Homestead Projects | Northwoods Homesteader

The Greenhouse

MerrieSeptember 26, 2015Leave a comment

The greenhouse has been started in the front yard. It is only 6 X 8 but I think it will be perfect for where it is located. I have a larger hoop house that is down by the garden area. It took about half the day just to get the landscape timbers that I'm using for the foundation level and plumb. That was all I had the gumption for since it was in the 80s and the greenhouse is on the south side of the house in the sun. I put up the frame the next day when it was perfectly beautiful and only in the 70s. Since I'm putting the structure on a slope it took a little digging to get things level. You can see where I dug the upper slope into the ground. On the lower slope I actually stacked the timbers two deep to get things level. The ends currently are only one timber each which leaves a gap on the down side. My plan is to fill in those gaps with the fill that will be dug out of the inside space in order to put some good growing soil and compost in. The outside will be backfilled also so that all the gaps and open areas will be closed it. I did chose to use pressure treated landscape timbers. I know there is controversy over whether to use these when you are going to grow food inside. I feel the risk is minimal since arsenic is no longer used as part of the treatment and where this directly on the ground I really need the benefits of the pressure treatment.

After reading the instructions, yes I did it first, I knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge to get the roof structure up since it said you needed the assistance of two other people and my sweet husband was at work. Well I can be fairly creative when needed so the ladder that you see in the picture became my helper. I was able to lay the ridge piece across the top of the tall ladder while I used a step stool to reach the joints to get them bolted together. It actually worked really well.

The next step it to put together the door and the vent windows that are part of the roof. I am hopeful that I can get the entire thing completed in the next week or so then I can get some fall greens planted. I need to go through my seeds and see what I have on hand that might do well in the cool of the fall in Maine.

Happy Fall Everyone

I cut notches in the corners of the timbers so they would fit well together and overlap then I screwed them together.

Double stacked on the down side of the slope. The frame of the greenhouse is screwed into the timbers with 3 inch screws.

Foggy Morning on the Homestead

MerrieSeptember 19, 2015Leave a comment

While we have been blessed with summer sticking around well into September that has meant that we have some fog every morning. This has created some absolutely amazing sunrises. I see them really well along the ridge that I drive as I head to work. Today the fog was extra thick but the sunrise was still wonderful.

Fall is just a few days away and it is finally beginning to feel that way. Some of the trees are just beginning to tinge with color but I don't expect that full on color will be here until October.

Today I am beginning my greenhouse project. I got a really good deal on a small 8 X 6 greenhouse kit earlier in the summer but just have not had any time to get it put together. It will take a bit of doing because where I want to put it is on a slope. I have landscape timbers to build a level base for it to sit on but getting the slope dug out is going to be a job. I won't be able to use the tractor because it is inside the fence surrounding the front yard so hand tools it is. I'll try to take pictures along the way so you can see how things went. My hope is to get some greens planted so we can enjoy them well into the fall/early winter. I want to try spinach, chard and kale which should do well in the cooler temperatures.

Enjoy these other pictures of this foggy morning.

Honey Harvest and Hive Swarm

MerrieAugust 29, 2015August 22, 2015Leave a comment

We finally decided to take a little bit of honey from the one year old hive. So I extracted three frames and left the other five full frames for the bees. The three frames yielded just under 10 pounds of honey. Not too bad. There are so many advantages to having your own raw honey to use. One of the main reasons we got bees is because my husband suffers from seasonal allergies. We have read that if you have just a little bit of local raw honey each day that it will help boost your immune system against those plants that you have an allergy to. This works because the bees feed from the same plants and therefore a small amount of the pollen, which is usually the culprit, is introduced to your system and you can build antibodies against them. I find this so amazing that God has provided what we need to take care of our issues.

There are a couple of key elements that are important. First, the honey needs to be raw. If it is heated it damages the pollen in the honey and it will not work the same in your body. Second, the honey should be as local as possible to insure that it contains the pollen that are causing your allergic reactions. I recommend that you visit a local farmers market or Google for a local honey producer because I know not everyone can or wants to keep their own bees.

We have made it through the first year of keeping bees with success and some downfalls. The biggest being that our first hive was so successful that it swarmed sometime in, we think, the middle of July. We were not home when it happened so totally missed the opportunity to capture the hive. What we first noticed is that there was not all that much activity at the hive. It wasn't even as busy as the new hive. There were so many days of clouds, wind and rain that it took a couple of weeks until we could actually open the hive and see what was going on. Well, there was honey, eight full frames but there was no young brood. There was a few very mature, almost ready to hatch, brood but no young stuff and we could not find a queen.

I e-mailed my bee mentor with a bunch of questions. He said that yes the hive had likely swarmed and that I could requeen. I started calling places that might have queens for sale this late in the season. The lady at Backwoods Bee Farm in Windham, ME was so helpful. Since we have a second hive and they are raising brood very well she suggested that I could move one of the frames of brood into the other hive and see what happens. First she said that it would give the bees in the other hive something to do raising the brood. You see bees spend a lot of their time raising the next generation and if there is none to raise they get bored. She also said that there was a possibility that they have already raised a replacement queen and that it had not taken it mating flight so had not started laying eggs yet. If there was no new queen yet though the bees would build what is called supersedure or emergency queen cells and they would do it in three days. We checked the frame after 3 days and there were no emergency queen cells so we are hopeful that the hive has replaced their queen themselves. I am going to check the hive again at 6 days just to make sure there are no queen cells. If they are just now trying to raise another queen it is too late in the season and we will indeed need to get a new queen.

The more I learn about our bees, and boy do I have a lot to learn, the more amazed I am by these creatures and their Creator. Their societal structure is one of total cooperation, when faced with a portion that leave, for whatever reason though usually space, they will raise a new queen for those that are left. As long as their is enough time in the season in our cold climate they will continue to raise the next generation and store honey to make it through the winter.

It has been a wonderful adventure down the path of beekeeping and we feel that not only are we getting a wonderful product for our family but we are doing our part to keep this valuable pollinator alive and reproducing for the benefit of all.

Adding a Second Bee Hive

MerrieJuly 25, 2015July 12, 2015Leave a comment

It was such a long cold winter that we were certain that our one little bee hive hand not survived. In February I went out with my stethoscope and listened while I knocked on the side of the hive and nothing. I was sure they were dead. So I ordered another nuc to replace the hive. Well along came a warm day in March and I went down to the hive. On top of the snow was hundreds of brown spots and a few dead bees. The brown spots were, uh hum, bee poop. Bees will not go inside their hive, they are very clean insects, they wait for a warm day and they take what it called a cleansing flight. So that day I found out that the bees had made it through the winter. We were so excited but now we had more bees coming so what to do. Well, we ordered another hive from a beekeeper friend who builds them.

As you can see from the picture we had it built to match the first hive. The new one is on the right. The older hive is doing great. We have put a honey super on and are in hopes of getting a little honey for us this year. Last year we didn't harvest any so that the bees could have it all. It is probably good that we did so they had enough food for the winter. We will do the same with the new hive this year. By next year we hope to be able to harvest from both.

The above pictures are of installation of the nuc into the new hive. The green box is how the nuc arrives. This contains 5 frames of already drawn comb with a queen, brood that she has laid and a lot of working bees.

When we got home with the nuc we set it beside the new hive and opened the box so that the bees could get out to feed and drink. We let them settle down for a couple of hours since they had traveled over Maine's pot hole roads to get home. When we opened the nuc you could see the bee activity. The frames were very active. The five frames from the nuc were placed into our hive body. We put another super of frames on top so the queen could lay even more brood. You can see a few stragglers still in the nuc box. We just left the box next to the new hive and they found their way to their new home.

We are having so much fun with the bees but mostly we are just leaving them alone to do their thing. There are many things in bloom for them to make honey with so sweet things to come.

New Chicken/Garden Shed

MerrieJuly 18, 2015July 11, 2015Leave a comment

The largest building project on the homestead this summer has been the new chicken/garden shed. My husband had shoulder surgery at the end of March so he was unable to help much. Don't get me wrong, I love to build things, but sometimes a second set of hands comes in real handy. He was able to help me with the roof a little. We built a platform from a pallet and strapped it to the forks of the tractor. I rode the platform while he operated the tractor to lift me up and down while I hauled up the metal pieces and screwed them down.

The blue barrel will be our watering system. I have gutter to attach and it will drain into the barrel. The barrel will be attached to the black tubing you see coming out of the building. This is currently hooked up to a hose up at the house but I would rather use the rain to feed the automatic watering system that is attached on the pasture side of the building.

One end of the 8 x 16 foot building is the housing for our meat birds and the other is a garden shed. This building is between the house and the garden so it is a perfect place for me to keep all my garden tools etc. Right now they are in a shed that is located on the other side of the house from the garden.

This year we are raising Red Rangers on pasture for meat. We had such a great loss last year with the Cornish Cross that we had raised the past 20 years that we decided to try something new this year. So far we have only lost 3 of the 40 birds that we started with. The big test will be how they dress out when we butcher them in a couple of weeks. There is a second batch of chicks coming from the hatchery about the time we butcher these. They should be ready for the freezer sometime in September. As I said we are raising them on pasture with the woven electric fence. I can move the fence when the area they are in starts to get a little beat up. I don't want the birds to take the pasture down to bare ground so I move them as necessary. The grass grows back very well since it has been fertilized :). I'll let you know how these dress out for us.