Mason Bees

My Christmas present, a Mason bee house.

     The note next to my keyboard says: 5/16 drill bit, holes 4-8", 3 ft. off ground.  It is a result of a google search for mason bees.  It all started when I got a mason bee house for Christmas (yes, my kids know that that is something I would really like  :-) --- really)  I am looking for ways to get my orchard and garden better pollinated this year.  The honey bees are truly lacking.  We are working on getting a top-bar beehive built and getting honey bees again.  Years back an elderly friend, Clarence, helped me put a couple of honey bee hives on the back of our 10 acres.  Wow! what a difference in production of everything in the garden.  The plum trees were loaded, and oh the pumpkins we had that year!  Clarence had worked  honey bees for so long he never protected himself except for the head gear.  If a honey bee stung him, he considered it good for his immune system.  Today Clarence, I think, is 98 years old.................  Those old bee hives were heavy and I didn't have the same passion as Clarence, so I let them go. The top-bar hive I think I could manage, but, that's another story.
     So back to the mason bees.  We have quite a few of them around here.  They worked the flowers and tree blossoms as hard as they could last year.  Including the dandelions - when I was picking them for wine last year I got stung!  They don't make honey but they do pollinate.  I am out to make sure I have as many of them as possible.  So, besides the nest I got for Christmas we are going to make some nests.  We will start with a big block of firewood and drill holes in it.  Evidently the 5/16 in. drill bit gives the perfect size hole, and if it is at least 4-8 in. deep, you will have more female bees than male.  It is the female bees that do a lot of the work pollinating, and of course laying more eggs.  From my reading it sounds like they don't go further than 100-300 ft. away from their nesting spot.  A couple in the orchard and a couple next to the garden is my goal.  A spot of wet clay mud helps them cap their pollen and eggs. The results of all this won't be seen until the garden of 2012.  Google mason bees, and then put a nest near your garden.....you might be giving mason bee nests for Christmas gifts before long :-).

Banana Walnut Bread

Yuck right? Don't throw them, use them!

     With grand kids at my house all the time, I always have bananas in the fruit basket.  I wish they were organic, but here in Northeast Wisconsin those are hard to find. Pretty often I have bought bananas faster than the kids ate them.  I never throw them out.  If I'm not ready to bake today, or I don't have enough for a double batch, I throw them in the freezer (skins on -just throw them in). I figure there is no sense in heating the oven for a single batch when it is just as easy to make it a double batch.  The bananas come out of the freezer mushy, but tasting the same -- perfect for banana bread.  The more ripe your bananas -- the more banana taste you will get.

     I always toast my walnuts while the oven is heating up.  I keep stirring them every 3-4 minutes.  I never chop them because  I hate doing it, and when you slice the banana bread it doesn't seem to make any difference.
     Don't get alarmed if your bread "cracks" on the top.  It's suppose to.  That's the sign of a good quick bread.  This recipe makes 4 little small loaves, and 2 regular loaves.  Banana bread freezes really well.  Eat a loaf now, freeze a loaf, and share your little loaves with your neighbors :-).

Banana Walnut Bread

2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup of butter softened

4 lg. eggs

8 medium size extra ripe bananas, smashed

1 cup buttermilk, fresh is best, reconstituted dry will work

2 tsp. vanilla

5 cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. salt

2 cups whole roasted walnuts

     Mix well everything except the flour. Add flour and fold in gently just until all the flour is mixed.  Spray your pans.  Bake at 350 degrees.  At 30 minutes, check the small loaves.  A toothpick should come out clean.  Keep checking the big loaves at 10 minute intervals, until the toothpick is clean.  Let them cool 10 minutes and then remove from pan to keep cooling on the cooling racks.




10 seconds after I took this picture, my husband was "diggin' in"

 

Perch Are Biting



Grandson Ryan, ice fishing for perch.

      It's fa-r-e-e-z-i-n-g with the windchill today, and my husband has decided to go perch fishing on frozen Shawano lake.  Well, you have a good time honey, I'm staying right here by the fire. :-)  He will come home with a catch though.  He gets excited to eat perch and I appreciate all the extra protein I will cook up for the chickens.
     With feed prices climbing higher and higher for the chickens and ducks I have been actively trying to figure out how I will feed my little flock off the land.  I can grow grain, and forage berries etc., but protein becomes the issue.  Without enough protein they won't be laying eggs.  In the summer when they are foraging for themselves it's not a problem, worms/bugs = protein.  Winter is harder. Organic soybeans work -- I will soak them overnight and then cook them up for them (along with anything else I'm clearing out of the freezer or refrig that day).  I will get extra eggs the next day, but soybeans I really try to use sparingly.  They can be allergenic, and around my grandbabies I'm cautious.  If the chickens are eating soy, the eggs could be a problem.
    That brings me back to the perch.  When Rick cleans the perch, the females will be full of eggs.  One of these days I'm going to try the Fish Egg Patties recipe I found -- super nutrition :-), but right now I will cook those eggs and the heads and skeleton of the perch until the bones are super soft, and feed it to the chickens.  Free protein! They will go crazy for it.  I love watching happy chickens :-)

How's Your Vitamin D Level?

     I just got back the results of my vitamin D test.  Right in the middle of normal.  Sounds good right?  Well, it didn't happen over night.  Two years ago when I was tested it was almost non-existent.  If you live in a northern latitude and are not taking vitamin D, I guarantee you, yours is low too.  Today I take 5000 I.U.'s of vitamin D every day.
     Over these last 2 years while getting my level back up, I've been trying to learn how they kept their vitamin D levels up back before the days of a capsule.  Well, for one thing, they ate liver.  I know, you all just curled your nose.  But, the fact is, liver is one of your best sources of vitamin D.  I save all the organic chicken livers from when I butcher my chickens, and am determined to find a recipe for liver pate that everyone will eat. (I'm still working on it).  When Rick bags his deer in the fall, I am all over him to bring me back the liver rather than leave it out there for the coyotes.  If we can't bring ourselves to eat it, at least we can cut it up into dog treat size, freeze them individually on a cookie sheet, put them in a freezer bag to store in the freezer for a month (to kill any worm larvae), and then feed them as the healthiest dog treats ever!  My dogs love frozen liver treats.
     Another good source of vitamin D that I read up on, is drying shiitake mushrooms gill side up in the sun.  I can't remember the exact amount of vitamin D they absorbed, but I remember being so impressed with the number that I was going to start doing it. (It was a lot)  I still haven't built something to dry things in the sun and keep the flies off at the same time, so it hasn't happened yet --- maybe this summer.  Then you would throw some mushrooms in your chicken soup every time you made it. 
     Vitamin D is so important for making hormones and keeping our immune system up that if you have never had yours checked, well, you should :-)

Elderberry Wine Recipe

Elderberry

Spiced Elderberry Wine

 Makes 1 gallon of wine ( 5 bottles)

                        2 lbs. elderberries

                                    1 organic lemon

                                    2 campden tablets (I don't use these)

                                    1 tsp. nutrients

                                    1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme

                                    water

Crush the elderberries and place in primary fermentor.  Add 12

cups cold water, lemon juice and rind, campden tablets if you

use them, nutrients and pectic enzymes.  Let sit overnight.        

                                                                     The next day add

                                                                                                          packet of wine yeast (I use Lalvin K1-V1116)

                                                                                                         1/2 ounce thinly sliced ginger root

                                                                                                         2 inch cinnamon stick

                                                                                                         1 cup chopped organic raisins

                                                                     Stir daily until frothing stops -- about 3 days.  Then add:

                                                                                                         3 lbs. brown sugar. (this all turns into alcohol)

                                                                    

                                                                     In a couple of days, place in secondary fermentor (add some oak chips if 
                                                                     you like - I do) and attach airlock.

For a dry wine: rack in 1 month, and every 2-3 months about 3 more times.  Bottle

For a sweet wine: rack in 1 month.  Add 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 1 cup wine.  Stir gently, and place back into secondary fermentor. Repeat process every 6 weeks until fermentation does not restart with the addition of sugar.  Rack every 2-3 months until one year old.  Bottle

     I'm going to walk you through all this again in the fall when I am making it.  In the mean time, find yourself a beer/wine making supply shop.  Let the store owner help you with your selections, including a little basic book on getting started.  Do your homework now, before the garden chores set in.  At the same time the elderberries are ready to be picked, the tomatoes will be going crazy :-)  You won't have time then :-)           

     Why is elderberry high on my list of medicinal herbs?  The elderberry's berries have ingredients in them that stop the replication of viruses.  This is one of my "go to" herbs when I feel a cold coming on.  I start it right away.  I have personally known it to knock out that cold over and over.  I don't care if it is juice, tincture, or wine, it all has medicinal value.  Just one elderberry bush in your backyard can give you a good supply, or if you are like me, you plant half the orchard in elderberries to supply yourself and all of your friends :-) 

Racking the Elderberry Wine

We always try to eat as "close to the land" as possible. Two years ago I found out I could drink "close to the land" also :-). We rarely drink alcohol, but a couple glasses of wine on Sun. night when all the kids are here, goes really good with supper. When we are talking medicinal herbs, elderberry is right up there on the top of the list.  I made 3 gallons of elderberry wine this year, a really fun way to preserve your harvest. Freezing elderberry juice takes up too much space in the freezer, though I do make the grandkids some elderberry syrup that they take home and freeze in their own freezer. The grandkids call it their "black ice cream vitamins". It does look black because of the deep, deep, purple color. :-) (think of all the antioxidants!) I did can some elderberry juice this year too. I will be doing more of that again next year.
     Three gallons of wine is 15 bottles of wine. When it is finished, this is what we will bring out if there are a lot of colds/flu bothering the adults. What a fun way to take your medicine :-). More on the medicinal value of elderberry, and the elderberry wine recipe, next time.

See all the "gunk" at the bottom?

     So, for now let's rack the wine. This wine has already been in the primary fermentor (a 5 gal. pail) for about a week, and in this 3 gallon jar called the secondary fermentor for a couple of months. All that racking is, is siphoning off the wine into a new container and leaving all the gunk (dead yeast -- I'm pretty sure "gunk" is not a real wine term
:-) .  You may have to rack your wine 3 or 4 times, with a couple of months in between each one, before you bottle it. This will make sure it's nice and clear in the bottle. Learned that the hard way with my dandelion and rhubarb wine this year. I bottled it too soon. It will still taste great, just not that pretty in the bottle. Tomorrow more on elderberry.

.....and the FOX story

     It was a spring morning when I heard Rick yell "Jean, quick! come see what's coming down our driveway!"  Two fox were running up the driveway in the middle of the day.  Just before the house they cut across the field and we watched Mr. Fox chase Miss Vixen all the way across 40 acres.  No doubt she was in heat, but it was kinda neat to see them so close.
     Fast forward to early summer........seeing them up close neat?.....not so much.  Mr. and now Mrs. Fox set up house somewhere in our neighborhood. I'm pretty sure they had a lot of mouths to feed too.  Our first encounter was a hole dug under the summer chicken coop door.  He/she killed the whole flock except for one hen.  My husband set a snare in the hole in hopes of catching her.  She never went through it again.
     She then dug under the coop door at the neighbors and wiped their flock out.  They even had a 3 foot wide stone in front of the door.  It was a regular tunnel that she dug!  So now we are on big time fox alert.  The new meat and layer chicks were getting pretty good size.  I love letting them free range.  The problem is they don't end up back in the coop to roost before I want to go in the house.  I'll remember to come out in a bit and close the door.....ya...right.  I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to distressed chickens squawking in my open window, and opened my eyes up just in time to see the fox carrying one away.  We had feathers and about 6 dead chickens all over the yard.  What a bummer feeling.
     We built a new run this last summer.  We made sure to extend the chicken wire down the wall and out about 2 1/2 feet onto the ground.  Then piled lots of field stone on top of it.  If she decides to dig a tunnel, we could still be in trouble.  We haven't seen them at all this year.  Did someone else trap them???
     Ok --- enough critter stories.  Tomorrow we rack the elderberry wine :-)

Coon!

     So, I'm walking very slowly to the duck coop with a pail of water in my hand  --- it's really slippery after our thaw and then freeze again.  I notice tracks in the inch of fluffy snow we had last night. I stopped to ponder.  "What are those? Cat tracks?  Rat tracks?" I started to follow with my eyes where they led to.....I didn't get far.  Thank goodness I had stopped where I was.  Five feet in front of me was a big fat raccoon!!! .....and it wasn't moving.  This is 10:00 in the morning.  You usually don't see raccoons in the day that aren't sick.  When they don't clear out fast when they see you, it is not a good sign either.  I ran back to the house for Rick (my husband) to get the gun.
     The thing you worry about with this situation is rabies.  The raccoon didn't look sick, but was moving in a half-dazed mode.  Rick thought that with the thaw he woke up out of his partial hibernation and was in la-la land, but, you can't take chances with rabies.  If you ever find that you have to shoot an animal that you suspect might have rabies, don't shoot them in the head...you don't want to spread rabies.
     Critter control.....part of homesteading.

How Redtail Ridge Got It's Name

     Redtail Ridge is named after the Red Tail Hawk and the ridge of limestone that protects the south side of the house.  We owned 10 acres, and after 25 years sold the old farmhouse and 5 acres. We built a new house on the back 5 acres, which is plenty big to homestead on for me.  The first summer here we were putting in a new lawn, there was no rain!  I hauled hoses all over the new lawn and garden that year -- it was a full-time job.  I will never forget coming home from town one hot day, and there in the sprinkler was Papa Red Tail Hawk.  He sure looked huge on the ground.  His wings were spread all the way out while he took a little shower!  Redtail Ridge was named that year.
     That was a fond memory of Papa Red Tail, but sadly I have a love/hate relationship with him.  Mr. and Mrs. Red Tail live in the tall pine trees on the ridge.  They would take a chicken dinner in 2 winks given the chance.  I have a covered run attached to my chicken coop for that very reason.  If I am not home, the chickens stay in the coop for the day.  When I'm out working in the garden etc., they get to be free range chickens.
     The people that bought our old farmhouse had a little hole in the chicken wire over their run.  Papa Red Tail went through that hole and killed most of the flock.  Hawks like to eat the brains of the chicken and then move on to the next one.  It is best to never give him a chance.  When we lived at the old house, our outside dog run was right next to the chicken coop.  We never had hawk or fox troubles.
At this new place we have no outside dog, and the hawks and fox know it!  Tomorrow is the fox story :-).

Egg Laying Machines

     Here we are going into the dead of winter in Wisconsin, and my 6 laying hens each laid an egg!  All those soup scraps pay off! ..... and it helps to have the right breed of chicken.  Four of my hens are Red Star Sex-Links, (that lay brown eggs) one is an Araucana (that lays a green egg), and I have a 2 year old Leghorn (that still lays a huge white egg almost every day).  The carton of free eggs my kids get to take home every little bit is very colorful :-)  I have a couple of banty hens that didn't start laying yet, and that's ok, because their job will start in the spring.  I bought them  because the description in the Murray McMurray catelog (http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/) said they would go broody easy.  That means they want to sit on eggs to hatch them out.  Not a trait you necessarily want in your laying hens.  When a hen goes broody, she won't lay eggs.  All she wants to do is sit on eggs.  However, this year I want my little bantys to hatch out some duck eggs for me.  Last year my ducks did a terrible job of it!
     I've had chickens for many years, and I have to say the Red Star's are the best.  They started laying an egg everyday since about 5 months old.  I ordered them after I read an article about them in Mother Earth News.  It said not only do they lay eggs early and every day, but the omega 3 fatty acids in them were far higher then any other breed.  That sold me.