I have volunteer squash all over the yard in odd places from tossing out bad ones last year. The vine out in the raspberry/ buckwheat patch has turned out to be a Calabash, or Vegetable Spaghetti squash.
Squash Hiding in the Buckwheat Patch
Quite a few of them rotted before I realized they were ripe but I still have a good pile of them to deal with. These particular ones won’t keep because a rabbit injured them in small spots so I need to cook and save them for later. Since I wasn’t sure how best to freeze them I Googled “How to Freeze Spaghetti Squash” and got this great link to the site Pioneer Thinking which has some good recipes.
So, I will cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and bake them at 375 F for 30 minutes. Then fork out the strands, let them cool, pack into quart size freezer bags, label and freeze. I save some of the seeds to plant again and if you like you can roast them in the oven to eat. You can even eat the blossoms if you want. Tempura is a good way and Alexandra’s Kitchen has a good stuffed Tempured Blossom recipe.
Squash Blossom
I love Spaghetti squash and use it like pasta or rice for our standard “Stuff on Rice” dishes, which varies according to what is available in the garden and the fridge. I usually saute onions and garlic, add sliced mushrooms, then whatever veggies I have- like broccoli or tomatoes-add some broth, thicken it up with a little cornstarch/ cold water paste and spoon it on top of the hot spaghetti squash.
I also have a volunteer Patty Pan squash vine by the garage door, which is producing well, and found some recipes for it here at Delishably
Crookneck Squash in the Tomatoes
Yellow Crookneck squash volunteered in the middle of the tomato patch in the veggie garden and also mini gourds along the fence. I was hoping for some Blue Hubbard or Butternut but will have to plant them instead- right away, as soon as I dig the potatoes out to make room.
Most summer squash can be used interchangeably in recipes. One of my favorite ways is to slice them and cook them on the grill with a spritz of olive oil and herbs.
Happy gardening and eating
– Wendy lee at Edgewise woods, gardens and critters
The swarm of bees that landed in our Walnut tree back in June seems happy in their new hive box, with larvae and eggs developing nicely. That is the only way I know if there is a queen laying. I have not managed to actually find a queen visually yet.
Where is the Queen?
The other five hives have been slurping down a gallon each of sugar syrup every two to three days. It seems I am constantly heating up big pots of syrup on the stove. It takes one pot with a gallon and a half of water (12 pounds) and three bags of sugar, and another pot with two gallons of water and four bags of sugar, each feeding. First I heat it up to melt the sugar, then I have to wait while it cools down. I hate feeding them white sugar and would like to try Maple tree sap, or something else, instead. I have to do some research on that to see what would be healthy for them. The beekeepers I mentioned it to, did not think it a good idea. I don’t see how white sugar can be good for them. The only reason I am feeding them this far into the season is that they are still building wax comb on the brand new foundation and that requires a lot of carbohydrates to produce. Next year they will get an earlier start and have the foundation already built when the nectar flow comes in. They also get protein and probiotics in the form of pollen patties, to help them feed the brood.
The bees are continuing to build out their double deep hive bodies (two ten inch deep boxes with ten frames each) and until they get them all filled up I cannot add a super (shallower box for honey storage) to any of them. A screen goes on under the honey super to prevent the queen from moving up there and laying eggs. Otherwise the frames would be all mixed up like they are in the rest of the hive- a little brood, pollen and honey on each frame.
Frame
I will have to treat the bees for mites in September, so any honey I get will have to be collected in August, when there is maybe not that much nectar available, although this link may help so I can plant more for them. I would love to get some honey for myself this year but I may not. It kind of depends on what is available out in the surrounding fields and woods when I finally add the supers .
I have to check the hives at least once a week to be sure they still have a laying queen as evidenced by brood and larvae in the cells. Last week I found the number two hive with no larvae and very little brood left. This made me think that the swarm I caught might have come from this hive. They absconded with the queen without leaving me one behind. I called Eversweet Apiary, which is only about seven miles from my house, to see if they had a new Carniolian Queen available, so I install a new one. Heading out the drive the next morning, I glanced over at the bee yard and saw that the number two hive was now covered with bees on two outside walls. This was different than the bees “just cooling off on the front porch”, as Ed Forney of Geezer Ridge likes to say, when they congregate on the walls above the entrance to cool off. These were covering the back and side of the hive. They were dripping off the bottom and not flying through the air, but huddled as if in a flat-ish swarm, or maybe about to take off. Not again!
Bees Plastered to the Back Wall
I hurried out to Eversweet to get the new queen, hoping the bees would stick around long enough for me to introduce her to them. When I asked the guy there what he would do, he said, “All you can do is try. Put her in there and see if her pheronomes will lure them back in. ”
As soon as I got back, I suited up and wedged the queen cage in between two frames. Then I removed the entrance reducer and canted the top feeder box off to the side to give the bees an easier way to get back inside and check her out.
Canted Top Box
I looked out there every hour or so all day and they seemed to be moving back in. By nightfall, they were all inside and I straightened up the box again.
Bees Cooling on the Front Porch
The queen comes in a tiny cage that has a sugar plug in one end that the bees have to eat through to release her.
Queen Cage
It takes the bees a couple of days to eat through and allows just enough time for them to get used to her smell. There is always the chance that they will not accept her but when I checked two days later they seemed to be feeding her through the wire mesh, not trying to sting her, which was a good sign. There was a bee in the tube and almost though the sugar plug so she she should be released by now. I am going out to check…and there is a bee meeting tonight l that I will need to attend. There is so much to learn.
-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewisewoods, Gardens and Critters
School’s out for the summer and I have managed to borrow my grandson to help me with some farm chores. We are repairing and building fences and gates. Yea!
Project One- Back Pasture Gate
First job we tackled was replacing the rotted gate post to the pasture out back. I had been propping it up with an angled t-post for awhile and it was getting ridiculous. Every time I opened the gate to drive the truck through, I had to pick it up and carefully maneuver it around . We had a nice fat Cedar post waiting around just for this gate and the two of us got her done.
Some of the Fence Tools
Of course, it was not a simple one step job. They never are. It was also a lesson in tools. First we had to clean up the fence line, digging out honeysuckle vines, pruning back the lilac bushes, limbing up the Leyland Cypress, and then we had to bundle all the brush up and drag it to the burn pile. Then we had to pry out old staples, and set the electric fence off to the side. Next, we dug the hole with the scissor type post hole diggers, set the new post in and tamped it down with the six foot tamping iron/ digging bar. Then we drilled two big holes- to screw the hinge pins into- with the half inch drill and a long extension cord. Finally we nailed up a board for bracing, re-stretched and stapled the woven wire to the post and hung the gate.
Long Handled Fence Stretcher
Oh, and then we added some insulators and replaced the electric fence attached to it. Whew. It’s gorgeous and the gate now swings freely on it’s hinges.
Rehung the 12 Foot Gate
Project Two- Front Paddock Fence and Gate
Next for the little paddock fence out front, a corner of which is also the bee yard. This area was originally a cut flower garden and the fence consisted of two foot rabbit wire with a couple strands of smooth electric wire later added on top to keep the horse in. The marauding herds of deer have since beaten it down. We had to first prune back a forsythia hedge to expose and then remove all the rusted wire. Jeff worked on that awhile and then my grandson finished it. It is kind of fitting that he is wearing his FFA (Future Farmers Of America) shirt while doing this work.
New Woven Wire
We set in eleven more fence posts ( Blayne did most of the work) and strung four foot high woven wire for this paddock. There was already a working truck gate but I wanted a people gate by the bees, so we built a four foot wide wooden gate in the garage and brought it out when the wire was done.
Building the Bee Yard GateHanging the Bee Yard Gate
The finished fence makes me happy. I love getting these projects crossed off the list. Some jobs require help, and this is one of them. I am appreciating my grandson and his willingness to work. Plus, he is getting experience with saws and drills and all sorts of fence building tools.
Project Three-Chicken House Again
In the interior of the barn there is a very sheltered area that expands the chicken space, especially useful in bad weather. It is handy to have when I need to separate different groups of chickens, and right now, with so many chickens, we need the extra room. The wall I used to have was thrown together from scraps and not very user friendly so I tore it down recently while I was cleaning the barn. Yesterday we built a hinged people door and a chicken wire wall and we will add some nest boxes and roosting poles tomorrow. Oh. And a swing for the chickens to play on. There is already a little chicken door that can join it to the main covered run.
New Inside Chicken Gated
I am having so much fun with all these projects. Eventually, I suppose I will be caught up and will have to find some paying work but I am trying not to think about that too much. For now, I am enjoying my grandson and my critters.
I was out in my garden this morning when I first heard the swarm of bees. I searched for the source of the sound and saw thousands of bees madly flying around in the top of a walnut tree nearby.
Swarm Zeroing in on the Walnut Tree
They were about fifty feet up. I went and got my digital camera to zoom in on the upper branches for a better look and finally focused on a large mass of bees hanging from the branch tips in the upper reaches. I watched as they calmed down and huddled together after about an hour of buzzing about. They would have to land in such an un-reachable tree. I did not want to lose all these bees. There were thousands of them. I have purchased five new sets of bees this year, in smaller quantities than this, and they cost from $100 to $165 each. I wanted to capture them and keep them home.
So High Up There
I have caught a swarm once before, a few years ago, when a friend left his bees untended at my place, but they had landed in a young apple tree and were only about ten feet off the ground. How in the world was I going to get to these? I wish I had a bucket truck. I decided to call Storm, a fellow beekeeper who is also a tree pruner, to see what he thought. He was nice enough to come right over to assess the situation. They were too high, even for him. He suggested that I rent a man lift from Jefferson Rentals over in Bardane, which is only about seven miles away, so I googled their number and called them. They had a forty five foot high, tow behind unit for $190 that I could have until Monday morning. I only needed it for about an hour and decided to ask my son in law if he was ready to paint the high end of his house yet. Might as well get our money’s worth. I drove over with my pickup right away. The guy at the yard talked me through the operating instructions and I pulled it home, every once in awhile taking a nice, deep, calming, yoga breath. This was turning out to be an intense day.
When I got home I backed the unit up to the tree, shut the truck off and climbed out. I was going to inch it forward a bit but then the truck battery died, so I gave up on that and started leveling the four hydraulic anchor feet. That took longer than expected and used a lot of battery power. I could plug it in to 110 house current if I was closer to the house but I would have to rely on the string of batteries out here. I had a fleeting vision of being stranded at the very top of this man lift with a bunch of mad bees and no battery power to get me down. I tried not to think about that again.
Going Up
Once the unit was level it was easy to climb into the basket and maneuver it upwards from the second control box . First I put on my bee jacket and gloves. I had to trim a few branches with loppers on the way but nothing major. I got right under the swarm and was able to reach up to clip the three branches it was draped on.
Bee Swarm
I clipped the first bunch and they landed kind of hard in the 20 gallon plastic bucket I had brought up. I lowered the rest more gently and put a lid on them. Time to go back down. It was a little rickety feeling up there when the boom was fully extended but the base stayed stable so it was all good. Jeff looked small way down there.
Way Down Below
Once I was back on the ground, I dumped the bucket of bees upside down over a double-deep hive body with a syrup feeder and nine frames of foundation in the lower box, and put a cover on it. Hopefully they will like their new home and stick around.
I am not sure yet if these bees are from my hives or if they were passing through and were enticed down by my bee yard. I will have time tomorrow to go through my five hives and determine that. I will be looking for queen cells, which I did not see the other day when I inspected them. I have been feeding them pollen patties and sugar syrup every few days, and have added an extra deep box to two of them when they seemed to be running out of room. Two days ago, there were still empty frames left for them to fill. Bees will leave if they run out of room. I am hoping that these are from somebody else’s hive nearby.
When we were finished, we had to go buy a new battery to replace the five year old one in my truck. Then we drove it over to our daughters house so they could finish painting the high gables on their house tomorrow. It was kind of fun to be able to do this job and I will take it back on Monday morning first thing.
