Town House Homestead Tuesday

Well here we are in 2018 starting new again. The severe temperatures took the last of the surviving bees, but we will begin again in early spring 2019. We will take the time to plant a stronger pollination garden and prepare better. Although we are saddened, we did out best. It warmed up enough to bring the hive box inside so that we could clean it, and retrieve whatever honey and wax for our use. Needless to say everything is frozen.

My daughter managed to clean one side of a frame and simmer down the frozen wax and honey. The bee shaped jar we found thrifting, and she promised it would hold the very first honey she got from her own bees. We will be able to fill this jar and maybe another. We are not sure of the amount of wax we will have, but all will not be lost.

There is canning on the horizon. Soups, broths, and stocks from the stock up in the freezer. This has been a blessing for us because we actually eat what we can. I like my deep pantry. I also use canning jars to vacuum seal everything from cooking and baking supplies to dog food. Extra work, but safer storage.

You know it's winter and a time to slow down when a shoe box of knitting is on the end table. A pair of socks here and there and small things made from leftover scraps. We try to use everything if we can. I also have a stack of patterns that I'm searching through for my next winter knitting project.

My quilt is closer to being done. Much more to do, but I'm making progress. My goal is to have it on my bed by the end of this month. I'm just hoping I have made enough binding for it because my scrap pile of this fabric is quite small.

Yes, this little guy and I had a good Christmas. I'm still working hard at the bonding with him, but he's learned to leave my bare feet alone, not chase my feet, not touch my sewing or knitting and he tries hard to listen. Our major goal with him is to stop the play biting and jumping, but everyone tells me he's still young. Hunter will be one year old February first. 

I hope that everyone is surviving the cold winter. I have a bad case of Spring fever today, but I have seeds to organize and lots to keep me busy. Thank you for stopping by and have a great new year.  

Town House Homestead Tuesday

It was another weekend that the hive needed to be inspected. This venture has been a serious roller coaster ride. The colony at this point is not prepared enough for the up coming winter and will need to be fed. They are working hard, but they need all the help they can get at this point.

These are some awesome pictures she took so I could see what was going on inside the hive. You can see the new bees eating their way out, some capped honey, and the comings and goings after the mouse guard was put in place.

This lady followed her back into the house and became disoriented and tired. She gently picked her up and got her back where she belonged. 

I harvested a few more items from my garden. I have quite a few beans coming, but only a handful were ready. I cut back the chives to make my zucchini quiche, potato salad, and to have on baked potatoes with sour cream. 

I was given some very old, but heavy duty garden tools this past weekend. I will wire brush them clean and treat them so they will last even longer. I will be sharing some too.

My sunflowers are doing so well. One is opened and growing and two more will be coming soon. This happy Bumble bee is certainly enjoying them. Next year I hope to have a larger area filled with them. They are so photogenic.

They are so mystical and mysterious at the same time. My daughter never liked them, but for some reason this year she has changed her mind. This is the first time I have ever grown sunflowers.

I've been getting almost too much help from Hunter these days. I was cleaning sod and putting it in buckets for next years container garden and he wanted to dig too. My daughter calls this engaging the dog. I'll decide some day what it actually means. Maybe just a puppy who needs to dig in the dirt. I'm saying this because of all the holes he's dug in the lawn that I need to fill. That's what's been keeping me busy here at the Town House Homestead. We just keep growing and I want to thank you for stopping by for a visit. Take care everyone and be safe. If Irma is coming your way please start preparing. She seems to be very dangerous.

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Yikes! Where did this past month go? Many differences since my last post, sooooo long ago. 

The weeds are higher and my sunflowers are as tall as I am and getting taller. All five have blossoms and I'm so hoping to get some seeds. The squash is also growing up the tomato cages and up to my neck.

Two five gallon buckets growing fast and steady. Lots of blossoms, and the start of some fruit. I am thrilled with this venture. Patty pan squash growing in five gallon buckets.

My ginger plant is now 35 inches tall. Lots of activity in the pot, so maybe in a year I'll be harvesting ginger. Watching ginger grow is a new experience. It's a different plant to say the least.

The zinnias I started from seeds are starting to bring wonderful color to the garden. In the next week there should be many more. I love the fact that a package of seeds gives me so many different colors.

This is butterfly milkweed that I started from seed and it's doing it's job attracting those beautiful pollinators. I will add more next spring. It is tall, dainty, colorful, and environmentally friendly.

I was literally gifted a 13 gallon kitchen bag full of freshly harvested basil. I do not say no to these or any food gifts. I got busy washing and preparing it for pesto. I froze 16 four ounce servings so that through the winter I can make pesto anything. I used walnuts this time because I had them on hand and I love the flavor just as much as pine nuts.

All individually wrapped and ready for the freezer. This was a wonderful blessing.

I was also given six wonderful fresh cucumbers that are all prepped to become bread and butter pickles tomorrow morning. I know they are not pickling cucumbers, but I had all the ingredients and they will be awesome.

I harvested the pot of shallots and ended up with eleven healthy ones. They are hanging in the breezeway drying and make a wonderful piece of wall art. Next year I will do a lot more, but not bad for the first time from seeds. I planted beans in the empty pots as a second batch. The bucket beans are almost ready to blossom and there are now three peppers that I can see growing.

The adventure I am on as far as gardening and becoming a little more self sufficient goes back a few years when I lost everything and hit bottom. My daughter and I started searching for ways to stop the waste and make everything work. All usable vegetable scraps go in the freezer for vegetable stock and gets canned for use. Then the scraps are added to the compost. I keep a small empty coffee container by the sink so I can add the scraps as needed.

Not everything goes to the making of stock or compost. This is the bottom of a red onion that I soaked in water to stimulate the roots. It will grow into a new onion and I won't have to purchase any. I do this when I buy different varieties because I'm the only one who eats the onions here and even though it takes time, I still benefit from waiting. Call me crazy, but it's working for me and I'm not starting everything from seeds. 

With my daughters back injury and the swarming we were sure we had lost the bees, but this weekend she did another inspection. To our surprise there is a queen and she is laying brood and they are producing honey. They seem to be very healthy and as I watched them daily thinking they were dying off they always appeared to be getting stronger. I guess mother nature was telling me that is was meant to be. We will be watching them closely to make sure they keep moving forward and will think about protecting them for winter.

And to put a nice end to this weeks blog, there is Hunter. I've admitted in the past that I am not a dog, or for that matter, a pet person. However, this little guy and I have taken those obedience lessons over the top and he is becoming a good puppy. He has quite a ways to go, but we are bonding. He is now six and a half months old and weighed in at 31 pounds. I would like him to stay this size, but who knows. For now the path to a good relationship with him is going okay. That's some of what's been going on at the new Town House Homestead. We grow more and more each day and learn constantly. Things are moving along well and we are happy here. Spread Love and thank you for stopping by.

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Well let's talk about activity and being busy. So much has gone on that I'm going to make it simple and mostly one liners if that's possible. 

Another find on this lovely half acre piece of the earth has been this peach tree. It's growing through the fence and has just a few peaches, but we'll see what happens. My daughter came across it when she was walking Hunter. 

I dehydrated sweet potatoes for Hunter so that he'd have some healthier chews. The teething and tooth loss has made him a little sick, so we've been trying to make things easier for him. Puppy kibbles are a bit hard so we've been adding some chicken broth to it.

I had a healthy harvest of garlic. As hoped I got 34 heads from the 36 cloves I planted. There are two braids hanging in the garage to dry well for the next few weeks.

Beekeeping has been a real trial. My daughter's first attempt at her own, and the hive split, which is normal. They swarmed to the dead apple tree about twenty feet from the hive box itself, and about eight feet off the ground. We watched it happen and immediately contacted another beekeeper and he came with his daughter to rescue it. 

This is Max doing his first swarm collection and what doesn't show in the pictures is that this is during a very heavy thunder storm.

Close to two hours later when the rain was letting up, Max and Brianna had the box filled and sealed up for transporting, and so far so good for them. Unfortunately one week later the rest of the hive swarmed to another tree 35 to 40 feet up and could not be rescued, but again I saw this swarm happen, and 24 hours later watched the swarm leave the tree and fly off into the sunset. 

This was the best picture I could get of the second swarm. We are sad, but the hive is still active and we will inspect to see if there is a third queen. You never know. 

The long neglected and dying apple tree was taken down. Emily and I needed to release some stress so in a couple of hours we had it down and mostly cleaned up. The future of the stump is still being decided.

One kids trash is a dogs treasure. Our friend Richard brought Hunter a kiddie pool. With a little duct tape repair it holds enough water for Hunter to play in. 

The gardens are growing. Weeds and all. The rose bush in the back I transplanted from a very shady corner of our lot and it is so happy. Blossoming on a daily basis. A bucket of mint and a bucket of lemon balm are almost ready for a good harvest, and there are Iris and spider wart in this corner. Much more growing and lots of planting to go this fall with bulbs. The front flower beds are growing nicely too and we'll have stronger plants to split next year to keep going. 

Everything has to look messy and old before it looks clean, new, and young again. The shed has been cleaned out so that a new floor can go down and new doors built. For now everything is in the pollination garden area that has not been planted, waiting for the new work to be done before it can go back in. 

We gathered all the landscape timbers that came with the property and stacked them in the back yard. These will become two raised beds. One for raspberries and one for blackberries. 

And here he is, the most curious puppy on earth, who stuck his face in front of the camera while I was trying to take a picture sitting down. Don't know what I was thinking. We're learning to work together. Hunter is five months old and completed three obedience classes. Some successes and a lot to work on, but he's still a baby as I am told, and he will get it. So that's how busy we continue to be as we build this half acre homestead. It is paying off in wonderful ways and we couldn't be happier. Lots more to do this summer and getting ready for winter, but even though time is passing quickly, we have accomplished a lot in 15 months. Thank you for stopping by for a visit and have a great week.

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Wow, it's been a while. So much to do while we have these warmer weeks. I'm trying to get outside work done, but it's been hard with my daughter unable to help because of back problems, plus an extremely active puppy, and just the ordinary day to day stuff.

Spray paint projects have been in full swing. My daughter commented that the colors and designs looked like the toppings for a cheeseburger (ketchup, mustard, and pickles). 

I made a little more progress on the pollination garden. This project is going to take most of the summer. I haven't figured out how to explain to a puppy that the plant markers I am putting next to my plants are NOT for him to take out and run away with, so I used a bucket to mark where I put some canna lilies. Yes, he managed to dig two of them out. Today it was my marigolds. Oh well.

My garlic is coming along nicely. I'm hoping next month to have a good harvest. For me that would be three dozen strong heads of garlic. Some to plant in the fall and most to use for fermenting in honey and a good amount for cooking.

I harvested a great amount of lavender yesterday. My daughter has had to sit, so she cleaned it up and made bundles for drying. Glad to help her so we didn't lose the first harvest. Looks like it's going to be a bountiful summer. I also harvested an over flowing cup of chives, and chive flowers for salads and vinegar.

This is a calendula blossom. The more you pick them the more they grow and they are starting to have many blooms. This one is so pretty. So nice to see those seedlings grow into pretty flowers.

The Bee Balm and St. Johns Wort are thriving nicely. They were just single stems when I put them in last summer. I had more than enough to split and add to the back yard garden. The pots contain shallots that I started from seed and I can't wait to harvest them later this summer.

The bees are doing well. Lots of orientation flights, so we know the colony is growing. We got a taste of their honey from a tool  being used for inspection and we are hoping to get a little in the fall. One day at a time.

We have been in our, new to us, home for fourteen months and what a difference a year makes. This is one after picture of what the front garden is today. 

This was one year ago this month and the work was well worth it. Just have to keep working in the back yard so that we'll see the same result next June.

In the next week or so all of these plants will be in bloom. My zinnia seedlings are in the ground now and I can't wait to see it all colorful in the next few weeks. This is another one year later picture.

I've done some more unpacking and sorting for a garage sale and along with the sorting I've been putting things in place on the breezeway. It needs a lot of construction fix up, but for now I have a place to chill while Hunter plays out back. I love the fact that we have a vintage home with vintage Pyrex collections. So nice that they can be out where I can see them and not shoved away in boxes or cupboards. 

Last, but not least there's Hunter. He's four months old now and I'll still confess, I am not a pet person. Here he is in his pen that he reconfigured to suit himself, but he didn't plan on a place to play. Needless to say he wasn't happy, but we couldn't stop laughing. Most of the time he is lose outside with us in the fenced in yard, or tethered in the gazebo out front, but he can find mischief wherever he goes. Maybe some day I'll share the nightmare story of his first obedience class, or maybe not. So, that's what's been keeping me busy at the new townhouse homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week.