Garden Zone Confusion

It’s early March here in the north Idaho panhandle. Time to start seeds for the garden, right? I look across the yard and see my six year old daughter climbing a tree. That tree that she could hardly reach the branch in the summer is practically a bush with three feet of snow around its trunk. It’s time to figure out what is suggested for our gardening zone.

Hardiness Zone: 6!?

What is a hardiness zone and how does it apply to my garden? The coldest temperature possible for my region is not what determines the hardiness. From what I’ve read, this may be determined as the average coldest temperature it has been over the last thirty years. The map puts me in a dark green area, called zone 6, and says it gets down to -5 to -10° F regularly. Yes, that’s true, but other more southerly areas get those temperatures without the snow load I have. And, what about the coldest possible? I looked that up and it can get to -30°F in the colder winters.

 After seeing the news about the freeze that went through the Eastern and Great Lakes states this winter, I’d like to make sure my perennials are grown for that sort of hardiness. 

Another consideration will be with the frost dates. Most tree fruit needs a certain amount of time to grow and ripen the harvest. If the tree blooms too early, there won’t be pollinators out yet, and a frost is likely to wipe out any fruit that is set. 

Frost Dates? May 21 (last), September 19 (first), about 120 day growing season

Zone: 3 !?

The zip code I have to use tells me the local city’s frost dates. The city is bordered by a lake which probably helps to even out the growing climate. The locals refer to our area as “the snow belt” because it receives more snow. We will be dealing with ice and have snow still hanging around, hopefully melting, long after the city is clear of it. And, we’re not in the mountains. From what I’ve observed, our last frost date is on average closer to June 1, and our first frost comes early September. Locals love to share about the time it snowed on the Fourth of July. The tomatoes don’t like the chill in the air by the end of August, and rarely last past September 10. That’s closer to 100 day growing season for the heat tolerant plants. There’s a separate map for this! This map is not the one on the seed packets! This is the frost date based climate zone I need to know for my garden.

Zone 3. 

whole Wheat Bread

My daughter and I make the bread for our family. Because there are ten of us, a loaf at a time doesn’t feed us as much as we might like. We bake three loaves at a time. Also, because the first whole wheat recipe that we tried -and liked!- which made enough for us produced three loaves.

We have a grain mill for grinding the wheat berries into flour. When I was looking for one, the main thing I looked for was the fineness of the flour. I wanted to have flour that wasn’t overheated, as some machines do, but I also wanted to use the whole wheat in regular recipes. If you’ve seen the usual flour in bags sold in U.S. stores that is labeled whole wheat, you’ll have noticed the coarseness of it compared to regular all purpose flour. The first whole wheat flour I came across that didn’t have that  coarseness was the King Arthur white whole wheat. I baked bread with that before I purchased the mill.

Using freshly ground flours is supposed to have added nutritional and financial benefits, sure, but we do it for the flavor. I was raised on my Mom’s homemade bread, and I have the privilege of passing this blessing on to my children.

We used that original recipe for quite some time. I have have been looking, but haven’t found the original to link to. We added some ingredients beyond the original flour, water, yeast, salt, honey to help the bread be more sliceable for sandwiches. A family friend says it’s cake.

3 Loaves WW Bread

First take:
3 cups water
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon yeast
5 cups flour (freshly ground, whole wheat)

Mix those so that everything is just mixed together. Set a timer for 30 minutes and let that yeast wake up and the wheat flour start to soften and absorb the water.

Next add:
1/3 cup honey
3 eggs (we use farm fresh from the chickens in our yard)
2 tablespoons of a fat (I usually pick an oil, my daughter prefers melted butter)
4 cups flour (also freshly ground)
1 tablespoon salt (can halve this, but any less and you get that odd flat, sweet flavor)

Now we mix it all together and knead for ten minutes. If you have a large capacity mixer with a dough hook, then you can set a timer and let it do the work for you. Otherwise, this is a bit of a workout, and whole wheat bread dough is tackier than regular. Adding extra flour will make it too dense, hard to rise. It will get to a point where it sticks together instead of to you, but I just knead and knead, then use the bench scraper to get the rest off my fingers.

Cover, one of my lids fits over my mixer bowl. A wet towel or plastic wrap (but use a piece that will fit across three bread pans so you can reuse it for the final rise).Let rise until close to doubled. I aim for one hour to ninety minutes, depending on the temperature of the room. If it’s a cold morning, it might take two hours. Living in the north has its challenges. Just set a timer and after the first hour, check it about each half hour.

Next, I grab the scale. You can just eyeball it, but it’s a good way to train your eye. I take that dough from the bowl and put the bowl on the scale to set the bowl to zero (tare). Weigh the dough (grams are a little easier to divide by three) and divide the dough in equal-ish thirds. Traditionally, they should get a ten minute rest now while you oil or butter the bread pans. Then, form the loaves. To do this, I stretch -don’t squish- the dough into a square about the length of the bread pan. Then, roll it up, putting the seam down in the pan. Cover again and proof.

Here’s the trick with whole wheat: never over proof the dough! Proof? That’s another word for rising, don’t over-rise (raise?) the dough! The aim is to let the dough get about 80% of its potential size without going past that... How? Let it rise until the top is just an inch or two above the top of the bread pan. Again with the timing thing.

In the summer, it’s often warm enough that this only takes an half an hour, so I start the oven
preheating right away. Winter usually take 60-90 minutes. Right now, my oven is broken, kaput, out of commission, so I light the barbecue right away. I have one of those round cookers with a 24” grill. I light the lump charcoal in a chimney to get it going quickly, give it ten minutes and empty the chimney into the barbecue, adding more coal if needed. Set the deflector, which is basically a bread stone, and a grill above it, and let it warm up to 400°F. This barbecue needs to have the airflow choked down to keep it from overheating. I’ve found that leaving the bottom air intake 1-2 inches open and the top spinner about an inch open works great.

Just before it goes in the cooker, be it oven or barbecue, brush the tops with liquid. In a professional oven, there are jets of steam during the first few minutes to help with “oven spring.” At home, we can set a pan in the bottom to warm up with the oven, and maybe get too hot... then toss water into that... maybe not so safe? Enclose the bread, like in a roasting pan with a lid (Dutch ovens work great for sourdough and other round loaves). Or, we can use a wash: water or milk brushed or spritzed onto the risen dough so that it can steam away during baking to allow the bread to achieve that oven spring.

Aiming for 385°-400°F, the bread bakes for 25-40 minutes. Glass, light or dark thin metal, and thick cast iron all have somewhat different requirements. Aim for a deeper golden crust. I have never used a thermometer to check, but bread is baked when the center hits 200°F (190° without the enrichments; butter, eggs, milk).

Let the bread rest as long as you can before slicing into it. I try for 30 minutes minimum. We easily polish off the first loaf right away. I hope yours is as fantastic!

Summer of the Wasps

The bees that had come to visit had a short stay. This summer had the largest wasp population we’ve seen since moving here. It can be difficult to locate the nests of the bald faced wasps and others that dwell in the brush.

Strangely enough, we had a new swarm move in today. September 21! That’s very late in the season to try to get established. Looks like I’ll be brewing up some 2:1 sugar water and feeding them a warm cuppa each morning. We’ll see if they can make it to spring.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

At the end of a long hard winter which has killed off all your bees, what do you do? See what honey you can still salvage. What about the questionable stuff? Stack the boxes on edge for the swarms to find! I left a half dozen boxes on edge like this, some with broken comb, most of it cleared of stuff. When I returned last week, I found that bees had taken over two nuc boxes that were together. I stacked them up today with a couple more boxes and now I have a honey bee colony again!

New Year, New Kids

I had thought she was due around Christmas. A couple weeks before, she had minor signs of labor (some distress, followed by mucus discharge), then nothing. Her belly went from wide to round, so I assumed the kid(s) had turned. Christmas came and went. No signs of labor. Just the last few mornings, the possibly pregnant doe and her mother stayed in the barn when I brought feed out.

Sunday morning, I was groggily getting ready for milking when I heard loud calls. Distress? Wild animal? I peered out the window with the flashlight and saw all six pairs of eyes in or near the barn, in turn reflecting back, the light caught their coats and I could see each was there. Hunger? Extreme hunger..? I tucked in to the bedroom and grabbed the handgun, in case heroics were needed after all, and stepped out front. “MMAAAAA!!! MMAAAA!! mew! MMAAAA!” One of those sounds was not like the others. I headed back in to grab what was needed, when Ben appeared. He was already in his coveralls, great big weapon in hand (probably having flashbacks of a previous feral animal encounter). Great! He’d go straight out and see and I could get my milking equipment together, so the milking does wouldn’t be off schedule. I reassured him that I didn’t see any extra animal, and the calls sounded like hunger cries. Off he hurried to be sure all was well. Supplies in hand, I headed out. My routine is to get the alfalfa first and take it to the barn, which is what was needed!

I arrived to find Ben nervously watching over our panicking smallest doe and her two new kids. The first had been in the doorway of the barn and the second near the back. He had pulled off his shirt and wrapped the first, got it into the birthing stall, found the second and moved it, took the little mama and tucked her in with the kids. “She’s really hungry!”

With the pressure of the full uterus relieved, hunger had set in full force. She focused on filling her rumen. I sent the man for towels and hot water. With the towels, we dried off as much of the babies as we could, leaving their faces with just a bit of labor goo for the new mother to smell and clean off, then set them near her front end. I tucked into the milking stall and took care of the milkers while he watched over the little family. The milk pail was stuck into a snow bank near the gate to cool so I could watch the kids and mama. Once satiated, she seemed to realize that she was separate from the other goats, alone with the kids, and calm down.

The new mama focused entirely on the black and white kid. I checked her udder, and it had bagged slightly. I milked out one squirt from each side to clear any obstruction, then waited impatiently. Ben was concerned that putting his shirt on the kid may have given it too much of his smell and the little mama was rejecting her baby. Once she seemed satisfied at the first kid’s level of cleanness, she gave the second kid a curt lick or two and went back to kid one. Good sign: no head butting. Patience paid off, and they settled down. The kids started looking for her udder and had their first colostrum just fine.

Kids in January! The temperature was barely above freezing. I still had one sweatshirt sleeve “sweater” from last spring, but couldn’t locate the other. I spent a couple hours making crochet sweaters (the first pattern was huge!). Once in the barn, I took the sweaters and rubbed them on mama, then dressed the little goats in them. One of the kids had seemed weaker than the other (it may have been stepped on by the doorway), so I tucked it under mama to encourage nursing. A full belly cures many ails. In a short time, they both were nursing happily, and we left the little family to figure things out.

Blew the Top Off!

As we drove around the back, I commented that the snow looked heavy enough to knock the hive over. Then, I saw that it may have! Not the first hive with the cubic yard of snow teetering on its lid, but rather the fourth hive had lost its lid. With the mission to check and save the bees in mind, I gathered some supplies and finished “winterizing” them... Which I should have done back in November...

I trekked over to the hive and checked the area for prints; nada. The bees were buzzing mad, but it’s too cold to fly far. Thankfully, it was just the feeder tray and lid that had come off. I set a piece of newspaper over the hole and a fresh medium box on the inner cover. I poured a good pound or more of sugar into the new attic space. The sugar should absorb the excess moisture and become extra feed for the bees, if they’re short on honey. The feeder tray had been very wet, and with this week above freezing, I don’t want to risk extra moisture dripping on the bees. A wet or cold bee is very quickly a dead bee.

Once the lid was in place, I checked the other hives and installed attics from empty boxes. In the neighboring buzzing colony, the bees were right against the inner cover! The last hive in the line was a dead out; it had been a mid summer experiment and just didn’t have time to build up once the dry season killed off the nectar. The dead bees looked normal, just too few to survive winter. If there had been signs of disease, it wouldn’t be safe for the bees to share the honey with the hungry colony. The two boxes of honey went onto the hive in need. I hope it helps them build up quickly and healthy in the spring!

The larger hives didn’t make themselves heard. I’m not worried at this point, as last year I was convinced I’d lost my quiet overwintered hive, but it made it through. It seems the Carniolan breed of bee is usually quieter in winter. My noisy ones today may have only been complaining about the cold. I hope they make it through winter and have a strong start in spring!

Petrified Trees

On the way home from Grandma’s, we stopped to see the petrified trees. The trails are along the hills, with the revealed trees held captive for viewing. Each tree was labeled as to its breed, and they varied from small piles, like this ginkgo, to unite impressive sizes.

This collection is a couple miles off the highway. The view was lovely, and the hike was a pleasant way to break up a long drive.

Desert brush in bloom gave interesting hues and fragrance to the dried grass of the landscape. It’s been raining, which kept the pollen down. All in all, a lovely stop.

Kiddy Pool

When it’s a scorcher out there, it’s nice to dip in the local wading pool.

What is in the Coop!?

The chickens are laying in the forest. We're out of eggs. Do you know how hard it is to bake anything with no eggs? Okay, those with egg allergies do, though we don't have that issue. I went from having a dozen and an half eggs per day to just one, two, or three on a good day. The egg count started dwindling about a month ago, and I expected it was the hens running off into the woods broody. Three, four weeks, no chicks. What's up? 

T.J. came in during his evening chores and announced there may be a raccoon in the coop. Raccoons eat the heads off chickens! And there had been one headless chicken recently. Ben went out to protect the chickens and came back in to tell me about his adventure. "Guess what was in the coop?" Since his arrival was preceded by a particular musky scent,  I easily surmised. Thankfully, the skunk hadn't sprayed the men, and a wash took off the lingering scent. However, the chickens perfumed the yard in a whole new way.

Skunks usually just eat eggs. The chickens don't like their routine interrupted, and lay elsewhere until they find the trespasser is a pacifist. However, if there are no eggs, then the skunk will happily munch a chicken head instead. The lost chicken last month was probably a meal for this malodorous intruder.

Now, we have a trap. In the evening, T.J. sets it up just inside the coop to catch anything entering through the chicken door. Our first victim?

Restoring a Roof

First heatwave of the summer coincides with a four day weekend. I'm carefully watching that all are drinking plants of water. Ben has taken down the garage roof. He has four consecutive days to focus on this task, and there is no rain in sight! Instead of a straight forward replacement, he's opted to repair. The tar paper needed replacement, so that cost can't be reduced. The metal roof, though, can be cleaned, puttied, and returned to the roof, then painted. This should give us another ten to fifteen years before replacing it. All told, the cost of replacing it, including adding plywood or replacing other wood as needed, would run at least seven grand. Repairing is maybe a quarter the cost.

Double the Hives

With the center hive (most likely) having cast a swarm, we split the remaining hives (the three on the left are the new hives).

The first hive (on the right in the photo) had several queen cells, and loads of drones! I think the queen must have been rolled or squished at some point with how much drone comb is in this hive. I still have a hard time spotting queens, so I'll have to go over every inch on Friday or Saturday when I check the splits for fresh queen cells.

The middle hive is light on bees, but heavy on bridge comb. I have an adapter between the two layers and the bees have filled the gap with comb. They are starting to work the lower hive body (8-frame medium), but in the future, I'll probably just use a medium nuc until they're ready to expand into a larger box, then switch altogether.

This is my first time splitting hives. I pulled four frames for each nuc (said /nuke/, short for nucleus hive), aiming to have a frame of nectar and/or honey and one or two of emerging brood to care for the new queen and make lots of wax for her to lay in once she's bred. I'm using mostly mediums, so I added a second five-frame hive body right away, and chose to feed them. Even with a bit of grass in the doorways to encourage the older bees to stay, most of them will probably return to their old hives when they go to work the fields.

Swarm!

Way up there, maybe 50 or so feet from the ground, they landed. We had watched as they rose in a cyclone of wings ascending from the hive, then flew. I ran outside, searching, as I rounded the bee yard, I cupped my hands behind my ear to trace the sound better. And there they be! We tried what we had available, but the ladder was too short, no pole could reach, the tree frail - each smaller branch snapping easily in my grasp. How would it hold me up to climb another thirty feet? I gave up, defeated. 

We went in to play a game. I wandered out between turns, pondering. At one point, I thought the garden had too many bees flying over it, but I wasn't at liberty to check at the time. I finally ventured to get another tool from the shop and saw it.

A cluster of bees working their way into the hive. Upon inspection, there were dead bees on the ground. The swarm had decided to take over the garden hive. I hazard the guess that this hive may also have swarmed and the weakened condition left them an easy mark for the larger group of bees. They all filed in by nightfall.

Lawn Workers

I've seen lawn crews working to sculpt a perfect lawn everywhere I've lived. My boys aren't the fastest, nor do they strive for that perfectly even turf. But, I appreciate the efforts, and they get paid in food. They do even better in the forested areas!

Grass flowers

Most people have heard of hay fever. It's that sneezy reaction some people get to grass pollen. We're in the height of the season right now. My oldest can hardly go outside without misery, and he's my best farmhand!

One thing that was difficult to see where we used to live is the variety of flowers that grasses have. The beauty of living in a wilder place!

We had a wet spring, so everything is in bloom. The bees are happy, but those like my oldest son will be miserable for a few more weeks.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Remember that old adage? Today, May first, I saw the first dandelions of 2017. The trees in town had started blooming this past week, but here we are still waiting with bated breath for the buds to burst. The first dandelions mean the nectar flow for the honeybees will be starting in the next few weeks. We have had only a day or two close to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, but starting Wednesday the sixties and even seventies will not be unheard of!

The Theatre!

This week has been devoted to the art of the musical. When we moved here, I checked the local website for child friendly activities. Missoula Children's Theater (MCT) is a traveling group that puts on performances throughout the U.S. and several other areas (countries, bases, etc). Basically, audition is Monday afternoon, and rehearsals are everyday. Friday is dress rehearsal, and Saturday is a final run through and two performances. It's a lot at once, but great fun, and great memories. The auditions are open to everyone age 5-18, both public and home schooled. On their website, you can search for a performance in your own area.

This year's musical, in our town, is Gulliver's Travels (in Space). MissA is an "assistant director" and is helping the other children learn their lines, songs, dances, and can help put makeup on before the performance, keep the kids focused and help cue. MissB, MissC, MisterA, and MissD are in the play. They're having a blast!

Last Goatling for the Year

Each night, Tommy has been closing Megan into the birthing stall. In the morning, I milk the other two does before letting her out. She likes to peek over the stall wall and ask for some grain. Pregnancy and lactation (making milk) are a big drain on a body, so I give her a small amount to get her used to it again.

As we were getting ready to head out for the afternoon, the children started yelling to spread the good news: Megan has a kid! This is the last of our three does, and it was nice if them to spread out the births a bit, and even better that we could be home to check on all of them right away after the births.

Mark is adorable, with his dam's floppy ears, and lots of color from his sire.

Top Feeder for Nucs

I pulled the feeder off the hive to see better how it works. Bees are notorious for drowning themselves, so I put sticks I the syrup so they can land on those and not have to swim. They're terrible swimmers.

The bees crawl up inside the feeder, then down the ladder created by the screening, slurp up the sugar syrup, then crawl back into the hive and use the feed to help make comb or feed the bees. The white/gray stuff on the screen is wax that the bees deposited. In my experience, the bees close up all screening on the top of the hive. These ones may also be making comb because of the size of the gap to get into the feeder.

"Bee space" needs only be about 3/8-inch or they start building. This is close to three inches, so I'm pretty sure they'll just build comb up here. Other than this issue, I really like this feeder.

Fudge

It's okay to have favorites once in a while...

Helped Release Kids' Queens

MissB and MisterA each grabbed a box of frames, just in case, and headed to the apiary. Neither of the hives needed more equipment, but I want them to learn to be prepared.

MisterA's hive (the far one in the photo) has a nuc feeder on top; one of those pans with a cage to hold the bees out of the syrup - I'll do a closeup in another post. The rest of the hives have a box with a feeder tucked into it. The close two have inverted jars of syrup, which they gobble down fast! I hope their not just leaking! The last feeder is more like an inverted tube cake pan with a passage in the center for the bees. I have one on my big hive, too.

The new beekeepers were a little intimidated with the tiny cork in the queen cage. I had them smoke their hives and open them up, but they asked me to swap the marshmallow in for the cork. Now, we'll wait at least a week to check for ba-bees: eggs, larva, maybe even capped brood. Actually, it's supposed to rain all next week, from what I can tell, so it may be more like ten days.

MisterA's hive is bearding... I'm not sure that's a good sign at this point. They have absolutely no comb built. We had used a stick to cover most of the entry, but I think it wasn't in well enough and the other hives may have been robbing them. I cut some entrance reducers, and we'll see how it goes. I only had two inner covers, I think the top entrance is easier on the bees in my area. If it is moisture, maybe I should make up some moisture quilts for over the feeders. A short frame with a cloth bottom that can be filled with shavings or some other absorbent material will allow the moisture out without making more places for the bees to defend.

(The other hive has been removed and the bees allowed to choose one of the other hives to join because I thought my big hive may have gone queenless, and she's been moved).

MissB's bees are on  the right. You can see the top entrance in the inner covers on both these hives. We had a stick in front of MissB's lower entrance originally, too, but exchanged it for an entrance reducer. The bottom board is the short way up, so we'll have to flip it to fit the reducer in properly. 

The Italians (in the left hive) seem a bit more aggressive than the rest of my bees. The rest are Carniolans. They bump against me and fly up in my face more than the others. The Italians are reputed to build up faster, sometimes to their own demise, and store more honey per capita  than the other breeds. The Carniolans are recommended for the north because they seem to only lay as much brood as they can care for, so are slower to build up, which helps conserve stores as well.