Strolling Through Our Woods

After church on Mother's Day we took a nice walk around our property.  It was a rather cool afternoon, with a threat of rain and temperatures in just the upper 50s.  We had a very enjoyable little hike, even though we had to wear jackets!

 

These pretty flowers are spiderwort from Mackey Bend, Lisa's homeplace growing up.  Lisa has two big bunches here in the wild garden.  She has several other plants and flowers from her home that reminds her of her mother, but these were the one's blooming when we took the walk.

These gladolia's are from the Mary Castle homestead across the river.  Before she passed away, the new bridge came through and took away all her garden space where they were planted.  She was happy that we were able to re-locate them , along with some of her other plants and flowers, before the bull dozers came through.

  

 

Lisa calls these dewberries.  They are a type of black berry that runs right along the ground.  The berries are among the first to ripen, and are super sweet.  They are better than blackberries or even raspberries!

We have three different varieties of wood sorrel.  I think those above are called violet wood sorrel, due to the purple markings.  The flower also has a violet tint to it.  It is a tasty sour treat on a hike through the woods and helps to quench thirst.

This is yellow wood sorrel.  It does not have the purple markings but tastes the same as the violet sorrel.  There is common wood sorrel that we didn't find on this hike.  We also have several good patches of sheep sorrel around, but we didn't go to them on this walk either.  All the sorrel are high in Vitamin C, good to nibble on, and are good as a tea or to use in salads.  They also contain oxalic acid which is ok, but can be bad for folks suffering from gout, rheumatism, or kidney stones if they consume too much of it at one time. Historically, wood sorrel was used to treat scurvy, fevers, urinary infections, mouth sores, nausea and sore throats.

The above plant is one that Lisa wants to look up.  She thinks it might be Angelica or New Jersey Tea.  We haven't identified it yet.  Looking for and finding plants that she does not know is one of Lisa's favorite things to do!

 I just thought this was a pretty picture looking out across the ravine.

We are very thankful that we have a nice wooded area that we can roam around and explore whenever we feel like it!  Nature is a wonderful place to spend some time!

Where The Green Grass Grows

I am blessed to have a morning commute of about 8 miles along a curvy country road into the town where I work the job that pays me money.  Sometimes I am frustrated by a car or truck pulling out right in front of me along the way, or often times one of them whizzing up from behind me and keeping close to my bumper, too much in a hurry.  Many times, however, I have driven the entire way without seeing another vehicle at all until I got to town.

Several mornings recently I've been awestruck by the mysterious beauty of low hanging bands of fog in the hills which hide the middle parts of the mountains.  These fog bands are seemingly held down by an invisible hand in order to allow the tops of the mountains to peak above the murky mists. 

Driving home I have been treated to the shows of the Dogwood and Redbud trees in bloom along with a variety of flowers of yellows and blues along the hills near the road.  I enjoy looking across the fields of the several hill farms I pass and seeing a man tending to his cows or horses, and I drive carefully by several homes where I have needed to brake in the past to allow for chickens crossing the road.

This morning it was not fog that had my attention, but the crystal clarity of the morning sun, shining on the mountains in the near distance.  It was unreal how it brought out such vivid shades of greens from the trees of the distant hills.  I thought to myself that the varied subtlety of the green colors seemed too perfect, like the artist had over exaggerated what the true colors of the trees were.  I realized that God was speaking to me, as He often does during my commutes.  He doesn't usually give me a specific message, He just taps me on the shoulder, reminds me that He is here and that He loves me.  I felt led to immediately thank Him this morning for the beauty of His creation and for blessing me with my wonderful family and home and providing for all our needs through the blessings of the employment God has allowed me to have.

My day at work today was unusually busy, but it was a good day.  As I got into my car to head back to the homestead, the radio started playing with the turning of the ignition key.  The last station that was playing this morning was the local country music station, becasue I was listening to the news at 8:00am.  I try hard not to make a habit of listening to the music on this station due to the offensive messages that so many of today's country songs offer.  However, there are still some songs that come out on the country music stations that are good!  I enjoyed the song that began playing this afternoon because it touched me so close to how I've been feeling lately.  Here's the chorus, which is pretty much the whole song.  You can sing along if you want...

I'm gonna live where the green grass grows

Watchin' my corn pop up in rows

Every night be tucked in close to you (Lisa)

Raise our kids where the good Lord's blessed

Point our rocking chairs towards the west

Plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows

Where the green grass grows

I am very thankful to live in this part of God's creation where there are grass and trees and hills and streams;  a place in the country where we can grow food, raise animals, and where our children can run and play and be loud if they want to.  I'm thankful that God has allowed us to plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows!  And where the green grass grows...

Taking Care of Some Beesness

We have been learning about how to run an apiary and earlier this week we decided to check on how our honey bees are doing.  We have 4 hives right now.  Two are colonies we purchased in 2011 and two are new swarms from last year.  Last year, our colonies began to swarm in March and continued to do so through the summer, so we were afraid they may have been getting ready to do that again.  This time, however, the plan was to head off the swarms by dividing the colony that seemed to be the most active and possibly ready to swarm.

Here are Lisa and Matthew suited up and checking them out.  They are looking at the hive that we thought may be ready to divide.

This was the scene between the super and the top hive body box.

These frames show that some of the brood has been capped, but we were expecting the frames to be completely full and capped.  If they are all like these, then this hive is not ready to divide.



Pulling out a couple more frames.

Here is Lisa examining it.

These are not as full as the first frames checked.  We will check on that hive again in a few weeks to see if they get everything filled up.

They also checked on the other hive that has been most active, which was a new swarm from last year.  They looked good.  The bottom frames are getting filled up nicely. 

All the hives seem to be doing ok, even though none are ready to divide yet.  We had a very cold March, over all, this year and it seems that true Spring weather was slow getting here.  I've noticed that everything is blooming later this year, so I guess the bees are just rounding out everything later as well.  Maybe last year everything was just earlier? 

Thankfully no one was stung very badly during this expedition.  Lisa actually did some bee work all by herself a couple days earlier with no protection except the veil and did not get stung at all.  When these pictures were taken, last Wednesday, the only sting we had was a friend who was visiting.  I was up there very near the bees taking pictures and he was up there also, observing.  Neither of us were wearing any bee protection and he unfortunately got stung on the ear.  Thankfully it didn't swell much and he discovered that he is not allergic to honey bee stings! 

Californy Is The Place To Be - Rabbits, That Is

Yesterday we finally took the plunge into starting a meat rabbit operation!  We bought a pair of 8 week old baby Californian Rabbits from a neighbor over the hill and down the road a ways.  They are unrelated so they should be suitable breeders when they grow up.  The California breed is one of the best for raising meat along with the New Zealand breed.  I'm hoping to get a New Zeland doe kit from a fellow in a couple weeks and have a breeding trio in the future.

We have talked about getting into meat rabbits for years and decided that now was a good time to start.  We've been learning how to care for rabbits with our Angora rabbits and since they are doing well we decided to expand into meat production.  By the way, Snowflake, the Angora doe, thankfully was not pregnant and so we did not have a litter.  They still have their long fur, which probably kept conception from occuring, even though she was mistakenly in the same cage with the male, Wiley, when we got them.  We are not yet ready for baby Angora rabbits.  I'm not  sure we are spending enough time with the three that we have, so we are really not yet ready for a bunch more!

But, caring for the meat rabbits won't take so much time.  We'll let them grow up and have kits which we will make use of for our family table.  Rabbit meat is supposed to be a very lean and healthy meat!

We'll get pictures taken soon, hopefully.  It was a beautiful day today and it would have been a good day to take pictures with the new rabbits.  Lisa, Simon, Timothy and I enjoyed petting and feeding them this afternoon, but Matthew and Christina had the camera with them visiting friends.  When I get pictures, I'll put them here on the blog sooner or later.

Sooner or later has now arrived!  Here are some pictures of them that Matthew took on April 12th.  They had already grown some during that first week!

God is good and we thank Him for our new rabbits!

Rosebud Says, "Hello, I'm Ready to Grow!"

Rosebud was 8 days old today, so she has passed that first week danger period!  The vet said that if she did not get enough colostrum her first 12 hours of life then she would likely die during the first week.  We were concerned since she could not get her mouth on Dandelion's teats those first couple of days,  but it appears that we did ok with the bottle!  She was full of bounce and energy today and was excited to get out into the pasture.

Timothy thinks it is really neat to have a "baby cow" around. 

 

These pictures were taken when Rosebud was 4 days old and still in the barn full time.  I think Timothy and Rosebud are adorable together!  That last picture shows that Dandelion was close by and keeping an eye on everything.  I'm glad she is being a good mama!

Since we were concerned about Rosebud nursing, I thought these pictures were really nice.

To celebrate Rosebud passing the one week test, we decided to introduce her to the rest of the current herd of animals sharing the pasture.  Violet and her calves seemed curious about the new calf.

Those calves sure have grown since we got them in September!

Here are some pictures from the pasture this afternoon:

Here are a few pictures that I liked of Christina and Timothy outside the fence on our gravel road:

Simon helped with the chores of feeding and watering, but then he went to explore one of his favorite places: the dump.  Near the pasture (in a secret location) we have a treasure trove of discarded junk from previous owners over the past decades.  Simon was having such fun, after awhile Christina and Timothy joined him.

One of these days we plan on cleaning the junk out and selling most of it for scrap metal.  But for now it is just a place to explore and find all sorts of neat stuff!  (I wasn't going to take pictures of such an eyesore, but I decided that we may appreciate having this record some day.)

It was getting late.  Time to leave the pasture and ride off into the sunset.

We give God thanks for sunny days, loving family, green pastures, newborn calves, and even old junk!