Red Hot Art and Fun

Last night, my friend Gabriela and I attended the very swanky Red Hot party and auction at Tacoma's Museum of Glass.  Gabriela Cowan is half of the mother-daughter team that comprises Hexen Glass Studio in Olympia, and they create custom stained and fused glass artwork.  We each juried into this exhibit, in which all proceeds benefit the museum's education programs.  I also attended last year's event, and it has proven to be a great opportunity to network and gain exposure.

As both Gabi and I are introverted country girls who spend almost all of our time on farms and in studios, we were giddy with the excitement of dressing up and going to a fancy party.  Walking into the Museum of Glass during the exhibit is like entering a glass artist's wonderland.  The whole main space gets set up as a huge maze of every kind of glass art, nicely lit and displayed.

This is one of my favorites, blown and hand-sculpted glass by Shelley Muzylowski Allen.

With our glasses of wine, we perused the art, commenting on how important it is to get out of our comfort zones once in a while, and to look at art made by other people.  I enjoy eavesdropping on people as they look at my work.  Whether they like it or hate it, I find it interesting to hear their perspectives.  In this case, I overheard rave reviews, and watched as the bidding sheet quickly filled up!  Here's the piece they won:

Gabi's fused glass cityscape also received many bids, and it looked great.
I can't find a digital image of her piece, but here is one that is similar:

We were both invited to give an interview for a live webcast, and I agreed.  Always nervous when put on the spot, I don't remember much of what I said.  I was completely hypnotized by the tall, gorgeous woman interviewing me.

After the silent auction, we were called in for dinner.  After a week of eating without groceries, it was great to be served a delicious meal, but the very best part (possibly the best part of the whole evening) was the chocolate wine they served with dessert!  Chocolate Wine...I didn't even know such a thing existed!  It was absolutely divine, especially paired with a dark chocolate truffle.  What a treat, and what a fun night.  I'm so glad I was able to share the experience with a good friend.

Late July on the Farm

In early June, Mike was putting together a drip irrigation system in our garden.  Sadly, his mom passed away before it was finished, so he gave me a quick tutorial before he flew to California.  We wanted to have it ready for someone to easily water in our absence.  Now, drip lines pinned to the soil feed mini sprayers and drip spouts throughout the perennial garden when the spigots are turned on.  In the veggie garden, we have timers for drip lines to the pumpkins and sprinklers for the raised beds.  The greenhouse needs to be watered by hand every couple of days.  This whole system saves hours of time and many gallons of water.

I drove down to join Mike in California, and we have only been home a few days since mid-June.  The gardens are full of weeds and many of our veggies were ravaged by slugs, but it's still flourishing.

From this view, you can see a bed of beets on the left, which we will freeze and use throughout the winter.  The bed to the right has a zucchini in the foreground and the rest is carrots.  Beyond that are raised beds with cabbage, broccoli, fennel, potatoes, kale, spinach, and salad greens.  On the far end is a huge winter squash patch, and there is a bee hive in the far right corner.

Inside the greenhouse (it was hard to shoot a full view), the left side is full of tomatoes and there are snap peas beyond them.  There are cucumbers on the right, training up twine suspended from the roof.  Calendula and basil are planted in between everything else.  So far, I've only been able to eat one ripe cherry tomato, but there are many green tomatoes that will be ripe soon.  I eat the snap peas straight off the vines, and I have more cukes than I can eat on my own right now.  They are delicious!

The turkeys are growing fast, and are always famished.  You can see the ducks peeking out from behind them.  The black rouens are absolutely gorgeous.

Most of these chickens were babies only a few months ago.  They have finally gotten through their awkward teenage phase and are coming into their own.  I am only getting about one egg per day right now, so I look forward to these hens beginning to lay.

And the goats are sweet as ever, though Pan has been getting abrasions of some kind on his face, and Isabel currently has a similar injury on her face.  I have no idea what could be causing them.

In addition to the veggie garden, we have berries and fruit growing all over the property.  I've frozen 5 gallons of raspberries, and I've been snacking on blueberries and strawberries.  I'm trying to spend some time harvesting lavender each day, and the herbs are just going to seed.  Our grape vines are huge, and little grape bunches are just starting to grow from them. 

I'm so glad to be home for the summer, and enjoying the beginning of the harvest season.

Bee Swarm

Earlier this summer, Anouk ran in the house announcing that the bees were swarming.  Sure enough, when I checked the back yard, the air was filled with buzzing bees.  It's impossible to describe this experience, and when I tried to catch it on film, it simply looked like the sound and image was poor quality.  As we watched, the buzzing swarm slowly condensed into a thick cloud of bees, and they eventually began to cling to a post in our raspberry patch, covering it in a thick blanket of bees (referred to as a "beard.")

We brought out an empty super, then we moved the swarm into the box. We had only read about this process before, and it was surreal how docile the bees were.  We were literally scooping handfuls of bees, like they were liquid.  Mike cut the stalk they had gathered on and shook that into the box, then we put a feeder full of sugar water in the top box, put the lid on, and left them to settle in.  Bees are expensive, so we were thankful that we had an empty super on hand, because we now have a third hive, and it appears to be building comb very quickly.

We left the feeder on when we needed to leave town in June, and when we came home, they had built crazy comb to fill every inch of open space between the feeder and frames.  Here is a photo of a smaller crazy comb formation (from a different hive:)

Crazy comb is when the bees build free form Dr. Seuss-style structures to fill empty spaces in the hive.  We have learned to remove it so that the frames don't get welded together, making it impossible to tend the bees.  After removing that larger comb, I spent about an hour pressing the honey out, then melting the wax.  I decided to try using the microwave on thaw setting, and it worked perfectly.  Remaining honey sank to the bottom of the bowl, impurities were in the center, and the pure wax floated and hardened on top.  From just a bunch of excess comb, I have 12 ounces of honey and a big chunk of wax for use in soap and lotion-making! 

Eating without groceries for 2 weeks

It has been a crazy busy summer, including travel for a funeral, art exhibit, family reunion and a wedding.  None of my travels allowed me computer access, and it was a refreshing break.

During the last trip, I spent 10 days in Northern Michigan wilderness, where I grew up.  While I was away, my husband, Mike, was working a summer position in Olympia, so he ate his meals there and snacked on what little was left in the house.  As a result, I returned to find there was almost no food in the fridge, and the rest of my little family turned around and left the following day to go settle an estate.

Left alone with part of a jar of peanut butter, some rice milk, and a can of tuna, I considered a run to the grocery store.  But, then I harvested 3 gallons of raspberries, which I was putting in our garage freezer when I realized we still had a few bags of tamales that we made during the winter, two frozen chicken breasts, and some turkey, along with quite a few bags of frozen veggies.  Plus, the garden, while severely neglected, is producing a lot of fresh food.  So, I made it my goal to survive on what is here on our property until my family returns.

We have made an effort to eat a lot food that we grow ourselves, but I've been lazy about it lately.  My daughter has been eating nonstop and I am not the kind of mom who will spend a lot of time preparing food.  It's one of my least favorite chores, and I had fallen back into the habit of using store bought groceries for the main components of our meals.  I hope this exercise will remind me that I can make better meals using the eggs and produce we grow. So far, I've had turkey with kohlrabi and zucchini, a couple of salads with grilled chicken, a lot of cucumber slices, fresh berries, quite a few tamales, and I've been cooking chili in a crock pot, made with dried beans, turkey, zucchini, tomatoes and spices.

So far, I'm enjoying every meal, I'm eating more healthfully than I have in a long time, our grocery budget for this month will be almost nothing, and I wash and reuse my freezer bags, so there has been almost no garbage!

Slug hunting season is IN.

Banana Slug, native to Pacific Northwest forests.

For anyone who lives in a dry climate, or one with cold winters, this is a slug.  Slugs are hermaphroditic mollusks that live in our temperate, moist forests.  However, a European variety was first discovered in 1933 in a Seattle garden, and this species has flourished to become the number one enemy of Northwest gardeners.  While I rarely find a native Banana slug in my garden, I spend time every day collecting European Red Slugs as they devour my precious plants.

Anouk gets paid 10 cents per slug, and we have had to fork out an alarming amount of money this season.  Unfortunately, I like slugs when they aren't eating my plants, and I hate killing them.  This was my main motivation for getting ducks.  Slugs are a yummy duck treat, and it provides a quicker death for the slugs than snipping or salting.  (They seem to take at least 10 minutes to die, even when snipped in half, and it looks miserable.)

This is Arion Rufus, the non-native variety.

Sometimes, I'll find 10 slugs eating a single plant.

Here is a very sad kale that has been ravaged by slugs.

This year, possibly because it has been so very wet, it seems like we are extra inundated.  Usually, after about a week of daily slug hunting, the numbers diminish significantly.  I collect them on wet evenings or after a rain shower, and I feel like they just keep coming by the bucketload.

My ducks can't keep up with the supply.  They gobble them down, but after too many, they start spitting them back up.  Last night, Mike drove a bucket up to some raw forest property and dumped them out for me.  It might be more humane, but it really isn't good for our ecology.

So, if you live in the area, it is important to know the difference between the beneficial Banana Slug and the invasive species.  Be brave and pick up a slug, let it slide over your hand, and talk to it.  They respond to voices and music, and they are fun to learn about and observe.  Did you know, if you lick a slug, your tongue will become numb?  How do I know this? 
I'n not thelling.

Crazy Comb

When I checked our new hive yesterday, I found that they had been hard at work building some Dr. Seuss-style architecture on the top of their frames.  (We have a top-feeder in the honey super right now, so there is room for them to construct a fantastic wax sculpture.)

I tried to find information online about what to do about this, if anything, but I only found a couple of references to "crazy comb" that did not include more information.  So, I once again harassed my friend Damian, who advised me to remove it.  Today Mike and I both suited up and I fired up the smoker (which goes out every time, so we use liquid smoke for back-up) and we carefully peeled the structure off.  This hive has been much more productive than our first one, and they already have comb built out to most of the outer frames.  We were excited to find that the part we scraped off has some honey in it, so we had our first tiny taste of honey produced by our own hives.

Next, we checked the established hive that we started last spring.  We have had a honey super on it for a year, but they aren't building comb in that at all.  Still, they have the hive body completely full of honey, and they appear to be healthy.  Hopefully, now that spring has sprung, they will spend the summer building on those frames and filling them with delicious honey.

A friend has been teaching me to make soap, and I plan to spend this year making more of it, plus lotions, balms, and candles, using our wax, herbs, and beneficial plants.  I'm actually considering reducing my mosaic production and turning part of the studio into space for making and storing products from our homestead.  We hope to invest in two more hive bodies by the end of summer so that we can either capture a swarm or purchase more bees next year.

Anouk had a friend sleep over last night, so I showed the girls the wax we took from the hive.  They were both fascinated, and happy to taste some honey straight from the source.  Keeping bees has been a rewarding challenge so far, and it ties together all that we are doing here on our little homestead.

Farm Update for late May

Each year, we face some kind of delay getting our garden planted and projects started, but it seems to always come together.  This spring has been very cold and dreary.  I even had to scrape my car windows on Monday morning!  My early attempts to seed greens resulted in no sprouts at all, so I tried again a few weeks later and got a few little starts, and now I feel pretty confident that the seeds I planted last weekend will be successful.

Luckily for us, Mike runs the Horticulture program at his school, so there are always plenty of starts available if we can't pull it together.  Also, our best friends own a nursery, (www.BarnyardGardens.com) so we lean on them when our luck runs out.

Right now, I'm working most days while Anouk is in school, so I'm up by 6am to get all of us ready and off to school, then I drive the long commute to the job site, and put in about 4 hours of work before I race back to her school to pick her up.  After school, we run errands and I try to accomplish some important task at home, like cleaning, bill paying, and garden maintenance, before cooking dinner and putting her to bed.  I usually fall asleep during that process and I'm toast after that.

Two Black Rouen & Two Swedish Blue

In between those tasks, I tend to our animals.  Our ducklings grew to nearly full-size within a month, and they now live where our turkeys have lived in past years.  I failed to socialize them, so they run from me, but they are very easy to take care of, and we have been supplementing their feed with a steady supply of slugs.  They are gorgeous and fun to watch.

Our chicks are now about half grown, so I moved them to the main coop just the other day.  First, I put them in an adjacent enclosure for the afternoon so that they could introduce themselves to the established flock through the fence.

That evening, all of the chickens retired to the coop as usual.  The rooster was particularly loud, but not aggressive, and they have been happily cohabitating for three days now.  (Chickens will become very territorial if you put new in with old during the day, and they sometimes kill the newbies.)

When we get baby poultry, they spend the first couple of weeks in a plastic tub in a closet with a heat lamp.  Then I move them out to our original chicken coop, close to the house, in our old rabbit cage for extra security.  When they are ready, I move them out of the cage to have full range of the brooding coop until they are big enough to be out in a yard.  When I moved the chickens, I was able to release the baby turkeys from the hutch, so they now have a big coop to play in.  We did not go with a heritage breed this year, but I would have to write another long blog to explain why.  Next time I get a day to myself...

It has been a beautiful week, and today is predicted to be the best weather yet this spring, so I had better get off my butt and enjoy the sunshine.  I have plants to water, bees to check, and a car to pack full for the POSSCA Artist's Garage Sale taking place tomorrow.

Tomato and basil starts in the greenhouse, with cukes waiting in the tray.

Broccoli and cauliflower bed.