Be joyful though you have considered all the facts
The Pink Moon, not entirely full (it will be tomorrow), but I took advantage of an opening in the clouds. Photograph taken through a double-paned window. Eerie, how the moon in the middle is in front of the tree branches, like it is on “our side” of the world.
On this rainy, chilly day I find myself alone in the house for the first time in over a week. My in-laws are here, and over the weekend we had a crazy house full of friends and family – eight adults and two kids, all sleeping over. I love extending the dining table to the point that it hardly fits the dining room, and everyone gathering around for a home-cooked meal. A friend of Amie’s came over for a play date and found herself at that table for a late lunch and for a moment I could see it all through her eyes: crazy, heart warming pandemonium!
On Sunday morning one of our friends, a string instrument maker and viola player, took out her viola and Amie brought out her cello. They played together seriously for a while, until the audience could no longer hold it in. All the instruments came out of the wood works: our African drum, a recorder (played orally and nasally), flutes of all kinds and materials, an “Indian violin” (one string strung on a coconut shell with an animal skin stretched over it), and a yardstick for a baton, with a warning to the self-assigned conductor not to emulate the unfortunate Lully, who died of gangrene in the foot after stabbing himself with his conducting staff. There were also many voices, ululation and, last but not least, the kazoo. This went on for over an hour and ended with everyone in stitches.
Today the rain and quiet are welcome and I have a moment to list what is growing. Of the medicinals the following managed to germinate: Lobelia, Astragulus, Yellow Dock, Motherwort, St John’s wort (2 out of 25 seeds), Selfheal, Echinacea, Hyssop (only 1 out of hundreds of seeds), marshmallow and horehound. No Aconite, Boneset or Giant Solomon’s Seal yet, nor is the broadcast stinging nettle showing itself.  But all the Goji berries germinated:  Goji forest here we come! The sweet potatoes decided not to grow any shoots, so on the advice of my MIL I turned them upside down, dug out some of the flesh, and filled the resulting cup with water. If I don’t see shoots in the next week I’ll have to order slips.
The chicks are growing like crazy, all cozy in their brooder, and the rather quarrelsome hens are laying 3-4 eggs a day. They were quarreling, quite too early in the morning, for the one nest box they all want to use. There are two, but they always chose the one that is a little bit larger. Sometimes I’d see to chickens in there, all smushed inside, quarreling. I hadn’t seen an egg in the other box for months. A visitor wondered whether that was because the big ox had a fake egg in it. I put it there to dissuade the hens from pecking their eggs, but perhaps… I found another fake egg and placed it in the other box. Â That day they four eggs were evenly divided between the two boxes. Like the fake egg bestowed legitimacy on that space. Why not.
Next weekend is our big Earth Day weekend, and my own Open House  is among the attractions. I had hoped to get the irrigation – the rainwater harvesting as well as the drip system – in, but no luck. I had also hoped to be at two hives instead of one but my new bee package was delayed by a week.
The other day Amie and I admired a pretty yellow flower with a scaly stalk in what we fondly call “The Pitt”: Â the front part of our garden that is mainly bramble. A friend of mine identified at as being Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), also known as cough wort. This was very exciting. Here I am trying to cultivate finicky medicinals and down there, in The Pitt, grows this amazing cough suppressant, expectorant and asthma treatment, wild, unattended. Uninvited but very welcome.
Apparently the plant tastes salty and was used as a salt substitute. The bees share my excitement!
Spring mode! It was 72 degrees today and sunny with a light breeze. I was in the garden as much as possible these last two days.
I planted two paw paws in a corner of the garden that previously held a leaf pile. What gorgeous soil I found there! From now on: leaf piles all over the lace! I also moved two elderberries from the front, where they were being overwhelmed by undesired brambles. I sowed lupine (a legume, so a nitrogen fixer) all around the trees and the bushes, as well as borage. I also made a spot n the edge of the forest for stinging nettle.
I transplanted lots of strawberries which a friend had left over. Also brassicas (collards, broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts) in the rhubarb bed – I thought rhubarb  was indestructible but one of the two seems to have perished.  Amie and I transplanted lettuce, kale, chard and parsley into one 4×4′ bed and then I transplanted more kale, also radichetta, lettuce, mache, minutina and more parsley into a 4×8′ bed. All were covered with row cover to protect the little seedlings until they’re established.
And then there was consolidating compost piles, treating the berry bushes to some top dressed compost and moving leaves and sticks and leaves. Oh, and stones.
I did a hive inspection of the remaining colony and found the queen. She is looking great and doing well. There are lots of eggs and larva as well as capped brood, all in the right formation. The workers looked fat and healthy. I slid a sticky board underneath the screened bottom board and in three days will pull it to count the mite fall. Then I’ll know if I need to treat for mites or not.
The two tiny chicks are growing rapidly and getting louder too. No issues there, aside from the fact that one is still anonymous.
We’re looking at a couple of days of rain and a drop in temperatures, though apparently not below freezing. I’ll be sowing many more seeds for the lights in the basement, now that there is room again. And I’ll be admiring my line-up of sweet potatoes. Quite a sight on my windowsill!
That’s the sound in the house again. Cheep cheep.
Today I surprised Amie when she came out of school. The feed store called, they have the chicks we want! We went to pick them up: two Ameraucanas, the cutest things, day two of their lives. Technically they’re not ours, but belong to Amie’s friend and her sister, who so want chickens but really can’t have them on their property. Ameraucanas lay light blue/green or white eggs, so they’ll be easily distinguished from the brown ones we have – and we have enough of. This is a nice way of having those kids “have” chickens too (they get to visit whenever they want, get the eggs, and get to do some chores!) and rejuvenating the flock without adding to the glut of eggs.
We are getting good at re-using those old Solarize lawn signs. I still have a couple hundred and will no doubt find uses for all of them!
Having discovered that two of the three colonies have died over the winter, I dismantled them to have a closer look at the cause. For Hive 2 my first assessment that there were next to no dead bees in it was correct. I counted 55. Here is one frame that was a good tip-off:
See those black specks in the bottom cells: dead varroa mites. This colony probably collapsed due to what our bee inspector calls “Varroa Mite Syndrome”. Varroa Destructor has been identified as one of the factors in colony collapse. I treated in the Fall, but possibly too late.
The second dead hive, the one that was supposed to go into its fourth year, perished due to starvation. There were many dead bees on the screened bottom board, and I could easily locate the remnants of the cluster, all the way in a top corner, far away from any honey. There was a lot of honey, but not close enough to the cluster.
I put all the good honey and pollen frames from the two dead hives on top of the surviving hive (after reversing its brood boxes: the brood was all in the top box). That colony should have plenty to eat now. The frames that were half filled out or that didn’t look too good (oozing, sweating honey, a grayish tint to the wax) I put in another box in front of the surviving hive, figuring the bees can distinguish what is good and what isn’t and will rob out the former – which they did.
Secondly, I had four brood boxes to clean. And boy, do they need cleaning, especially those that have done service for three years now. The bees have glued propolis and wax all over the rim on which you hang the frames. Removing, replacing and especially sliding frames along these rims becomes near to impossible with so much gunk around. The frames too got a good scraping.
In other news I also sowed the medicinal seeds that had been stratified in the freezer, plus those that needed scarifying. Ouch! In the end I found a way that was quicker but no less hard on the index fingertip. The seeds that need “vigorous scoring” I left for another time.
OVER FOUR YEARS OF RIOT!
This is the Riot for the months of February and March 2013 for the three of us. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!
Gasoline. Â Calculated per person.
9.3 gallons pp.
22.6% of the US National Average
Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. We cook on an electric stove. According to our solar meter, we produced 7805 kWh since the system was turned on, that’s  668 kWh over the last two months,  395 kWh in March (you follow our solar harvest live here). We used a lot because the grow lights and heat mat are on. Our 668 +  337 kWh (from NSTAR Green) makes:
502.5 kWh
27.8%Â of the US National Average
Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. This is for heating water and space heating, which we mostly do with our wood stove, except for the guestroom (thermostat at 45F – no guests in there, obviously), at night and when we’re not home (thermostat at 59F). We went solar hot water in the middle of February (the Riot calculator has no provision for solar hot water).
 36 gallons of oil
58.4% of the US National Average
Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers:
6 lbs. pp per month
4.4 %Â of the US National Average
Water. This is calculated per person. This is about our usual.
501 gallons pp.
16.7%Â of the US National Average
I see it only now, at the end of the day, how much was accomplished: cleaned out the chicken coop, Â collected four eggs (we’re back to four!), inspected the beehives, painted the last of the signage for our town’s Earth Day, and racked the wine.
 Four.
Amie paints her own sign in the new basement Project Room. The Earth Day lawn signs behind her are reused.
The A-Frames from the previous year got a new lick of paint and are awaiting the last lettering on the porch (along with the seedlings, hardening off).
DH racks the Merlot and the Cabernet
Sediment, with some wood chips.
We tasted both, the Merlot, pictured here, was further along than the Cabernet. Back in their cubby they went for the next stage.
I had been feeling rather starved of bees. Usually, by this time, I’ve done a short hive inspection or two, but with this extended cold period, I’ve not had a chance to work the bees. Until Monday.
My friend K picked up her two bee packages in the morning and I met her at her home to help with the hiving. It was pretty cold, around 45F, not a temperature the bees would enjoy, though they’ll break cluster for short flights around 50F. These bees were already stressed: they had arrived the evening before from balmy Georgia, had been cooped up in their box for three days. For this reason we set up her hives in  K’s garage, and after the hiving she closed the door to keep the bees warm. When the temperatures rose two days later she moved them to their permanent spot. What a pleasure it was to work with the bees again, and K was thrilled – though she got stung twice.
Today I had the opportunity – good weather, Â a break in my day – to check up on my own three hives. One (hive 3) I already knew to be dead: flies don’t crawl in and out of a beehive unpunished. It was confirmed. Unfortunately also hive 1, my original one, has expired. The weird things is: either had at most a hundred bee corpses in them. Usually, with starvation, the bees are piled on the bottom board or stuck inside the cells. Not so here. All were gone.
Hive 2, the one which gave me  60 lbs of honey last year, is going strong. Its bees were robbing the honey from the two dead ones.  I didn’t have a chance to do a thorough inspection, but will at the earliest opportunity. I can feed it the unrobbed honey frames from the other two.
I” split that colony if it continues strong, and I ordered one bee package, to be picked up on 22 April, with a marked queen. Â Soon there will be three again.
Amie sewed this! I am very terribly awfully bad at sewing – any kind of needlework, actually. I blame it on a tyrannical needlework teacher I had in secondary school. Also, I don’t have the patience. So I am happy to delegate the learning and practicing of this skill  to my daughter.
She took a sewing class which revolved around making this beautiful ball gown fitted for an American Girl Doll (AMG). She doesn’t have an AMG and doesn’t want one, either. She has several reasons for this, but mostly she doesn’t want one because one of her very best friends doesn’t have one either and if she got one, it would make her friend feel bad. Â Amie decided to take the class anyway, because she understood that what she would get out of it was not the dress, but the skill. She decided she will give the dress away to a friend who does have an AMG.