Wild Blueberry

We are lucky in having lots of wild blueberry brush on our property. For years I did not understand why, while I had lots of blueberry brush, there were never many berries. I then realized that in order for wild blueberries to set fruit they had to have a good deal of sunlight. Most of my blueberry brush was in fairly heavy shade. After I spent a afternoon one spring trimming out all the alder and winter berry brush around a nice patch of blueberries I saw results in the form of yummy wild blueberries later that year. Now I try to manage those areas that have lots of blueberry brush for berry production by keeping things trimmed out to let in more sunlight. As in every thing in life, you have to strike a balance. I do not want to create a mono-culture in my wood lot, I simply try to make conditions more favorable for species with more value to me. Nature has designed a natural progression of plants in every situation. Blueberries wait until something creates a opening in the canopy letting in sunlight, then they produce fruit to send their seed to a new area. Eventually the canopy grows in cutting off the sunlight and the blueberries wait. I just shorten the wait.

Asparagus Beds

Here are our asparagus beds all ready to go. We put   100 more crowns this year. Asparagus is another crop that will bear for many years if you take care of the beds. Grasses are the biggest problem and the hardest to keep out of the beds. We keep the beds heavily mulched which helps a lot. The next line of defense for organic producers is the ancient art of pulling the weeds!
We planted a new strawberry patch also,200 sets .We put in a early and a mid-season variety for a longer season. Next week we will put in some red potatoes, for harvesting as new potatoes, onions, and maybe some more peas. The peas we planted earlier are up so I will have to get pea fence up for them to climb on. I still have a good size area of the garden to rototill and I haven't even started on the sweet corn patch yet. Then we are making a new garden on another field ,which has sandy soil, for our tomatoes and peppers. We had a lot of problems with mildew last year and want the tomatoes well away from that area this year. The new area should have better air flow and be dryer both of which should eliminate the mildew problem.

Planting Blueberries

We are adding more blueberries to our orchard this year as well as planting some raspberries. I planted twenty blueberry bushes yesterday,ten of a cultivar caller Northland and ten Patriot. I got fifty raspberries, 25 Jewel, which is a black raspberry and 25 Heritage. These were all shipped bare root so I like to set them in a bucket of water with a mycorrhizal blend add to it for 12-24 hours before planting. The mycorrhizal  blend, which I get from FungiPerfecti, innoculates the roots with benificial fungi and bacteria. It really seems to help the plants get established that first year. When planting shrubs ,or trees for that matter, it is recommended that you make your hole with a small cone shape in the bottom. The plant is set on top of the cone with it's roots spread down the sides of the cone. Plants should be set at about the same or slightly deeper  depth as they were growing.

A common mistake in planting trees and shrubs is leaving the soil too loose. Pack the earth in firmly and eliminate any air pockets around the roots. Then give them a big drink of water which will also help settle the earth firmly around the roots. Water new transplant about once a week, depending on the weather. One big watering is better than several little ones. If we are getting regular rains I don't water after the first month. Don't enrich the soil in the planting hole too much as this will tend to make the plant put all of it's new roots there instead of spreading outside the hole.With any luck at all these plants will produce for 25-30 years so it is worth taking a little time and doing it right.

Foraging Festival

Just a quick plug for a event that anyone who is interested in foraging wild foods should consider attending.  I added a link to the right there but here it is again, www.wildharvestfestival.org  They have some great instructors lined up. I am helping with publicity for this so I would appreciate it if you at least look at the site and pass it along if you know of anyone who might be interested.

Early spring edible,Ramps, we wait and pic them later in the year when they are much larger. A good place to learn about foraging wild foods are events like this.

Grafting Apple Trees

This is every thing you need to graft apple trees; root stock, a twig from the variety you want, a razor sharp knife and some rubber electrical tape. There are many ways to graft trees but this is the easy ,beginner graft. Here's what I do. First make a clean flat cut completely through the root stock about 3-4 inches above the highest roots. Now split the top of the root stock down about 1/2 inch. Take your graft stock and make two long cuts through the stock to form a long tapered wedge. Push this wedge down into the split you made in the root stock. The cambium layer,or inner layer of the bark on each piece must make contact. If they do not match up with each other the graft will fail. In a case like mine where the root stock is larger in diameter than the grafting stock the graft is made with the grafting stock to one edge of the root stock to get that contact of the cambium layer. Next the graft is tightly wrapped with a 3-4 inch long piece of the rubber tape. This will pull the split tightly against the graft wedge as well as sealing the cut and preventing it from drying out. It needs to be rubber tape because that will break down when exposed to sunlight for several months and prevent your new graft from being girdled by the tape.You could use grafting wax which will seal the graft but that does not hold it together tightly like the tape.

Here you can see the split and how the graft stock is to the side so that the cambium layers line up. All of this root stock was purchased from a nursery. The grafting stock is all from trees in our orchard.This grafting stock will produce semi-dwarf trees that are hardy in our zone 3 climate. The new varieties at the nursery are generally patented and growing your own grafts from those would be infringing on the patent.Old heirloom varieties or volunteer trees you sometimes find are fair game. This is a handy graft if a tree you have planted dies but sends up shoots from the roots. Just cut the new shoots off near the ground and graft something back on.

Real Spring Water

   We are lucky enough to have a great natural spring located only 12 miles from our house. It is in a large national forest too so the  aquafier is somewhat protected from pollution and it is tested by the forest service. We have our own well which we use for all our washing and cooking needs but we prefer this water for drinking water. We have 10 of the blue 6 gallon jugs to haul water with so we wouldn't have to go very often. Since the national forest is a great foraging location we are there fairly often anyway. We went out earlier this week to see if the ostrich fern fiddleheads were up yet. They were just starting to peek out so we will try again today. The weather has turned cool the last two weeks after a early very warm streak and all the plants seem to be in stand by mode. We had a lot of rain this week so we are on hold in the garden until it dries off a bit. My grafting root stock and our nursery stock all arrived yesterday so this is going to be a busy week.                                                                                                                            

We Got Bees!

Our bees finally arrived Tuesday. It was raining and very windy so we did not put them in their hives untill Wednesday. It was still cool and breezy but at least it wasn't raining. We had never hived bees in a Warre hive so were not sure how it would go. While it was a little confusing at times every thing worked out. The queens in both packages looked very good and the bees seem nice and calm. Some hives of bees are just a lot more excitable than others. These both seem calm which is nice for us.

Here I am shaking the bees out of the shipping box into the hive. I have already removed the queen cage from the shipping box and placed it in the hive. Bees will cluster around the queen cage and not get excited. If the bee keeper stays calm and does not move around excessively or make fast movements the bees don't pay much attention to him. The only bee gear I wore to hive these bees was a pair of leather gloves. Ann, who was taking pictures right next to me didn't have any gear at all.

 Here the bees are in their hive. I have the queen cage in my hands and I am removing a little cork that keeps her locked in.When I have gotten bees previously there was a little candy plug under the cork and the bees ate that out and released the queen . When I removed the cork from these there was nothing under it so the queen got to her subjects a little early.The top box on this hive will be removed once the bees have moved down into the hive. I will leave them two hive boxes until they are settled in. I'll have more on the bees as the season progresses.

Soil Test

I have had professional soil test done previously but not in the last few years. I decided to try one of the home soil test kits sold at many hardware stores and nursery outlet stores. They are both pictured and I used both with similar results.There was a green vial in both test for ph also and I had already done that part when I took this pic. The tests are quick and simple. Both had detail instructions on the inside of the card. They are not as accurate as a professional test of course and simply give a low, medium ,high reading on the NPK portion and go from5.0 to 8.0 in four steps on the ph portion of the test. NPK is nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash. A full professional test would also check many other trace elements such as copper and magnesium. Acidity or alkalinity are checked in the ph test with 7.0 being neutral ,lower numbers more acidic, larger numbers more alkaline. The test did show that the lime I put on last year had brought my ph up to near 7.0. The phosphorous and potash readings were in the medium range on all my test. Nitrogen in the main gardens was in the medium range but my new garden areas need a lot of nitrogen. Fortunately, nitrogen is easy for me to apply, llama droppings are a great source and the llamas considerately put them in communal piles! 

Good Weeds

Front Joe Pye Weed ( Eupatorium maculatuim), middle, Boneset ( Eupatorium perfoliatum), back, some type of Goldenrod, probably Canada Goldenrod, (Solidaga canadensis). All of these are or were used medicinally .This is a pic from last fall near the edge of one of our gardens. I have been busy this last week and didn't get a pic of any thing I was working on so I raided the pic files for this. Any time I visit a farm that is supposed to be organic I look for so call weeds at the edge of the fields. Those weeds are an important part of the eco system. In some cases they are one of the few, if not the only, host plants available for beneficial insects. If we don't have the host plant we don't have the beneficial insect. Of these three, golden rod is a great bee plant, providing a lot of pollen late in the year. Bees feed pollen to the larva so a good source of pollen is necessary to have a strong, productive hive going into the winter. I do not let any of these grow in the garden but I encourage them along the margins. Biodiversity is the keystone of a health organic farm.

Pigs V/S Rototiller

 Last summer we raised two hogs. We had them penned in an area we planned to use to expand our garden this year. They rooted up their pen fairly well but pigs are fastidious creatures and they will not root in the area they use as the bathroom. This left two areas in each of the pens that wasn't rooted up . I have been rototilling the first pen they were in this week for Ann's flax patch. It is worked up fairly uniformly except for the sod areas. That ole Troy horse tiller really bucks when it hits the sod. I finally got the whole patch worked up and we raked it off and seeded it today. We were going to hand broadcast the seed but it was so windy I don't think much of the seed would have ended up in the intended area. Ann had a great idea and we went with it, we used a yard size lime spreader to spread the seed. We then raked it in and used the three wheeler to compact the seed bed. It is supposed to rain this weekend so I'm glad we got it in. Next time I use hogs to root up a patch I will plow it instead of just going at it with the tiller.

Spring Wild Flowers

Yesterday Ann and I went on a walk about to see if the ostrich fern fiddle heads were up yet. They are not, probably next weekend. We did find this big patch of bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis L. The flower comes up with the leaf wrapped around it and the leaf unfolds as or after the flower opens. They are named for the bright red sap from the root although the sap in the entire plant is red. The root contains the alkaloid sanguinarine. There are traditional medicinal uses but modern herbalist advice extreme caution as it is toxic.It is also a traditional dye used by many American Indian tribes at one time.

This next pic is of Spring Beauty,Claytonia caroliniana. This one was a little pinker than they normally are. These have a edible tuber like root. Samuel Thayer, has a chapter in his first book,The Forager's Harvest, about Spring Beauty. I would highly recommend Sam's books to anyone interested in foraging wild foods. There is also a web sight of the same name.
We spotted a few Marsh Marigolds blooming too but I didn't feel like getting wet feet to get a pic.

Hoary Comma Butterfly

I try to carry my camera most of the time I am at home. Yesterday as I was walking back from the garden this beauty seemed to want it's picture taken so I obliged. I am fairly certain this is a Hoary Comma. If so, it is on the edge of it's range being a more northern and eastern species. It was on the cool side and it seemed to be trying to warm up a little. Usually commas are flighty and sit with their wings closed. I never did see the color of this ones outer wings so I am not positive about my ID.

We are not into the survivalist thing but we do look at several sites on facebook that are survivalist sites. We find useful info there on occasion and sometimes they are very amusing. Ann saw these fire starters and since we go camping sometimes thought they might be handy. They are simply a paper egg carton filled with wood shavings and covered with paraffin wax. You only use the bottom part of the carton.  To use them you just rip off one section and light it. I went further and tried out this magnesium fire starter. I didn't use the magnesium, just the striker part. I fluffed out a cotton ball on top of the egg carton and scraped sparks onto it using the flint edge and the little piece of hacksaw blade that comes with it. Cotton balls catch the spark quickly and they burst into flame. This started the egg carton,wood chip,wax combo burning. It burned hot enough and long enough to start a camp fire even with slightly damp wood. Don't know how much we will ever use them but will add the knowledge to the"nice to know" category.

Troy-Bilt Rototiller

It seems awful early to me but we are getting started on this years gardens. We will put in stuff like peas and onions first. Ann wants a spot for some Jerusalem artichocks too. First step of course was getting out our 16 year old Troy-Bilt rototiller. I changed the oil, put on a new belt, air filter, and spark plug. All right, ready to go. It is pull start. I pulled. And I pulled, and I pulled some more. No go. Oh, Oh, didn't drain out the gas last fall.Off to the hardware store to get some carb cleaner. Had to remove the carb, clean the float bowl which was full of gunk, spray out the jets and put it all back in place. Thankfully it started on the third pull after that. It is still not quite up to snuff but it ran good enough for me to get a good size patch gone over. Ann is putting in some flax for linen fiber this year and that needs to go in soon so I guess that will be my job tomorrow. Before I can start on that I have to get my new bee hives set in place and my bear fence around them. Guess it will be a busy day!

Homemade Cream Cheese

 Getting a second cow is starting to have benefits. Although her mastitis seems to be clearing up we are still only using her milk to feed our steer calf. That frees up more of Bella's milk for us to use. This week Ann made cream cheese. It  is yummy! Ann said it was Swiss style cream cheese but I'm not sure how it differs    from some other style of cream cheese. We have a large supply of butter canned so we are good there. Now we will see what kind of cheeses we can make at home. I am working on a cheese press which Ann will need for several kinds of cheese. I think all of the hard cheeses which are better keepers are pressed cheeses.I made two molds for the press, one from a small stainless steel stock pot and another smaller one from a stainless steel coffee press. I used a die grinder to cut the bottoms and handles off leaving a smooth cylinder. Then I drilled small drain holes all around it. The larger should make about a three pound cheese and the other about a pound or pound and a half. I'll get some pics on when I get more done on the press.