On (Not) Saving the World, One Element at a Time

(I’m thinking of this third post today as a Transitiony kind of post…)

When I show people around the place, I finally (after five years) feel like it’s all coming together, and that’s because I have started thinking in terms of elements.

Breaking the enormous task of creating a “sustainable place”  up into elements allows me to do several things:

  1. to accept that it will only happen one element at a time,
  2. thus to take a more realistic  longer-term view,
  3. and while digging the compost I can now enjoy digging the compost, while not also, at the same time, in my head,  digging the pond, pulling the weeds, cleaning out the coop, identify the mushrooms, building the earth oven…
  4. and I can take pride in the accomplishments, in what has already been done,
  5. thus also feeling confidence that we will succeed in making it even better.

Yes, this is all about feeling good! I’ve realized that, for me, only good feelings will (1) allow me and (2) even get me to act.  I am finally taking seriously the title of my blog: Wendell Berry’s

 Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

I’m not saying we shouldn’t keep track of the big picture, the reasons behind our actions, etc. I’m saying that too much talk (or thought), too much worry makes for a very frustrated activist.

Case in point: DH and friends were sitting around the patio table discussing ngo’s and having to make a living and what the world really, truly needs. They had snacks and drinks, and the umbrella was shading them from the Summer sun. Meanwhile, some 30 feet away, I was building a chicken run entirely out of materials scavenged from the property. My run took as long to build as their conversation took to resolve into agreeing-to-disagree. As all of us wrapped up, one of them quipped

“While we were discussing saving the world, you were saving the world”

However much it was a joke, it was revealing. Saving the world? I should never think if that as my job. Or yours, or any one’s. Putting systems, elements in place that may just contribute to a better world? Yes. That I can do, joyfully, efficiently, proudly.

Edible Mushrooms in my Garden and Neighborhood

You may remember I tried to grow King Stropheria in a bed of sawdust and leaves. Unfortunately it dried out and I never got any shrooms from it. But my mushroom adventures just began anew. I learned a while ago that a neighbor is a hobby mycologist and I expressed interest. Today she came by with a chunk of hen-of-the-woods that she got from another neighbor’s yard.

Hen-of-the-woods is a porous, not a gilled mushroom

I showed her the mushroom I found a week or so ago, growing next to the coop and the wood pile. After seeing the one she gave me, my hopes that it was hen-of-the-woods were already dashed, and she confirmed this. However, she said, this is chicken-of-the-woods and also delicious! This one may be a little old (fibrous and wormy) to eat, but I am going to give it a try at dinner time. How fitting that this fungal chicken grows right next door to my avian chickens!

Lastly we admired the hundreds of Turkey Tail fruits on the logs that have yet to be cut up. These too are porous and edible, but too tough to eat. It’s even difficult to tear them off the log. Still, they’re edible and that’s good to know.

pores on the underside

In exchange for the hen-of-the-woods I gave my neighbor a jar of honey and six fresh eggs.  Thank you, Pam!

 

More Fall Hive Management: Robbing honey frames and Mite Treatment

I wanted to treat my bees with formic acid against varroa and tracheal mite, but it kept being postponed. Just getting a hold of the treatment (MiteAway) was difficult. Then I had to wait for the free time and relatively warm, rainless day to do it.  Then, last week, it suddenly got colder and we even had our first frost. Not as hard as predicted, but enough to kill the basil. And enough for me to think it was too late. The treatment takes about 7 days and during those days daytime temperatures have to be between 50 and 90F.

But today it’s a balmy 74F (23C) and the next seven says it promises to stay warm enough. So I went for it.

I opened each hive and took out all the frames that had no more honey in them, either because they were never filled, or even drawn out, or because they had been filled, extracted by us and then returned to the bees for cleaning. That made for 20 frames.

While the supers were off the hives, I put one strip of MiteAway (not two as the instructions say: my bee mentor puts just one because he thinks that’s sufficient and more kills too much brood) in between the two nest boxes. That was some heavy lifting, even without supers on there. I think that for all three hives there is enough honey int he top nest box for Winter.

Then I put one empty super on top of the nest boxes (as described in an earlier post), then a super each with the frames that still had honey in them, as well as the eight last frames we had extracted but that were still dripping/oozing with honey (I gave those to the two weaker hives for cleaning out).

The twenty empty frames I took away. I knocked off most of the bees but there were still plenty of them hanging on, so I opted not to bring them into the porch but to leave them out so the bees can take the last they they can from them, and return to their hives by nightfall, at which point I’ll collect them.  Here’s a video of them buzzing around.

 

Winter Coop Prep and Eggs

We’ve not had a frost yet, but we will, this evening, and a hard one too: 28 F.  I have my thermometer out in the coop so we’ll know cold it will really get. I’ve harvested all there is to harvest, brought in all my potted plants, drained my rain barrels.  But, being a brand new chicken keeper, I am most concerned with the chickens, since their coop doesn’t have double walls or insulation (there is just particle board with siding).

In between drizzles I cleaned out the coop for the last time before Spring. I put down a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth to kill creepy crawlies like mites and fleas that may bother the birds. Then I shoveled in a thick layer of pine shavings, and on top of that I put straw, all adding up to about 5 inches.  This is the beginning of the deep litter method. I will simply add more shavings and straw as needed over the course of the Winter. The lower layers will decompose and give off heat, warming the coop. I also made sure that, apart from the ventilation which comes from the eaves, the little coop is draft free. I put extra bedding in the nest boxes – though I’m sure they’ll clean that out.  Our breeds – Rhode Island Red and Black Sex Link – are cold hardy, so they should be fine now.

We’ve been getting three eggs a day, and three days out of the week, four. So they’re good, consistent layers. The little pullet eggs have also been growing bigger, and yesterday we had a huge one.

Today I found a weird egg: the shell is all soft and crumpled and not entirely fused in places. The shape is squished. I hope this is a one-time problem!

To help with egg shell/calcium problems we’ve been giving them crushed oyster shell (in a separate feeder). In the meantime I was saving up the egg shells and yesterday I had enough to crush. I washed them, then made them brittle and cooked whatever egg was left in the microwave, then ran them through a coffee grinder we don’t use anymore. What a great way to close the loop!

Fire Wood and the First Fire

Ah, that first fire.

Over the weekend DH and I hauled a bunch dried fire wood from the woodpile to the screened porch, and I cut up a lot of kindling. It was my first go with the small electric chainsaw that a friend gave us. It does the job! Another friend commented “My favorite environmentalist, using a chainsaw!” Well, I responded, this chainsaw is solar!

Today I was feeling a little under the weather, a bit chilled, so though it was  still 64F  in the house, I lit the stove.  It’s good to test run it anyway before it becomes a necessity. While the stove was burning real  hot – for the first fire of the season, burn it hot to clear out the chimney – I put on the Dutch oven and boiled water for a hot clothes wash, then filled it with squashes from our CSA. Then, when those were done,cooked a beef stew in it for dinner. We call that stacking functions, using one thing for many things. Feels good. Smells good too!

Making Simple Mead

I started my first mead – fermented honey wine –  today. I used my own honey, of course. This little jar was from our last extraction (09/26). All the air bubbles that were “invited” into the honey when spinning it had risen to the top, taking the wax and propolis that had hitched a ride up with it.

It creates a nice, creamy wax seal.

This stuff is okay to eat if you like the texture. I read in Katz’s book, The Art of Fermentation, that adding wax cappings during the first phase of mead adds flavor. So in it all went, 1 part honey with 5 parts dechlorinated (charcoal filtered and then boiled)  water. This is called the must. Shake it vigorously (for that, screw the cap on tight), then open the cap to release pressure buildup from the fermentation.

The honey is alive with yeasts, so it should start “boiling” soon. This phase of the process can take a couple of weeks, during which the must must be shaken every day.

We also extracted 13 more pounds of honey today. This from 6 frames (so about 37 oz. per frame). This was disappointing: our last extraction of 8 frames yielded 22 lbs, that is, 45 oz. a frame).  But these last frames had all kinds of honey in them: some light and runny, some (I presume the second honey flow) very dark and viscous, almost impossible to extract.  DH and I spent hours spinning it. Still, it’s another 13 lbs. This brings our total to 54 lbs and 12 oz.!

Two Ferments: Sauerkraut and Comfrey Liquor

The first one is sauerkraut. It is my first deliberately fermented food. A huge cabbage head came in our CSA box a couple of weeks ago. What to do with it? As I was reading Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation, I couldn’t resist.

My mom and I went looking for a good crock, but all the right shapes we found (in non-specialty stores) had questionable glazes. Always know what glaze is on your cookware, and especially make sure there is no lead in it.

In the end we went with the ceramic liner of our crock pot.  We shredded the cabbage, layered it in the pot, with one tablespoon of salt on top of every inch of cabbage (except on the last layer), then submerged it in filtered tap water, crushing it down to get the air bubbles out, then weighed it with two plates, then a jar with water. We draped a towel over it so dust couldn’t get in.

It smelled something awful three days into the process, so I put it on the porch. The potent smell lasted a few days, then it became more neutral. On day 10 there was some surface mold, which was easily skimmed off. All the cabbage under the water surface was unaffected. It is now two weeks and it tastes delicious!  I think it’s ready!

I transferred the kraut with the brine into jars – careful to keep it all submerged – and put them in the fridge to eat it over the next couple of weeks.

I gave the chickens the large leaves that we put at the bottom and they are loving it!

The second ferment is comfrey liquor. No, it’s not  edible. At least, I wouldn’t drink it!

It took much longer to make. I started it in July. It required three buckets that fit into each other. The bottom one captures the liquid which drips down through the holes in the second bucket, which I stuffed with comfrey leaves from my garden. I have a comfrey patch right across from the chicken coop. The chicken, by the way, love to eat it. On top of the leaves I put a heavy paver and then on top of that a third bucket heavy with sand. I stood this in the shed for a couple of months. I checked it a month later and it was pretty bubbly, but it didn’t smell,  even though my internet sources say it should stink to high heaven! I swear I took a picture then, but I can’t find it. This was the state today:

Now a little over two months into the process, the  leaves (left in the picture above) are just fiber. The  liquid (right) is no longer bubbly, and it doesn’t smell. It’s a coffee brown-black and somewhat viscous.

A 5 gallon bucket stuffed with leaves yielded a little under 5 cups of liquor.

I will fertilize the berry bushes with this or keep it in a dark, cool place until Spring. I’ll dilute it as it’s very concentrated: one part of liquor per fifteen or so parts of water. Comfrey’s deep roots mine and bring up  especially potassium – comfrey is actually one of the few organic sources of potassium.

Robbing Honey and Fall Hive Manipulations

Woah, I just did the most stressful honey robbing yet. A warm (80F) and sunny day, the bees were busy.

Hive 3, my Super Hive

I brought the super with the frames we harvested last week (green in the image). You return harvested frames to the hive so the bees can clean out the honey that is inevitably still in the comb. My mentor Rick told me to put an empty super in between the harvested honey supers and the nest boxes. If you don’t, the bees feel compelled to fill those frames back up again, or the queen might start laying in them.

So I went into Hive 3, my strongest hive. I pulled out the three frames of honey that were still in the top super (blue in image). Then I put that box aside and checked out the super below it (yellow). It had been harvested a while back and the bees had emptied it nicely and rebuilt some of the comb I had wrecked when scraping off the cappings. Unfortunately they were also rearing brood in it! Not a good sign for later, if I find the brood nest to be mainly in the top box – more manipulating to come. But for now, I took off that super, put the empty box in its place, then replaced the super with the  brood and, on top of all that, the super with the harvested frames to be cleaned out.

Hive 2

Hive 2 requeened itself in May and never caught up to Hive 3, though they were both packages from the same source, installed on the same date. There is only one super on this hive, with very little, uncapped honey and fortunately also no brood (yet). Once an empty super becomes available I’ll put it in between the super and the second nest box.

Hive 1

Hive 1 swarmed in May and also never caught up. It has two supers, first one old one (still with plastic Pierco frames) and, on top of that, one new one with wooden frames and Duragilt foundation. I found this latter one has three to  four or so frames with capped honey, I could steal only two because my “robbing box” (a nuc box that I can close off to the bees after dropping each robbed frame) only holds five frames – which is heavy enough! In the bottom super I saw a couple more frames with honey, so I think I’ll be able to rob at least another 4 frames from this hive. Maybe I can combine the half filled frames from this hive into one box, thus emptying one super to interpose. I wish I had made more supers.

Varroa

I need to treat the bees for varroa. I’m already a bit late: the formic acid that I will use will kill the mites (also the tracheal mite) but it might be too late for the bees to fully recover (that is, to repopulate with the next generation) from the viruses that the varroa has given them. Still, it will be good to try. As Hive 3 is totally done with honey, I’ll treat it tomorrow (weather permitting), along with Hive 2. Hive 2 may have to wait till after I’ve robbed the rest of its honey.

Honey harvesting

So far, we’ve extracted 18 lbs and 12 oz + 22 lbs and 14 oz, all from Hive 3!

I open the hive up, take out the frame I want to take, brush off the bees, put the hive in my nuc box and close it off, so the bees can’t get to it. As you do that with five frames the bees get understandably more agitated, and bees get into the nuc box. So when I carry the box away I make a stop in between the apiary and the house. There I open the box up and try to get brush off or shoo off as many of the bees who caught a ride. Then I rush the box inside my screened porch. Inevitably bees get inside, but I catch those and let them out the front door. I can’t let them out the porch door because by then hundreds of bees are buzzing against the screen, trying to get to the honey.

Sorry, ladies, but thank you!

Riot for Austerity – September 2012 – Month 47


This is the Riot for the month of September 2012 for the three of us plus my parents for two weeks, so 4 people. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. DH’s shuttle started running so he hasn’t been driving in. I’ve been doing less outreach for Solarize. So we did much better this month:

8.6 gallons per person

20.9 % 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 6175 kWh since the system was turned on, and 502  kWh this last month (down from 615 kW, the sun is lowering. You can follow our solar harvest live here). We owed NStar nothing but how much we consumed is a mystery: the NSTAR billing software apparently cannot handle negatives. So we used less than

502 kWh

27.8% of the US National Average

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. This is all for heating water for dishes and showers. We did really well this month. We’re still looking into an electric on-demand heater with perhaps a solar thermal unit.

7.15 gallons of oil

11.6% 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% of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person. Again, not bad!

499 gallons pp.

16.6 % of the US National Average

***

After three months of having at least 6 people in the house – at peak times 9 – a general exodus is taking place and we will be down to just Amie and I for a couple of weeks. Hopefully there won’t be a repeat of last year’s storm and week-long power-outage!