Basil is a frost tender annual herb which is easy to grow from seed. It can be sowed directly into the garden after the ground warms up and there is no chance of frost. The seedlings will emerge in about a week and if grown in a solid row, will need to be thinned to about six to eighteen inches apart. You can replant the thinnings wherever you have space in the garden. I find that six to ten well spaced plants supply us with plenty of leaves to eat fresh, dry and freeze for the year.
I use some form of Basil in a lot of what I cook and I put it up in different ways, according to how it will be used. Fresh, it is really good with sliced tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese and is great mixed with spinach as greens on sandwiches or salads.
Dried Basil
Once your Basil plants are about eighteen inches tall, you can start cutting them. Take a heavy pair of kitchen scissors and a basket out to the garden and cut each branch of Basil back to a nice pair of leaves so it can keep on growing. It is better to cut about six inches each week or two than it is to cut it back too far all at once. Fill the basket, and using cotton twine, gather about five cuttings in a bunch and tie them along the length of string. Tie a loop in one end that will fit over your peg or drying arms and let them hang until dry and starting to crumble.
Do not hang them in the sun, but indoors in the shade. If the weather is too damp for it to dry properly, you can lay it on a cookie sheet in a warm 200 degree F oven with the door open a crack to crisp it up.
Once it is dry, strip the leaves off the stems over a cookie sheet and then rub through a big sieve. Fill small half pint jars and save some of them for presents to give to family and friends.
I use dried basil in omelets and scrambled eggs and add it to sauces and soups.
Frozen Pesto Cookies
For a fresher flavor, especially in Lasagna or sauces, I really like to use frozen Basil cookies.
These savory cookies are made by picking the leaves into the food processor, adding a little olive oil and periodically giving it a whir. Add more leaves, whir again. Keep adding leaves until you run out or it gets too full. The oil helps it to mix and holds it together so you can spoon cookie sized rounds out onto cookie sheets. Place the sheet in the freezer overnight and in the morning, remove them with a spatula and load into quart sized freezer bags.
Processing Basil Cookies
Drop a couple of these cookies into a pot of simmering tomato sauce, steam with spinach and stuff into a pork roast, or add to the cheese filling of spinach lasagna, drop into stews. Add pine nuts and cheese fora fresh tasting winter Pesto over rice or spaghetti squash. It is very easy to use a cookie or two at a time.
My bees are having a hard time these days. There are Small Hive Beetles (SHB) attacking their space. I installed screened bottom boards onto the bottoms of the hives because they have a slide out tray the larvae drop onto from above. Weekly I collect the cappings and pollen they have destroyed which has fallen into the tray, along with the numerous white, wiggling beetle larvae. It is disgusting and I kill them by scraping it all into plastic shopping bags and freezing them for a few days. Some I have then sieved out, so only the pollen remains. The rest I feed to the chickens. This does not bode well for my bees.
Pollen and Small Hive Beetle Larva
Beetles
I have twice now, on September 8th and 25th, drenched the ground around the hives with Permithrin insecticide to kill any pupating SHB larvae in the soil. This is supposed to do the trick but I have not seen positive results yet. I still have a lot of larvae showing up on the slide out trap drawers. Supposedly, I should see a drop in populations at three weeks, which is later this week. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Top Feeders and Supers
I installed honey supers on the first five hives on July 20th but after a month, only the number two hive had drawn out any comb, so I removed the supers and the syrup feeders from the other four hives on August 22nd. I had been feeding them 1:1 syrup all this time so they would have the energy to excrete wax and draw new comb out on the foundations. The bees seemed really strong there for awhile and I was hoping I might even get some honey. But no. Plan B was that they would at least get the supers prepped with drawn comb so next year they would not have to work so hard.
Mites
To combat the Varroa Mites, which all beekeepers must assume we have these days, and which is most likely what killed my bees the last two winters, I have hung two Apivar miticide impregnated strips in each deep hive body (except #2 which had the super left on longer). I am seriously hoping that this will kill all the mites and enable me to overwinter my bees this year. The last two years I had only treated with HopGuard, which is considered organic, but it did not work well enough to kill all the mites, so I am using the harder stuff this year. This is what Ed Forney of Geezer Ridge uses and recommends, and since he manages to keep all his bees alive, I am following his advice this year.
Feeding
I am still feeding pollen patties to all 6 hives, about every week to ten days, to help the bees feed their brood. The Goldenrod and Autumn Asters are blooming now but, according to Charles, a beekeeper who moves his bees up and down the East coast following crops, the bees around here don’t utilize these plants here so much. He tells me it is an elevational thing and that up in Pennsylvania, at higher latitudes, the bees are all over the Goldenrod. I don’t see very many on the plants here in my yard, but the wasps seem to like it.
Queens
September 18th, while going through the hives and laying the pollen patties between the two hive bodies, I discovered that hive # 3 had no brood and no larvae on their frames. So, no queen. I have no idea what happened to their queen but now I need a new one. A fellow beekeeper showed me a photo of the frames in her Russian queened hive that were absolutely brimming with brood, so I bought my new queen from the same place she had. Charles lives fairly close by and raises queens himself, which means they have not been stressed by shipping at least. I borrowed a frame of capped brood from hive #1 and installed the new Russian queen (another $36) in hive #3 on September 20th. This is the fourth queen I have had to buy this year, even though all of my hives are new this year. I had one package arrive with a dead queen, and the others have disappeared for unknown reasons.
Queen Cage
Today, I will order some more Apivar from Mann Lake, which will cost me $10.40 each double deep hive, since I am ordering a 50 strip package this time. It was about a dollar a strip more when I was buying it in 10 strip packages. Then I can remove the super and treat hive #2 for mites. I will have to treat all six hives again next spring and fall, so I can definitely use the larger amount.
Meanwhile, I attend every workshop and monthly class I am able to and I am also planning on working with another beekeeper close to me so I can learn as much as possible about keeping bees. So far it is an uphill battle and I admire anyone who does it for fun. I am finding it a little stressful myself, as well as expensive.
When you don’t have running water or an automatic water heater you make do with what you have. You can take a perfectly good bath using only three gallons of water, even without a bath tub.
Summer Time Baths
When I first lived without running water, back in the early 1970’s in West Virginia, I had to go down to the creek and fetch all our washing water in buckets. I learned pretty quick that it was easier to haul two at a time than just one because then I could walk without being lopsided. It is a good way to build up arm muscles. It is also a good way to learn how to conserve all the water you can, if for no other reason than saving yourself some hard work.
In the summer, taking baths in the creek was no problem. We used Dr Bronners Peppermint Soap, which is fairly benign, but we still hauled a bucket of water out onto the bank to rinse most of the soap off, so it would not go directly into the creek. Cool creek water and peppermint soap is refreshing on a hot summer day.
Even after we had a pitcher pump and a well around the back, we still had to pump it by hand and haul it inside. Plus, you always had to remember to keep enough water saved back to prime the pump.
Laundry
Doing laundry and diapers by hand was the most challenging water job. That required hauling lots of water- 6 gallons for wash and 6 for the rinse. I had to heat water for the diapers and they got done separate from the main wash. Every thing else got washed cold. I had these great aluminum wash tubs out near the clothesline (with drain plugs!) and I used an old time wash board to scrub really dirty denims and such. To conserve water, I washed all the lightly soiled stuff, like sheets and shirts, first, then did the socks and saved the denims for last.
Fall Bucket Baths
In the fall, when it started getting colder outside we hauled the water in the big blue granite ware cooking pot and heated it up on the stove. That took almost 30 minutes on the gas stove or a little longer on the wood stove, unless it was cranking hot.
Bath Bucket on Stove
We would carry the bucket outside to the porch, and squatting on the stone step and using a small saucepan, pour a little over our heads, lather in the shampoo, and then do a partial rinse onto the ground. After that, we did a whole rinse with our head over the bucket so we could re use the water for a body wash. Standing up we’d pour some nice hot water over ourselves, soap up, pour some more to rinse off and then- for the best part- dump the whole rest of the bucket over our heads. The sudden rush of hot water felt so good at the end. Even better than a real shower. We had to wait for dark for this kind of bucket bath because our porch was visible from the road.
Kids did not have that problem and they could entertain themselves for a good while in their little tub.
Tub for the Little Ones
Winter Time Baths
When winter set in, our baths had to come inside where there was heat from the stove. Our living quarters consisted of one room that measured 16 by 24 feet and we had a lot of stuff in there. A double bed, a single bed, a crib, a couch, treadle sewing machine, wood cook stove, gas cook stove, kitchen sink cabinet, and a table. It was kind of crowded. We didn’t have a drain system for the sink, just a bucket underneath that we had to empty by hand. No bathtub. So we improvised, using a wrought iron coffee table that had a removable glass top.
Coffee Table Bath Tub
We would start heating the blue enamel bucket on the stove, take the glass top and set it aside, and then drape a shower curtain all around the edges, held up with clothespins-the two piece wooden kind with the spring clamp. When the bucket was the right temperature we’d set it down inside the table and then climb in with it.
You had to hunker down and be careful not to splash water out the sides of it but it actually worked really well and also caught most of the cold drafts.
I remember one really cold, snowy day, some friends arrived unexpectedly while I was taking my bath in the table. The door was only about 6 feet from me and I hollered,
“Quick! Come in and shut the door. ”
They were standing there with their mouths open,
“What are you doing? Are you inside a table? Taking a bath?!”
“Sorry. Didn’t know you were coming. Give me a second to finish up here.”
They walked over to the other end of the room by the stove to warm up while I toweled off and got dressed.
“Well, now we know how you guys take a bath in this place. Wasn’t really wondering, but I have to say, I never would have thought of climbing inside a coffee table. How do you empty the tub?”
“Watch this. It’s easy.”
I proceeded to remove the clothespins and gather up all the edges of the shower curtain, gave it a slight twist, hung it over my shoulder and headed out the door.
Five seconds later, I hung the curtain on the wash line out on the porch and I was back inside. All cleaned up.
“Wow. That is such a good idea. Course it would be even easier if you brought your cast iron tub in and ran a drain line.”
“Right. Where would we put it?”
For the six years we lived in Ritchie County, we did our bucket baths according to the seasons, although every once in a while we would take a real shower at a friend’s house. When we first started out, we even went to the little motel in town a couple of times and paid them three dollars to use their shower. But that was cheating.
I have since lived in other places, in Nelson County Virginia, where we had to haul water and do bucket baths. Wells and septic systems are seriously expensive to install and it took us a while to be able to afford it. Outhouses and bucket baths worked just fine. for quite a few years. When I finally managed to get electricity, running water and a water heater I felt like I was coming up in the world.
These days, I still appreciate the hot running water that magically comes out of the tap when ever I turn it on. I will never take it for granted. It is good to know however, that we can live without it if we need to.
Stepping out onto the porch this morning I saw our resident wild turkey flock. There were four hens, a bunch of young ones and one Tom, cruising around eating in the back paddock. Last week I saw them up in the bee yard.
Two Wild Turkey Hens with Young Ones
It has been awhile since we have harbored any wild turkeys and I am glad to see them hanging around. I think they might be appreciating that I mowed the back woods the other dayso they could get around easier.. It was getting all grown up in invasive weeds again.
After the turkeys entered the woods I went to the barn to let the chickens out and feed them. I tried to find the turkeys again so I could give them some grain but they were too smart to let me anywhere near them. With all the foxes around here it is a wonder there are any turkeys at all, but maybe rabbits are easier to catch. And chickens.
