Boundary Waters, Day 1

 The trouble with leaving on vacation is that many of the things that you don’t do at home while you are away are waiting for you when you get back. Tomatoes to pick. Weeds to pull. Bills to pay. 563 unread emails. (disclosure: I left with over 400. I’ve gotten so bad about checking daily.) “Blog post” has a permanent place on my to-do list, but one day follows another. Today, however, it is dangerously hot and humid outside. I harvested between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning, and when I was done, my T-shirt was so stuck to my body that I couldn’t get it off to put on a dry one.

I am taking time this afternoon to start blogging about our trip to northern Minnesota. Since we’ve been back for over two weeks (seems longer), it’s nice to look back at the photos and remember the cool weather.

The drive to the cabin on Saturday, August 3, was uneventful, which is what you want if you have to spend 11.5 hours in a car.

Sunday morning was beautiful. We try to not get in the car at all on Sunday as we are still stove up from Saturday. We had blueberry pancakes with peaches and bacon for breakfast, although by the time we got up and organized to cook, it was more like brunch.

Breakfast

Shortly after the dishes were done, we had our first loon sighting, an adult and a baby. The baby was nearly as big as the parent, but that can be deceiving as down makes a chick look larger than it actually is. The adult was busy finding small fish to feed the chick.

One of many fish fed to the baby

After the chick took the fish, it preened itself, showing us its white belly and sticking out its foot.

Post-prandial preening

Then it stretched.

Stretch and flap

The parent brought another fish.

Next fish

The chick proceeded to give us quite a show, first rolling over,

Roll and preen again

Then stretching again,

Stretch!

Putting up a foot and waving it in the air (we’ve often observed this, but I don’t know why they do it. If they are trying to dry it, it is all in vain since is goes right back in the water. Perhaps it is another way to stretch. Chickens do something like it without the wave.)

Wave #1

And waving another way.

Wave #2--big feet, hey?

The loons moved out of our bay. We passed the day sitting on the deck enjoying the pleasant coolness. Jane grilled dinner. The foil-pack potatoes came out perfectly, golden and crunchy on the bottom.

Mmm--foil pack potatoes

Here’s my plate with potatoes, sweet corn, and zucchini from my garden along with half of the porter from the porterhouse we shared. We’d had snacks with happy hour and left the New York strip for another meal.

Supper

In the middle of supper, we saw something far away that didn’t behave like a loon. It was an otter! Leaving my meal to get cold, I grabbed my camera and went down to the dock to take a great number of poorly focused photos. Otters are surprisingly long.

Look at the length of this animal--that's its backside breaching the water behind it.

This is the most focused picture I was able to get.

Bad pose, but sort of in focus

After supper, the loons came around again, this time much closer to our side of the lake.

Swimming into the sunset

Good food, good weather, good wildlife viewing, good company, good food and wine—it was a perfect start to vacation.

 

Late summer

 I know, I know. It’s been a while. It seems that it takes three weeks to be gone for one—one week to get ready, one week to vacation, and one week to get caught up when you get back.

I have one post leftover from before my trip, and hope to continue to post vacation pics regularly over the next week or so. However, I’m getting lots of tomatoes right now, and those may cause delays. Just saying.

The oaks are dropping acorns now. At the end of July, some acorns came down early with branches when we had windy days. One morning, a doe and her still-spotted fawn came around to dine. I love the deer when they are eating something other than my garden or Terry’s trees.

A peaceful morning under the oak

I’ve had successes and failure with my prairie plantings this year. One of my very favorite plants is cardinal flower. It is so incredibly RED. I’m hoping I can collect seeds and get them to germinate so I can plant it everywhere.

Cardinal flower

The obedient plants, which I also put in last year, have done very well. The pollinators love them. There’s a big bumblebee front and center in this picture.

Obedient plant

I ordered three Queen of the Prairie plants. Two of them drown, even though it is allegedly a wetland plant. The third is doing well and has a striking pink inflorescence.

Queen of the Praire

I will get out for more pictures of flowers soon. The ironweed and lobelia that I grew from seed are about to bloom. I’m pleased with how some of the plants from last year are spreading. That’s my strategy—plant the most aggressive natives I can find and let them have at it!

More soon, I hope.  

Hey, honey!

 

Summer is in full swing, and we are checking annual tasks of our list. The peas have been picked, shelled, and frozen. I pulled out the pea plants and took down the trellis. Done. The garlic is harvested and drying outside. The meat chickens are resting peacefully in freezer heaven. I’ve started making pickles. The first tomatoes from the high tunnel are ripe. Zucchinis are coming in at a rate of three per day, which adds up faster than you might think.

There was a surprise addition to the list this week—harvesting honey. The story begins with my friend Jane, whose favorite hobbies are online shopping and watching the Cubs. She found a good deal on a honey extractor, which is a giant centrifuge that spins the honey out of the comb. She knew we needed one because, if you are a loyal reader, you may recall that I tried EVERYTHING to get honey out of a single frame last fall. I ended up with a big sticky mess and about a half cup of honey. Spinning is definitely the way to go.

The honey extractor: motor on the top, rack for frames inside

What I didn’t realize was that we would be using the centrifuge so soon. I thought we would wait until fall. Our bees made honey last year, but did not make it through the winter. When we got new bees this spring, I thought we left all the honey in the hive to support the bees until pollen and nectar was abundant. Unbeknownst to me, Terry had pulled out some of the honey-containing combs and stored them in his shop. Terry was, therefore, practically giddy when the giant box showed up at the house. He wanted to begin at once. “It’s good to do it when it’s hot out,” he said.

I looked at the frames, which had been stored in a plastic bin the bottom of which was coated with honey and bugs. Also, there were suspicious bubbles here and there.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” I asked. “It hasn’t fermented?”

“It’s fine!” Terry insisted. “It can’t ferment. It’s too thick.”

I conceded the point. After all, archeologists have found honey in Egyptian tombs thousands of years old that was still perfectly edible. Terry assured me that all the impurities would be filtered out.

We assembled the extractor by putting on the legs and the cover.

Assembled with bricks to hold it steady

We put it outside on the patio in the afternoon sun so the honey would heat up and flow more readily. Terry put brick on the legs to minimize shaking. The combs were not uniformly full of honey, so there was no way we could balance it perfectly.

Our first problem was that we didn’t have an uncapping knife. This is a heated knife that melts the top of the comb off, opening each cell. We tried scoring the comb with forks. We loaded the frames in the extractor.

Frame loaded in the rack

And started it spinning. Honey and wax bits appeared on the side of the centrifuge.

If you look closely, you can see wax and honey drops on the sides

We were puzzled at first that we didn’t seem to be getting a lot of honey out of the comb. The frames remained heavy. I got out my beekeepers’ book, which explained that we had a reversible extractor that would only remove honey from the outside of the frame. Duh! You would think I didn’t use a centrifuge nearly every day of my research life. So we spun one side for a while, then reversed the frames.

We had to stop for the day before we were done with the first two frames, and we didn’t get back to it for a few days. Honey has lasted for thousands of years in Egyptian tombs. Meanwhile, I watched YouTube videos from which I learned that the best thing for uncapping is an electric carving knife. Eureka! I already owned one! Also, to clean the extractor, you should start with cold water, which solidifies the wax so it flakes off. Warm water will melt the wax, and then you will have a right mess. The honey should be filtered as it is removed from the extractor. Collect the honey in something that has a spout at the bottom so you can draw off the honey after the foam has settled on the top. A paint filter over a five-gallon bucket with a hole and hole cover (commercially available) works great. I never heard of a paint filter, but I do own a set of soil sieves that range from coarse to exceedingly fine. I don’t use them for soil. I got them for cleaning dry beans, but have found other food-related uses from time to time.

Electric knife in hand, we finished spinning the rest of the frames in one day. We had enough honey to barely come up to the hole in the side of the drum. Terry tipped the drum while I held two of the coarser soil sieves over a large bowl. I don’t have pictures because it was just too sticky. We managed to remove all of the wax flakes.

Here’s the honey in the bowl.

After the first filtration

The only thing I had that opened on the bottom was a 1-liter gravy separator. It works like a separation funnel, if you’ve ever had to endure Organic Chemistry. You pull the handle and a valve opens on the bottom. I put about half the honey in that.

Honey settling in a gravy separator

The bubbles coming to the top

The rest went into a 2-liter pitcher. Our total honey production at this point was 2.3 liters.

1.3 liters of honey in a pitcher

As instructed, I left it overnight. In the morning, the top was indeed covered with foam. I expected air bubbles, but it had the consistency of marshmallow fluff. I drew the honey off the bottom of the gravy separator as planned, but it wore out my hand holding the trigger that long. I took the foam off the pitcher with a spoon, which worked quite well.

Honey fluff

I was so amazed by the foam that I had to show Terry, even though I knew he’d seen it before.

“Oh yes!” he said. “That’s valuable! People use that for stuff.”

“For what?” I asked. “Honey whoopie pies?” The only time I remember buying marshmallow fluff was when I was making whoopie pies, which were really good BTW.

Terry couldn’t exactly remember. He has a tendency to think lots of things are more valuable than they actually are. This is why he is a packrat.

I ran the honey through three ever finer filters and was pleased with the outcome. It’s a wasteful process. No matter how hard you try, some honey is left behind with every transfer. Nevertheless, we ended up with four lovely pints of honey. And the clean up with cold water was much easier than I thought it would be. 

The final product

One more skill to add to our resume!

 

 

Summer blooms

 Full disclosure: I took these pictures awhile ago. I have, temporarily, gotten caught up with the weeding and finally have time to write a brief post. We’ve been getting rain on a regular basis, although it looks like Beryl is going to be a bust. She’ll be dropping all her moisture south of us, if the forecast is correct. I’ve gotten all my native seedlings in. Here’s Rain Garden II.

The start of another rain garden

I have extended the pollinator garden by the south garden. This is a pic of the established garden.

Pollinator garden after several years

One of my favorite flowers is butterfly weed. It takes a few years before it blooms, but I’m pleased that several plants are now established. If the flower shape looks familiar, it's because it is a milkweed, like rose and common milkweeds (see below).

Butterfly weed--a very orangey orange

Here is the new one. It includes rose milkweed, meadow blazing star, great blue lobelia, wild senna, partridge pea, common ironweed and penstemon.

The extended pollinator garden, all natives

The Milkweed Forest, as Terry calls an unmowed patch of the field where common milkweeds are abundant, is crazy with blooms. And yet, I have only seen one monarch at a time. You’d think there would be more.

The Milkweed Forest

Common milkweed

We have seen but one monarch caterpillar. Sadly, it was gone when we went back to collect it to raise in captivity. We suspect a bird ate it. Every Introductory Biology text I’ve ever taught from says that the caterpillars are toxic from eating the milkweed, and birds leave them alone. Unfortunately, the birds have not read the textbooks.

Monarch caterpillar

The black-eyed Susan seedlings were two feet tall and terribly root bound by the time I got them in the ground. That very night, the deer came along and trimmed them down to one foot. And so I had to put them in bondage the next day. They are recovering now. I can’t decide whether to uncover them or not. What to do….

Black-eyed Susans covered in deer netting

The seedlings I planted in the Milkweed Forest last year are very, very crowded.

Cup plant, rose milkweed, Joe Pyeweed, wild senna, partridge pea, all crammed together

Many bees visit the rose milkweed, such as this bumblebee.

Bumblebee on rose milkweed

The cup plants are doing well. The cup plant catches water where the leaves are fused at the stem, making it available for birds and bees. I noticed that even when there has been no rain, enough dew accumulates in the cup to make a little puddle.

Cup plant

I took a walk to the creek one day when it wasn’t beastly hot. The bleeding hearts I started from bare roots all sprouted and are getting big. I don’t suppose they will bloom this year. Perhaps next.

Bleeding heart

The catalpa are in bloom.

Catalpa flowers. These have suffered some wind damage

As are the elderberries.

Elderberries--lots of fragrant flowers, surprisingly few pollinators

There was a robin nesting in the magnolia by the garage. When I first spotted the next, a little bald head was sticking up. Then mom or dad came back to guard it, and I didn’t see the baby anymore. Note that this enterprising robin has incorporated plastic strips from a fraying tarp into its next. Waterproofing!

A robin on a nest built in part with plastic tarp strips

When the thyme was flowering in the high tunnel, it was visited almost exclusively by this bee-mimicking fly. We know it’s a fly because it only had two wings instead of four (not the best way to tell, because bee wings are hard to count), and its eyes are very large. Some fly eyes touch in the middle of the head.

A bee-mimicking fly, with eyes that touch on the top of its head

We have a whole lot of smooth sumac next to the road. I have never seen it flower so prolifically as this year. It might be because it doesn’t have the bright red clusters of berries that staghorn sumac has. I grew up with staghorn sumac in Michigan. When I moved to Illinois, I wondered why the sumac branches weren’t fuzzy. I caught on eventually.

Smooth sumac in flower

Friday marks exactly 7 weeks since we got the chicks, and that means its butchering day. It makes me sad, yet in death they fulfill their function in life. They are a prey species. Just a link in the chain. They’ve had a good life, however short.

Hot chicks

 Summer arrived suddenly and relentlessly with 90°F days and 70° nights. Day after day, I’m soaking my clothes through by 10 a.m. I made a goal of only working outside before lunch, but every day, I find just one more thing that has to be done outside. Once I do that one thing, there’s always one more thing….

The chicks are hot. They stand or lie around with their mouths open, panting with their throats. It’s called gular (“of the throat”) flutter.

Gular flutter--also note fluffed feathers to expose bare skin

We put up the chick fence on June 12 and let them outside for the first time I have mentioned before that they are jungle fowl in their evolutionary history and retain an aversion to direct sun. For that first day, I put one of the shade shelters over the wind break so they could stay out of the sun. We decided not to drag the dog kennel covered in landscape cloth into the run until we move the hens up in the fall. All of the bricks and boards we use to keep the cloth on the kennel are in the windbreak. The chicks think this is a very fine jungle gym.  They all huddled in the shade at first. Soon a few began to foray out into the grass.

The first outing as two chicks start to explore. I should have noticed the
size of the chick compared to the height of the door entry.

In addition to getting the chicks some fresh air, I was motivated to get them out of the coop so I could change the seriously stinky bedding. Meat chickens eat a lot. The consequences should be obvious to you. I shooed everyone out, shut the door from the inside, and changed all the wood chips. Afterward, one chick peered in curiously, but would not enter.

Can this be home if it doesn't smell like poop?

A little while later, there was a pile-up by the door. I didn’t think much about it until bedtime, when it became apparent that many of them couldn’t manage the big step into the coop. The problem was that previous chickens had used the dry soil next to the coop for dust bathing, effectively lowering the soil surface several inches. With darkness upon us, I grabbed the stragglers individually and put them inside.

Pile-up by the door

The next day, I installed a porch. I filled in the area by the coop with top soil and put two bricks in front of the door. This enabled even the smallest chick to come and go at will. Within moments, however, chicks were dust bathing in the newly installed soil.

The porch in front of the door

Eager dust bathers

Look how deep the Ameraucana (dark) chick has dug! Little stinker! I just filled that in. Also note the chick at the top. I see chicks like this and think they are about to die, but no, they are just rolling around in the dirt.

Ameraucana in a hole, seemingly wounded but actually fine chick at the top

Chicks also stretch a lot. I assume they are having growing pains or something. It is always the same. The leg and wing of the same size are stretched backward. If this isn’t a yoga pose, it should be. “The Chick” it could be called.

Chick yoga

In the morning when the chicks first come out of the coop, they feel compelled to establish the hierarchy all over again with chicken fights. It’s the males mostly (no surprise). You may have heard the expression “get your hackles up.” Hackles do exist. They are neck feathers. It is hard to catch a chicken fight in a pic because they happen so quickly, but I finally did it! Behold chicks with their hackles up (and two bystanders “egging” them on).

Hackles up, from the front and the back

The pullets are good at flying up to and perching on the crossbar on the windbreak. Here two Ameraucana are enjoying to cool evening air.

Pullets admiring the sunset

The meat chicks struggle to get up on the crossbar and find it a bit two narrow for their massive feet. Chickens don’t have the kind of feet that readily grasp small branches like songbirds do. They prefer flat surfaces.

Whoa-oa! How do you balance on this thing?

Most of the chicks lounge in the grass under the shade shelters in the evening.

The evening lounge in the cool grass

The coop has a high 2 x 4 perch for the hens in the winter. Experience suggests that there is no way a meat chicken can get up there, even with a ladder. I made a perch on the floor from a 2 x 4 and two bricks. They are slowly getting the hang of it, but somehow have not grasped the concept of spreading out all along its length.

Perch practice--everyone huddled on about 1/3 of the perch length

The chicks are getting old enough that I can tell the males from the females by the size of their combs. I get “straight run” meat chickens, which means they aren’t sexed. In theory, we should get half males and half females. However, roosters are preferred for meat because they get bigger faster. Last year, I ended up with mostly females and suspected that they had been sexed after all, and some of my roosters had been swiped to bring a higher price. In any case, with straight-run, we end up with some big chickens (the roosters) and some smaller chickens (the hens), as we sure are not going to set up the butchering stuff twice. Next year, I may request all females. I would save a little money and end up with chickens that are all the same size. We just might have to delay butchering for a week.  This year, we seem to have gotten half roosters (although it is hard to count chickens because they don’t stand still), and I have to stop thinking mean things about our supplier.

The rooster (front) has a bigger comb than the hen behind him

This picture of a male was taken four days later, showing fuller feathers and larger comb

The size difference of a layer and a meat chick never fails to impress me. This picture is from a few days ago. The difference is more remarkable with each passing day.

Little chick, big chick

That’s all for today, boys and girls! Stay cool.