Picklemaking was brought to a halt this week because we ran out of mustard seeds. After none were found at two local grocery stores, a rush order was placed on Amazon and 12 ounces arrived the following day.
Now we know to add mustard seeds to our preps, or at least to our prepper pantry, if we want to pickle our cucumbers after the SHTF. We already have pickling salt and vinegar, and we grow our own dill, garlic, and two kinds of peppers, but we don’t grow mustard. Maybe next year.
Here is one of my wife’s favorite recipes for refrigerator pickles. They have to be refrigerated and have a limited shelf life, so they are not ideal for prepping, but they are tasty.
Speaking of tasty, we have been enjoying some fresh, plump blackberries. They are at their peak now and likely for the next five to seven days. We have also harvested two batches of green beans and our first pepper from the garden.
Bee Stings
I got stung in the tiny space between the top of my sunglasses and the brim of my baseball cap. It was enough to cause the flesh above my eye to swell, which forced my eyelid closed. I walked around with a droopy eye for almost 24 hours. It wasn’t painful, but it was annoying.
The worst thing is I wasn’t even working the bees. I was stung while mowing the lawn. The week before, they got me while I was weed whacking. I have so many bees, it can be dangerous to go outside. Counting one yellow jacket stings, I’m up to 12 stings this year, but this was the only one on my face. Most have been on my hands or legs, where they sting me through my pants. One bee crawled down my pants in the space next to my concealed carry holster a stung me on my butt cheek. An unforeseen downside of inside-the-pants holsters!
Cranky Bees
The bees are testy right now. The heat dome that has hit the East Coast has resulted in a week of hot weather with no rain. This has caused the nectar to dry up, which is making the bees cranky. My fear is the bees are eating all the honey I hope to harvest, but that’s better than them dying of starvation.
I saw a few bees working the Queen Anne’s Lace, a flower I have never seen them paying attention to before. That tells me they are looking for any nectar source they can find.
When I give the chickens water every morning, there are bees on the edge of the water bowl, something I rarely see. The bees use water to cool the hive. They fan it with their wings, and the evaporation helps cool the hive. In the hot weather, it’s not unusual to see bees bearding on the front of the hive, which means they hang off of it in clumps.
I put out water for them, and there is lots of natural water in the area, but some seem to prefer the chicken’s water. Because 17 chickens consumer quite a bit of water on a hot day, they have two watering bowls; one holds two gallons and the other three. The chickens avoid the one with the bees, so I guess they learned a hard lesson at some point: you mess with the bees, you get the stinger. Happily, the chickens continue to eat all the grasshoppers they can catch.
Beehives and Frames
I completed all five of the nuc boxes I was working on, although I have not yet painted them. The more I built, the better I got at it . I wish I could build a dozen more while I am on a roll, but I don’t have a need for them.
With so many recently constructed hive bodies, I estimate I need about 180 frames, so I built a jig that will allow me to assemble ten frames at a time. I watched several videos of people designing and using frame assembly jigs, and while the model I picked isn’t the fanciest, it was simple to make and gets the job done. A copy of the video on which I based my design is posted at the bottom of this post.
Before I build any more bee boxes, I plan to build a jig to help make their assembly easier and faster. I’ve got the directions and purchased the wood, but I don’t have any boxes to assemble, so there is no rush.
Summer Chores
There is much work to be done on the homestead, and a good deal of it is killing things. In fact, killing is commonplace on the homestead. (If you can’t put down an animal, don’t get livestock.)
At some point, we have to kill our chickens. Maybe in August, maybe next spring. When they dropped down to an average of only six eggs per day, I started making plans to slaughter them and get a fresh batch of chicks. Now they are averaging 11 eggs a day, so I gave them a reprieve.
For those who think this is terrible, it’s just economics. Buying feed for chickens that don’t lay very many eggs is a money-losing proposition. At some point, it becomes cheaper to dispatch them and raise a new batch. Of course, we can only do this when it is warm, which is why the timing is important.
We have tried raising chicks along with the adults, but the last time I did that, we lost seven of the ten chicks. If we raise them on their own, we rarely lose any. Of course, it means five months without fresh eggs.
Another chore is spraying Roundup on all the grass and weeds that are growing up through the gravel in the driveway. I believe much of the dirt that washed down the mountain during Helene carried seeds, and they are all trying to grow, despite the 35 tons of gravel we spread on our driveway after the storm. We’re going to spray and then spread even more gravel a few weeks later.
Hack and Squirt
Finally, we have to hack and squirt the young saplings that have popped up all over the hillside. We like plants to grow here to help hold the dirt and prevent erosion, especially on the landslide areas, but there are just too many young trees. Again, we think this is an aftereffect of the hurricane. Mother Nature is trying to bounce back.
Hack and squirt refers to the process we use to kill small trees growing where we don’t want them. We hack off the sapling a few inches above the ground and squirt a concentrated herbicide on the stem. This prevents it from growing back and prevents more trees from sprouting from its roots next spring.
We try to be judicious about what we kill and what we leave behind. Top of the list to die are the invasive Tree of Heaven followed by the buckeye, native tulip poplars and black locusts, all of which are far too plentiful. We will let a few locusts grow larger, only to cut them a few years down the road. We also try to let the sumac remain as the local variety does not get too large.
When we let trees grow, we space them out so if one catches on fire, it one will not spread to its neighbors. We also don’t let them grow where they would fall on the house.
Most of the hill is flowering shrubs such as Clethra, flowers we planted, and weedy wildflowers that spring up on their own. Right now, this includes Bee Balm, Black-Eyed Susans and other coneflowers, Jewel Weed, two colors of Liatris, Queen Anne’s Lace, thistles, clover, and a few Turk’s Cap Lilies. Before long, the Joe-Pye weed will bloom, followed by several varieties of goldenrod. That is when the bees will feast.
Video of the Day
Here’s the video from which I borrowed the design of the frame assembly jig. Mine is very similar, but I used all wood. I also use more staples on the frames than he does, shooting one in from the side right under the top bar for added strength. After years of beekeeping, I’ve yet to have one fail.
