Farm

Our two new bee nucs arrived this week.  A nuc (short for nucleus) contains one queen, 5,000-10,000 bees and the foundation and brood that the bees have begun working on.

On the colonial farm, honey served multiple functions—as a sweetener; a preservative; and for beverages, usually in the form of a home-made meade.  The wax was used to make candles, for waterproofing leather and coat thread, and as a chewing gum.

colonial skep

Our bees are apparently liking their new homes, and are quite busy today in their quest for water (for cooling) and pollen (for food production = honey).  Our garden and more and more of our surrounding fields are now stocked with bee-loving plants—bee balm, thyme, lavender, borage, and roses, and my husband takes particular care to avoid mowing the clover sprouting up throughout the lawn and fields.  Later in the season, the bees will enjoy sunflowers and golden rod.

Bees are threatened in our modern world and countless thousands of hives have been lost due to a combination of habitat loss, pesticides (including neonicotinoids, which our government refuses to ban) and parasites.  Markus Imhoof’s stunningly shot documentary film,  “More than Honey” examines the relationship between agriculture, man and bees, and will be on view at NYC’s Film Forum starting June 12^th until June 25^th.  I plan to go to see this important film.

i’ve been criss-crossing across the New River Valley of Virginia.

It is haying season. Cicadas are out, too.

Back tomorrow.

Friday  afternoon, I picked up a disc of scanned 35mm slides. Of course, these were not glass slides like the ones used in my art history courses, but nonetheless rather ancient technology. No one wants slides anymore, and most people want images sent via Dropbox or over the cloud.

Next stop, typewriter ribbon. At Gramercy Typewriter, they do their own form of recycling, by re-spooling old metal spools with new ribbons. Of course, typewriters have gone by the wayside, for the most part, although the shelves of beautifully cleaned and repaired typewriters are just waiting for purchase. Paul told me that last year during the holiday season, they were sold out of refurbished typewriters. I have my eye on a pink Regal.

foraged 1930s Olympia typewriter

Communication via imagery or electronic text is key now.  And lickety-split fast responses are expected.

When Abigail Andrews lived on this farm, she had none of these mod-cons, and must have cherished the trips into town to find out news. She would have relied on signs, natural signs, for when to do specific chores on the farm. We look for the ‘frost free date’ relying on the internet, but she must have been keenly attuned to the seasons, and perhaps kept a diary like Martha Ballard. By now, Abigail might have twinned her pea shoots up a trellis, and put her onions, potatoes and leeks in the ground. Our peas are up and soon onto the trellis, and I must get those root crops in the ground this week.

One of our first chores when we moved into our colonial home was to establish a garden plot.  Ironically, this old farmhouse sat in the middle of a large landscaped lawn with a few ancient apple trees. Perhaps the former owners were merely following the trend of the ‘american lawn’ movement.  Haven’t you ever wondered as you drove through city suburbs why the houses are plunked on perfectly green patches as the air becomes clouded by the spewed petrol fumes of lawnmowers and leaf blowers?

Thankfully the artist Fritz Haeg embarked on a project, Edible Estates, to convert front lawns into vegetable gardens, so more people can live off the land.  Some citizens groups fight this movement, for garden plots and natural landscaping are deemed “untidy.”

We staked out our garden plot and for the first winter covered the area with the cast-off cardboard moving boxes to kill the grass.  The following spring, we began to dig up the beds, yielding hundreds of rocks but workable soil.

Garden plot first year

I hoped for at least one arrowhead find, for I knew that a Mohican tribe once occupied all of this land.   Last night, the Sheffield Historical Society sponsored a talk by our local naturalist, Rene Wendell, on Native Americans in South County.  Indeed, the Mohicans did occupy hundreds of acres of land and their artifacts have been found in many farm fields.  Wendell mentioned that anyone living in a 1700s home most likely would find more arrowheads, due to the fact that the frontier settlers would have chosen already cleared land.  I will keep on searching!

Growing up I watched my grandmother and mother can and freeze produce from the garden, setting aside or putting away for future use.

We don’t do as much as they did, but when there is a surplus of anything from the garden or if the ancient apple trees produce a bumper crop, applesauce is made and frozen for the winter months.

Now, setting aside means saving materials to use during the winter months in the studio for dyeing of paper and textiles. Last fall, I gathered and dried the long stems of Jerusalem artichoke, the thin golden rods and sacks of various leaves: rose, red maple, dogwood, maple, oak and viburnum. Slowly, over the past months, the stores have been used sparingly, but now with spring here, I am beginning to dye up a storm. Yesterday, I soaked the Jerusalem artichoke leaves and the rhododendron leaves for respective dye baths. Today, I filled the pots with bundled textiles and paper and simmered them along. Tomorrow, I will take them out to cure and unbundle in a few days.

dried Jerusalem artichoke leaves ready for boiling

And for dinner, a jar of frozen pesto from the bumper basil crop of 2012!

Gathering greens and lettuces in the hoop house; we have a plethora of greens.

In the fall, M built us a beautiful homemade hoop house with inspiration from Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm. We longed for fresh greens in the dead cold of winter and thought, if they can grow greens in an unheated hoop house during frigid Maine winters, so can we. And we have done just that. There were are few weeks during the coldest nights when the lettuce seemed to slow down and one had to wait to pick it til after the night’s freeze. It has been a delight to go into the hoop house with its defused light and peacefully gather greens.

With the longer days, the greens have taken off.  We have so enjoyed salads and sautés, but we needed to try something else. What did we have on hand in the larder? Goat cheese, cottage cheese, frozen garlic scapes and basil, eggs from the flock, and frozen FILO dough. Spanakopita!!

new greens in hoop house

M’s Macedonian grandmother made her transparent filo dough by hand. Imagine the skill required to do this. I wish that I could have watched Babo roll out her filo—truly a vanishing skill.

We washed down our version of Spanikopita with an Oak IPA from Big Elm Brewery—our local. Failed to mention that M’s grandmother was a single mother and supported her family by making bathtub gin during Prohibition. Prior to this, her husband started a coffee shop in Cincinnati—a modern day Joe—having arrived in the United States of America with a dream, the American dream.