. I got a lesson in fencing to use around your hives to keep black bear out. He uses 10,000 volts electric fence. Bears are sneaky, they can climb over the fence they can also plow right though it. It is important to be able to ZAP them pretty good. Bears are a terrible nuisance around Northern Wisconsin, they have gotten in my trash and they trash people's bird feeders and I see them dead along the highway all the time.

The spring rain brought out the oyster mushrooms in my woods. I have not seen other wild mushrooms yet. My husband was the first to spot these oysters on the log along side of our driveway.

Oyster mushroom

Now that it is officially fishing season in Wisconsin I thought I would share a neat site about bullhead fishing and eating.  I always thought bullheads were garbage fish but this site has peaked my interest in catching them and eating them with my son.

Grafting

One of my master gardening classes was all about fruit tree grafting and grape vine pruning. As part of the class I got to take two grape vines home. I chose MN 78 and Baltica grape varieties. Both of these grades are table grapes great for jellies and wine. These grape varieties were pruned directly from the UW Extension office display garden where I take my class, so at least I know they will grow in my zone. They instructor said they made wine with them last year and we might get to sample some, WI requires him to file for a permit to legally serve us one sip. 

I made my first Apple graft. I used Emla 7 a semi dwarf root stock with a honey crisp scion wood. I cut each piece on the bias then cut a groove into each part, sort of like a tongue and groove. It was call the whip method. It's very important to make the root stock cut and the scion cut the same size. This insures the cambium, vascular part inside, lines up. After that I wrapped the two attached sections with a thin rubber band, then wrapped this wax grafting tape around it. 

I soaked everything over night in water. And planted the next day. 

My tiny Apple graft. 

I had to dip the end of each grape vine in rooting hormone. Then stick them in the hole. 

Next step is to protect them from rabbits, deer and the lawn mower with a small cage. Side note that stuff is extreamly sharp after you snip it with the wire cutters I wore leather gloves.

GOOD NEWS!! The 4 apple trees, 2 pear and 2 cherry trees that we planted last April over wintered and all have buds on them!! Yay!! Our thrifty stake and fishing line fence worked keeping deer away too. 

I have been volunteering like crazy, I have to get 24 hours logged to become a master gardener. I went to the tribal preschool and planted seeds. Was a helper for a shiitake growing class and went to my sons preschool and talked maple syrup tapping. I want to mostly work with kids when I become a master gardener. A lot of other people that are master gardeners are retired and work in the flower gardens. I don't really have an interest in flower gardening except for pollinators. 

I have been working with my son more on cooking his own food. Him and all his classmates made their own pancakes. 

I have been assisting him with learning knife skills and requiring he cut his own veggies and make his own sandwiches. He can only handle the knives with me next to him for now. My goal is to work up to his own pocket knife. 

Finally, my first sign of spring in the north woods. (Two days later it snowed.) 

Boil

The sap collecting began. My son carries the 5 gallon jugs and the funnel to the trees. I remove the bags and pour the sap into the jugs while my son holds  the jugs steady. He likes to go up the spout and lick the sap drops dripping from the trees. If you want a great work out, carry 5 gallon jugs filled with sap up the long driveway. Each jug weighs about 40 pounds when its full. My six trees produced about 15 gallons of sap.

My husband adjusted the fire pit with fire bricks to rest the grate on. Last year I had the set up in the driveway on cinder blocks and all the blocks cracked. He dug out the front of the fire pit for easier loading of the wood. I start the fire and then go to the wood shed to split more wood. Usually about 2-3 wheelbarrows full of wood lasts the 8 hours of burning.

My Coffeeshop buddy gave me 30 gallons of his sap to boil down again this year. He boils down until he gets sick of it then gives his surplus sap to me. I sat outside from 12pm-8pm all week long burning down sap. Once I got all of the sap evaporated down to fit 30 gallons in the pan I brought it inside to finish it off on the stove so I could keep a close eye on it. This is the stage you have to watch it because it will boil over and make a hot sticky mess. Once the sap hits 219 degrees it syrup and its ready to be filtered and poured into jars.

My 15 gallons boiled down is way lighter

My buddy's 30gallons of sap is way darker than mine

I have been trying to increase the amount of healthy fats I eat so I made Fat Bombs! They are coconut oil, almond butter, coconut flakes, nuts, craisins and extra dark chocolate. I eat these as little snacks when I am craving dessert.

RECIPE:

1 C  Coconut pil

1C   Almond Butter

1/2 C Coconut flour

1/4 C Dried Coconut flakes

1/4 C Craisins

1/4 C Slivered Almonds

2tsp Vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp salt

Maple syrup or honey to taste- ok to skip too

1/2 bag dark chocolate chips

I melt everything in a pan over medium heat,

I scoop them into tiny wrappers.

The last step I add 4 dark chocolate chips to each one. Then stick in the fridge to harden up. They are fantastic. They will start to melt at room temp, so they need to be stored in the fridge in a zip lock bag after they harden.