Garden Weather

75.7 F (24.3 C)
56%
From the SW at 5.0 MPH Gusting to 5.0 MPH
29.73" (1006.7 mb)
KILWHEAT3
Oregon Scientific WMR986
September 2, 9:06 PM CDT

Photos

IMG_5920 IMG_5909 IMG_5908 IMG_5905 IMG_5904 IMG_5898

First honey harvest

IMG_1329

So last week I went out to the bee yard to check the progress of my hive not intending to harvest any honey yet.  But once I got there the bees had nearly filled the 5th super on the hive (bottom two are for brood/pollen the middle one is a mix of honey/brood/pollen and the top 2 are honey). So I took the opportunity to shift some full frames up to the top super and then take the top super home for harvest. With 2 months before the first frost of the season the bees should have enough time to refill the 5th frame with honey for winter.

IMG_1331

After getting the frames home from the bee yard I ran a room fan over them for a few days to drop the moisture content of the honey.  I don’t own a refractometer to check the percentage and nor was I going to spend $65 on one, so I just guessed at what I needed. I figured a couple days couldn’t hurt and would only help. In theory the bees wont cap honey that isn’t ready for harvest, but bees don’t follow a manual.

IMG_1330

After anxiously waiting for a few days I used a cold knife (as opposed to a hot knife) to remove the capping. Now I have to comment on the cold vs hot knife dilemma. Most beekeepers I know and have read swear that it’s worth the extra $80 to get the electric heated knife. It makes removing the capping easier and damages less of the comb (so they say). I don’t know if I’m special or not, but using the cold knife was just fine. After each side of the frame I dipped it into hot water and moved on to the next side.  Couldn’t have been easier.

IMG_1332

I’m guessing folks figure you will need to uncap more than 9 frames…so I guess at that point it might be better. But for now I’m perfectly happy with the cold knife.

Since I don’t own a honey extraction/spinner and didn’t want to spend $300 to get one, I decided to just let the honey drip out using gravity. BOY was that a mistake.  After nearly 4 days of probably 1% of drip per day I couldn’t take it any longer. I had tried the frames upside down, tilted, hanging, heated in front of the oven to get the honey to flow better, you name it..I tried it. But it just doesn’t work.

IMG_1335

IMG_1338I called my neighbor who I knew had an extractor and asked to borrow his. He graciously allowed me to use his and off we went. About 10 minutes after setting up the extractor I was done extracting.  Wow..that was easy! As you can tell I had plenty of help from the girls.  They honey went into a food grade tub for bulk straining.  Then I put the honey into a food grade bucket with a 200 and 400 micron strainer on top.  Then it went into bottles. Can’t get more direct from the bee then that.

The 9 frames extracted out to about 26 pounds of honey.  I actually didn’t have enough bottles and had to make an emergency purchase from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. Even then I didn’t have enough bottles and ended up putting the remaining honey into some large canning jars. When I originally extracted the honey, it had a very obvious mint/eucalyptus flavor to it..I don’t know why…but it was very intriguing.  After mixing and sitting for a few days waiting for the extra bottles, the flavor has mellowed into a typical wild flower honey.

IMG_1336IMG_1358

Best part of blueberry picking is the dairy farm…wait..what?!

Camera Roll-6

Last weekend we headed out of Chicago at a normal time in the morning with plans to hit the Mac Wood’s Dune Rides up at Silver Lake.  It just so happened that lunch time put us near Benton Harbor, MI so I used my iPhone to do a search for a local place to eat and we hit upon the Charlies’ Piggin’ and Grinnin’ BBQ joint.  It was highly rated so we decided to give it a shot.  When you get off the highway and head into Benton Harbor you are smacked full in the face with the bad economy.

Camera Roll-7

Many abandoned homes and an obviously poor neighborhood.  Where the BBQ joint is located looks to have been a focus of an attempted redevelopment in a few block radius. The area is well maintained but not very busy for a Friday lunch.  The food was acceptable and they had a constant flow of a couple people. The BBQ was nothing to write home about, but better than a chain restaurant meal..so I was happy with the choice.

Another few minutes north and we made our first stop at the DeGrandchamp Blueberry Plantation. It makes for a nice stretch your legs stop and we got a chance to look around the shop.  I asked what looked to be the manager if they had any heather plants in the warehouse and he said they did. I told him I would be back on Sunday and would like to buy a few and he promised to have them out front when we came back. I shook my fist towards Chicago and all the gardeners who told me growing heather in Chicago was impossible. Watch me!

Camera Roll-8Camera Roll-18Another few minutes north, or was it an hour?, and you are at the Mac Wood’s Dune Rides up at Silver Lake. They charge about $15/person for a 45 minute ride but having done the ride the previous year it was still worth the $15.  Technically we could have taken our Jeep Wrangler out on the dunes in the public area but it would have been a pain-in-the-butt compared to getting into someone else’s vehicle. And besides, I don’t know what I would be doing. Better let Mac Wood’s do the driving.

Another few minutes north, or was it an hour?, and you end up in Ludington, MI.  We arrived just in time for a late dinner and to check out their street festival.  I got to meet a local beekeeper and purchased a jar of creamed honey to take home.  Using my iPhone again, I steered us over to the Jamesport Brewing Company for dinner. The food was excellent and I would highly recommend the place.  I tried a blueberry/apple hard cider that was very tasty.

Off to the hotel for sleep.  Oooh look!  There’s a brochure on a local Diary Farm you can tour…that might be fun.

…Day 2…

IMG_1287 IMG_0347 IMG_0350 IMG_0357 IMG_0356 IMG_0353 IMG_0354 IMG_1296

About an hour south of Ludington is the Country Dairy Farm which offers “Moo School” for kids and adults.  Essentially it’s a 1hour and 30 minute tour of their 1000+ head of cattle dairy farm.  The tour was excellent and I actually learned a lot. The kids were kept entertained and found many of the aspects educational and entertaining…especially the milking part.  You get to stand about 5 feet from a worker milking cows.  Pretty cool.  You can see a short video of this below.  The most interesting to me was the simplistically brilliant cooler they use for their long-term cheese storage (8 year old cheddar!). A refrigeration truck! If it ever breaks you just pull up another one into the loading bay and you’re good to go. The picture above with the slat boards is the cheese room.

We stuck around for lunch and ice cream (of course) and then headed back to the hotel for swimming and naps. Afterwards we headed down to the Ludington lighthouse and played on the beach.  A good, but slooooow dinner, was had at the House of Flavors. I took the opportunity to be a pig and eat their 2 scoop pig trough. Yum.

IMG_1307 IMG_1309 IMG_1312 IMG_1314 IMG_1315 IMG_1316

…Day 3…

A morning dip in the hotel swimming pool and then off for a drive south towards home.  We tried to stay as close to the lake Michigan shore as possible and ended up driving through the small resort town of Pentwater, MI.  Wow! I want to live here! Awesome cool downtown area and the homes and land are just beautiful. Too bad you need about $1mil to get a lake front property. *sigh*

Off to the DeGrandchamp Blueberry Plantation for blueberry picking and to purchase my heather plants!  We had to cut the blueberry picking short as the girls were complaining of mosquitoes and we still had blueberries in the freezer from last year. 5 hour drive home (thanks DOT construction crews who don’t know how to keep traffic flowing) and that was the end of a fun weekend away with the family.

IMG_1325 IMG_1326 IMG_1324 IMG_1327

Bees may have a home!!

Chris Saad of Honey Trails and I spent 2 and 1/2 hours today with the folks behind Pushing the Envelope Farm. Essentially what they have is 13 to 14 acres of property that is adjacent to the Continental Envelope factory in Geneva, IL.  Actually, the owners of Continental Envelope, and their family members, decided to build a non-profit farm on what had been conventionally farmed as corn.  Fred and Trisha hired Libby as the farm manager and in the past 12-18 months they have started the process of converting from a mono-culture crop to a true diversified farm.

The property looks idyllic to me, but I’m a new beekeeper.  Chris and I are going to ask our mentor (40 years beekeeping experience) to take a look at the property and give us his second opinion.

Fred, Trisha and Libby showed a true interest in beekeeping and Fred especially peppered Chris and I about every aspect of bees. Fred went so far as to offer to plant whatever flowers and trees Chris and I thought the bees would be most interested in.  He even mentioned that they may have goats and chickens in the future and wanted to make sure bees would be okay with them. And showed us where a new hoop house was planned. Wow! Big plans.

I’m excited for the potential opportunity to work with Fred, Trisha and Libby.  Now it’s just a mater of a second opinion and logistics.  I’m ready!

Yes…we have a garden

Looking back over the past few months I realize that MyChicagoGarden hasn’t posted anything about gardens.  How can that be?!

IMG_0279Anyway….here’s what I can tell you.  We have  a garden. It’s very small. At least by my measurements.   I have 3 cabbage plants (on the right in the picture) that are growing like gang busters.  I have a $5 bounty out on any cabbage white butterfly my girls can catch and kill. There are two of those blighters hanging around that are giving the girls and myself fits.  Behind the cabbage are 2 brussel sprouts and behind them is a couple rows of onions and a watermelon plant.  In front of the cabbage where 2 broccoli plants but I harvested them already and the wife had them for lunch/snack last week.

In front on the left is a trellis for the 1 zucchini and 1 cucumber.  Left of them is the spinach field (had some for dinner last night).  Left of the spinach is a couple rows of carrots.  And then in an L shape on the left is an inter-planting of bush beans and peas.

And then obviously in the back is the corn.  What you can’t see is the butternut squash planted in the middle and the bush beans and pole beans inter-planted in the model of the “three sisters”. The pole beans have curled themselves around the corn and are reaching to the sky with long tendrils.

That’s all I can pack into my 3 little 6-foot by 3-foot raised beds.  I’m looking forward to when I can have a larger garden and the free time to work in it.

One last thing…

Do you have a garden or acreage on at least 2 acres of land within 20 miles of downtown Wheaton, IL?  Interested in having bees on your property? I need to find a permanent home for my bees. You’ll receive a share of the honey! Drop me an email at tyler@mychicagogarden.com

Chicago Highland Games next weekend!

The St. Andrews Society of Chicago has released their schedule for the Chicago Highland Games on Friday, June 18th from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m and Saturday, June 19th from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m at the Oak Brook Polo Grounds, 700 Oak Brook Rd, Oak Brook, IL 60523. All children under the age of 12 are FREE!

They still haven’t taken my advice (not like anybody listens to me anyway) and published a readable schedule. I’ve spent the last 2 hours using their schedule and putting all the times and events in a spreedsheet so I can see what things conflict with what and which ones I want to see.

Here’s the schedule I’ll be looking to follow:

08:00 am – 08:30am : Solo Pipe Contests [ Pipes Area ]
08:30 am – 09:00am : Pre-Premier Highland Dance Competition [ Highland Dance Area ]
09:00am – 10:00am : Highland Piping & Celtic Fiddling Exhibition [ Arts & Culture Tent ]
10:30am – 11:00am : Falconry Exhibition [ Demonstration Area ]
11:00am – 11:30am : Swordplay Exhibition [ Demonstration Area ]
01:00pm – whenever : Pipe Band Competition [ Pipes Area ]
06:00pm – Closing Ceremonies / Massed Bands [ Athletics Field ]
06:30pm – Winning Pipe Band [ Celtic Rock Stage ]

If you intend to watch the pipe bands starting at 1pm, DO NOT FORGET TO BRING A CHAIR. Folks start setting up their chairs early in the morning and holding a place around the ring.

With 8 days to go there is a slight risk of thunderstorms on Friday but a nice day on Saturday (85F).  8 days is a loooong way away to forecast so I don’t put much stock in it, but it’s something to watch.

If you are going to be there drop me a note, we can at least shake hands and say “hi”.

They have an online printable coupon if you are purchasing tickets at the gate.