Be joyful though you have considered all the facts
I opened my last bottle of ginger soda yesterday. Â It had been in the fridge for two weeks – I had sort of forgotten about it till now. I did open it over the sink…
Yeah, blew the top right off! My bottle! And then, when I poured it…
DH and I finished the whole bottle at once, of course because we couldn’t close it anymore. No one got hurt. But now we know how dangerous this soda making can be. Always open the bottle outside or on the porch, and make sure no one’s in range.
3/4 of the carrot bed is still frozen, but the rest yielded this
And they’re yummy.
Some days ago I had a chance to run out and pull one side of the hoop house plastic out from under the leftover snow (it thawed some, finally!). It involved breaking up the huge slabs of ice that had formed inside the “hoop sloop” and pulling them out, then draining the melt water. You can see the pile of plastic – still intact, that woven stuff is strong! – behind the structure. It is still stuck in the ice and snow on that side.
This took about an hour, at the end of which I was cold and sopping wet. And it started the rain. Still, I had just enough stamina left to cover the three beds with row cover (Agribon) and plastic. I am happy to report that these beds still have –  miracle of nature! – living plants in them. They’re not exactly thriving, but they’re still there and will hopefully take off soon.
I came in and washed my freezing hands in a bowl of warmed up ginger tea – the tea I brewed from the ginger peels. Aaaaah!
In order of sowing:
That makes for one shelf with heat mat and 3 shop lights (6 bulbs) and 1 shelf with 3 shop lights.
Honestly, I have no idea. But I do have a bad feeling about it. Grasping the small window between the bees flying (i.e., warm enough) and the imminent rain, I opened the hive to check on them. It seemed to me that there are even less now than last time I looked.
The bees were docile and didn’t seem put out by me opening the hive, so I went ahead and accomplished several things.
First of all, I could see they hadn’t taken much of the sugar fondant I put in last time, and almost none of the pollen patty. I pulled out some of the outer frames, those furthest away from the cluster, and just by their heft immediately know they are still loaded with honey. It has obviously been too cold for the bees to get to it. I exchanged these full frames for the ones right next to the cluster.
As I was pulling the empty frames next to the cluster I took a closer look at the dead bees. The sight is a sad one.
All these bees are dead. Bees head first in cells is a sign of starvation. I used my bee brush to remove these corpses.
The frames switched, I turned my attention to the living bees. We have just bought a new camera and the macro mode is amazing, and revealing.
Can you spot it? Let me blow it up for you:
It’s a mite! Â The puplish-pinkish bump on the bee in the lower part of the image is varroa destructor. And it wasn’t just the one. In another image,
I can spot a bee grooming another bee, trying to get rid of a mite on her back:
Ugh, just looking at these images make me itch all over!
Mites survive on the bees over the winter, Â but they can’t reproduce (they reproduce by laying eggs on brood, and during Winter there is no brood rearing).
So now, on top of the bitter cold, starvation, and dwindling numbers, my colony has to deal with varroa. I doubt I can treat them at this point. I would use Apiguard, like I did last year when I first installed them,  but I’ll have to wait until the outside temperatures are above 59 F, that is, until the bees are active again, breaking cluster and moving the fumigant all over the hive so it can get to most of the mites.  But is the colony strong enough? Might it might interfere too much with the queen’s egg laying (assuming the queen is still alive and well)?
Brood rearing should have begun by now. In a strong hive well-stocked with honey and pollen, the Queen should start laying by the end of December/beginning of January, even in the Northern States. The determinant is not the temperatures but the length of day (source). It was too cold, of course, to pull the frames with the cluster: it would have chilled and killed any brood if it was there.
So I don’t know what to think of this surviving population. I’ve scoured the internet looking for some idea of how many bees make it a viable cluster.
The last thing I did was  replace our improvised rim board (made out of an old landing board) with a new and proper rim board. The hive looks like a usual hive again.
old apple
that no one wanted to eat
drying above the wood stove
silky on the outside
crispy in
double as sweet
old apple
soon you’ll be desirable again
;)
Solar eye
Today we talked to the tree removal people, and the quote they gave us was reasonable. We’re talking a lot of trees, here: six largish-large oaks (some white, some red), one massive beech and one younger one, and three tall pines. Then there will be stump removal (necessary because we want to plant an orchard instead, matching each cut tree with at least one new dwarf one) and splitting and chopping fire wood. We’ll leave the first to the experts, but are planning to do the second and third jobs ourselves. I plan on becoming an expert in chopping and stashing away two more years of firewood while also gaining a kick-ass figure!
So far we’ve received three (ball park) quotes for a 5 kilowatt solar PV system and a solar hot water system. They too, given the incentives, could be within our means. We need to crunch more numbers, but one thing is for sure: it will be nice to open up our canopy for the gardens, but if we decide not to go with the solar array(s), we won’t take down the trees.
Above is the image one of the installers took when on our roof, which at that point still had 2 feet of snow above a good 10 inches of ice on it. Â That was excitement enough for me!
The last month for which I calculated our Riot was August 2010. That was month 22, so the calculation here will include the last two months of our Second Year of Rioting. Our first year’s averages were calculated here, our second year’s averages can be found here.
Gasoline. I haven’t been able to calculate in our trip to India (wish the Riot Calculator  was back online!). Without that trip, we used:
10.78 gallons per person pp. per month
25 % of the US National Average
(First year’s yearly average: 24.8%)
Electricity. The calculator reckons per household, not per person. We did well, got our usage down more. We have  made some serious solar PV plans and have calculated that with this kind of usage we could get all of our electricity from the sun.Â
398 KWH (all wind) per month
12 % of the US National Average
(First year’s early average: 18.2%)
Heating Oil and Warm Water. This is warm water and back-up heat during the night and when we’re not home to build the fire in the wood stove and keep it going. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. (I didn’t figure in the cord of wood, because I don’t have enough data to calculate what that does to our percentage of the national average).
Considering (or wishfully thinking) that the coldest months are over, we did well.
48 gallons of oil per month
80% of the US National Average
(keep in mind that is is for what I hope are the coldest months)
(First year’s yearly average:Â 77% / Second year’s yearly average: 42%, see here)
Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.
10 lbs. pp per month
7% of the US National Average
(First year’s yearly average: 7.3%)
Water. We did quite well here too, bringing our usage down by another percent or so. If we could rig up a plumbing system that would pipe the bath and sink water into the toilet tank…
458 gallons of water pp. Â per month
15 % of the US National Average
(First year’s yearly average: 16.5%)
The last month for which I calculated our Riot was August 2010 (month 22). In the meantime the Riot site has been taken down and bought by a link farm. That means the calculator is gone too. The Riot Yahoo-group has looked into restarting it, or at least putting the calculator up, but it hasn’t happened yet. While I was waiting I failed to record the numbers at the end of Year Two, so for the last two months of Year Two (September and October 2010) I have to hypothesize. Our first year’s averages were calculated here.
This is the outcome for Year Two:
Compared with Year One (red):
1 = gasoline / 2 = electricity / 3 = hearing oil / 4 = water
We used a lot more gasoline in Year Two mainly because of Amie’s and my trip to Europe, which brought that month’s percentage up to a whopping 302%! Not calculating that trip, we did better than Year One.
The biggie is heating oil. In Year One, when we had our super efficient, new oil burner, but no woodstove yet, we scored 77% of the US national average, which comes down to about 50 gallons per month. In Year Two, our average went down to 26.6 gallons, or 42%. So with the help of the stove we almost halved our reliance on heating oil! What  a pleasant surprise this was. If we get to add a solar hot water system to our roof, our third year would see this number lowered even more.
In electricity we’re doing better by a little. This is one of the hardest category to tackle, I find. We’re mulling the installation of solar PV on our roof – a 5 KWH system that, with this usage, would produce all our electricity. Stay tuned!
As for water, Year Two saw the expansion of the garden plus a relatively much drier year than Year One (when blight struck because of the swampiness). Our rain barrels were frequently empty so we had to look to the tap.
What about trash? I now always calculate our trash production to be at 10 lbs per person per month, or 7% of the US national average. I just don’t weigh it anymore. That’s about the same as Year One.
It’s snowing again, a driving powdery snow that has already accumulated to 2-3 inches. Inside the fire roars, Shubert delights, as does the smell of ginger.
I was surprised by how cheap this fresh ginger root was ($1.99 a pound), but then when I started peeling and cutting it, it all made sense. Â This ginger was harvested too late (thick skin, very fibrous) and not fresh (not firm, yellow and juicy enough). That’ll show me to shop at any old grocery store along the way. Also, I am now more determined to try growing my own ginger.
So I dropped my plans to make ginger tincture, for which I want to use only the best root. I just made a big batch of candied ginger, some strong ginger tea (a by-product of the latter), more ginger bug, and a ginger body scrub (from the peels).
Candied ginger
Peel the ginger if necessary, otherwise wash the roots thoroughly. Slice them to your preference, but not sliver thin. Put in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for 30 -40 minutes. It is ready when the ginger is no longer raw and a little translucent – this is again to your preference.
Drain the ginger, capturing the ginger tea – which will need some diluting if it is to be had as tea.
Weigh the ginger and put it, along with an equal amount in weight of sugar, into the pot. Add 1/4 cup of the ginger tea, and bring to a boil on high heat. Simmer on medium high, stirring frequently, more frequently as the sugar syrup gets thicker, so as not to scorch it.
After about 20 minutes the sugar will become dry and crystallize. This effect is unmistakable and comes on very quickly, so stir, stir and be ready to lift that pan off the heat and scoop the mass of crystallized sugar and ginger onto waxed paper. There break it up – it cools very quickly – and let dry.
Amie finds the ginger too spicy but enjoys the sugar (which is still quite potent). I am planning to carry this around with me when I go for drives, to combat my motion sickness. I don’t know how well it will work, since it’s been boiled for so long, but it will have to do until my first batch of ginger tincture is ready.
Ginger Body Scrub
I was left with a lot of ginger peels. I rinsed these in cold water, then boiled them for 25 minutes to make a ginger peel tea. I wouldn’t drink it, as I hadn’t scrubbed the peel before removing it from the root. But I will use it as an invigorating and warming body scrub for sore muscles after coming in from hours of shoveling snow.
You can use this as a facial rinse, against acne, for instance, but beware when you have sensitive skin: it can warm the skin too much and cause burning – again depending on how strong the rinse is.
Ginger is a powerful antimicrobial, which is why it is used medicinally for colds and flues, along with garlic, and as a cleanser in cases of acne or cuts. As the main ingredient in ginger soda it not only imparts its flavor, but also its food-preserving qualities. Normally, when fermenting foods, salt is used to keep the bad bacteria at bay, so the good yeasts can do their work, while the food doesn’t spoil. In soda, thank goodness, no salt is used. It is the ginger that acts as the antimicrobial.