Come on baby, light my fire.

December 30, 2017December 30, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

I know I’m showing my age with my recent music references, but it doesn’t bother me to let people know I’d be retiring next year if I still lived in England!

We were both so tired last night that we didn’t think to check the propane tanks. Even the luke-warm air flowing from the vents didn’t clue me in, so we awoke this morning to a chilly camper. Thank goodness for electric blankets and the electric radiator. Hubby got up to make coffee and found we also had no water. Thank goodness for the Brita pitcher in the refrigerator. Now heat and water are both restored and we’re planning ahead for colder temperatures tonight. I’m also keeping an eye on temperatures in the city as I may need to go back to make sure pipes don’t freeze at the house, although we have everything well insulated there. Still, it’s a concern when we’re a few hours away.

Again, I have to concede that hubby was right when it came to spending money on a new furnace. Not only is this one more efficient, it is quieter than the old one. Never mind that hubby was correct in his assumption that the electric radiator would be insufficient once winter arrived and the old furnace stopped working Thanksgiving weekend. That’s also the weekend someone hit my car at Starbucks and the washing machine had a violent-sounding death. The new furnace is better; the new washing machine is bigger and better; and the repair shop detailed my car inside after repairing the front fender, so the interior of the car looks and smells better than it has in years! Now that Maggie travels better, maybe it will stay that way — I can deal with clay, but I can do without dog barf in the cup holders!

Cold as it is this morning, both fires still had hot coals, so I was able to get the one by the future house site going again very quickly. As we’ve been bush-hogging more land, we’ve been adding to the burn pile up here, and even though I doubt it’s raising the temperature much outside, it looks warmer out there. Still, it’s a good morning to stay inside and get some more grading done.

Hubby is building shelves for the 20 foot shipping container. We had to take everything out to slide the back shelf in yesterday. Surprise, surprise — everything that was on the floor except for some wood and the old couch from the camper fits onto the new shelf, with space to spare. We’ll be able to start moving some things from the house down here now. Hubby is also going to build a base for the old scissor couch. While I hope we never have to ride out a tornado in the shipping container, I’d rather have a semi-comfortable seat if we do need to! That was the main reason for putting the container up here and it does give us peace of mind. Apparently this part of Georgia had a record number of “weather events” in 2017.

Along with the less pleasant surprises of no heat and no water, we had the pleasant surprise of a visit from our real estate agent, Kent Morris, this morning. He specializes in land sales and is the best real estate agent we’ve done business with in decades! We hope we can find someone like him when we sell our house in the city.

2017 is drawing to a close, and it’s been another good year. True, we haven’t won the lottery or found that elusive gold nugget on the land, but we have our health and we have this land. Our health is better because we have this land. Life is good and we’re looking forward to see what 2018 brings.

A Mule for Christmas (and other distractions from grading).

December 29, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

During a job interview many years ago, I was asked whether I’d rather be an art critic or an artist. I’ve never figured out what that had to do with being a computer programmer, but I do finally know the answer — I want to be an artist — or at least be creative! I only spent 90 minutes grading this morning before the urge to empty the compost pot became the most important thing in my life, and that led to seeing a bee flying, which led to visiting the bee yard, which led to taking pictures, which led me back to the computer and this blog! To grade, one must be a critic, and I find it hard to “criticize” according the criteria on a rubric. Yes, I agree that it’s a fair way to grade, and, yes, students knew what the expectations were for their oral exam, but the happy feelings that blue skies and sunshine evoke makes it hard to give a student a failing grade! Never mind that my dominant learning style is hands-on activity, my second most dominant is visual, and my least dominant is listening — and here I sit with 17.5 hours of oral exams to listen to. I should not have procrastinated, and I probably shouldn’t be blogging, but just like every other year I’ll get through it somehow.

It’s only 48 degrees out this morning, but the bees are foraging and we want them to have as much stored as possible going into the predicted 20 degree nights next week, so it wasn’t just procrastination that led me down to the bee yard. Cold as it is, there were so many bees on the pollen feeder station that I couldn’t get to the trays and had to scatter the pollen-sugar mix where the bees can get to it but the dog can’t. (Maggie climbed a stack of shipping pallets to get to a pollen tray yesterday — you’d think we didn’t feed her sometimes!) I so enjoy standing there listening to the sound of happy bees, especially on a day as beautiful as today. We are just so lucky to have this little piece of heaven to call our own.

What does any of this have to do with a mule? Not much, but our Christmas present to each other this year was a Mighty Mule gate opener. Well, it was hubby’s Christmas to me, and my gift was to graciously concede that it is money well spent! Even on a good day, having to get out of the car and walk across the gravel to unlock the gate becomes tedious. If I’m wearing anything other than my trusty work boots, the likelihood of a twisted ankle increases with the height of the heel. Rain makes the process even less fun. Last week’s thunderstorm actually made it somewhat hilarious. If we do end up moving here before retirement, we need to somehow be able to get out of the gate in all weather still looking presentable enough to show up at work.

It took hubby a while to install the gate opener, partly because of the instructions, partly because of all the adjustments and settings, and partly because the dog and I were hibernating in the camper instead of helping for much of the time. By the end of the day on Christmas Day, he had everything working, but then spent most of the next day trying to get it to work right! The gate opens fine, and even closes after 30 seconds. The problem was that it randomly re-opened. That doesn’t offer much security and is likely to run the battery down. I searched the Internet for answers on our way to the family dinner and found that many people have problems with the wand that detects when a car pulls up to the gate to leave. Hubby spoke with tech support and tried many things, but the final solution was along the lines of Hotel California — guests who have the code can check in any time they like, but they can never leave! The wand is going back for a refund and hubby will research other solutions.

Well, it’s time to listen to at least a couple more exams — 7 down, 30 to go! It makes me want to curl up with the dog and just take a nap.

Construction · Gardening · Lazer Creek Apiary

Smoke on the Water (a.k.a. burning wet wood)

December 28, 2017December 28, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

The last of the wood pile — The final big burn!

Two years after having our trees thinned, we are down to one pile of waste wood to burn. With last week’s rain and the cold, we spent two frustrating days trying to get a fire started. Even when we got it going yesterday, it never really flamed up much, but the coals were so hot by the end of the day that even last night’s heavy rain wasn’t enough to extinguish the fire completely. It is still smouldering from the inside out this evening, much like a compost pile. If we can get a burn permit tomorrow, we may be able to get rid of the last of the big logs without having to spend hours coaxing a fire back into the wet wood.

While tending the fire, I’ve been box-blading the deck, getting it leveled out and distributing the ashes from previous burn piles. I also redirected some of the water that comes down the driveway and flows onto the deck on one side and used to flow into the woods on the other. Over time, more water has been encroaching onto parts of the driveway, and driving up during a thunderstorm the other day provided us a good opportunity to see where we could make some quick modifications. Hubby needs to show me how to adjust the box-blade so that I can create real ditches, but what I’ve done so far is at least a temporary solution!

I’ve been having fun on the tractor and am gaining confidence. As I have to extend my leg to reach the gas pedal, the onset of knee pain and the onset of over-confidence have so far coincided, so I haven’t managed to get myself into any questionable situations so far. Backing up remains problematic if I’m wearing my bi-focals instead of my safety glasses, but I’ve managed to auger two holes in the right places! I did, however, hand the tractor back over the hubby for the final holes this evening as I was becoming increasingly cross-eyed.

Talking of cross-eyed, hubby’s nose and the post-hole diggers somehow collided at the end the day yesterday, but he does not have black eyes! He, of course, wanted to keep working on the compost bin, but his nose wouldn’t let him. He was able to get the corner posts set today and we’ll put the walls up tomorrow, weather permitting. We’re going to use shipping pallets to form the walls for now. We know they’ll rot over time, but as the garden plans are every-changing, this may not be the permanent location for the compost. We’ll keep the tumbler bin up by the house for kitchen waste, but that will be just a drop in the bucket once we start gardening for real.

Composting helped us create a fertile garden in central South Carolina’s sand, and now it will help us do the same to middle Georgia’s clay! After box-blading yesterday, we see that between what has decomposed in the log piles and the ashes from the fires, we now have some really nice soil to at least get some cover crops growing early spring. I’ve thrown out pounds of grass and clover seed over the past year, but without breaking the packed clay surface, very little was able to germinate. I have a bag of buckwheat ready to sow — it’s a great early cover crop that also provides nectar. Buckwheat honey is supposed to taste really good, but we don’t have enough acreage to provide enough nectar of any one kind to be able to give our claim our honey is from any single plant type. Still, the bees liked the trial batch we planted in fall and that’s good enough for us.

Arriving back from grocery shopping during the thunderstorm gave us the incentive to move another project up the to-do list — the gate opener! But that story will have to wait until the next blog because the sun is shining and it’s just too nice to stay indoors typing!

Lazer Creek Apiary · Relaxing · Supplemental Feeding

Looking back, looking forward

December 21, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

As I sat here last night knitting and watching a western that is older than I, it was impossible to not think back to doing the same thing throughout my teenage years. True, instead of being dad’s channel-changer, we now have a remote and don’t have to take the two steps to the T.V. We also had 9 channels, instead of the 3 we both grew up with. And we got to choose what we watched — something that rarely happened when grown-ups were home and the one-and-only T.V. was in the living room. Watching a wildlife episode of NOVA afterwards just reinforced the feeling of stepping back in time. It’s a good feeling.

The deja-vu continues this morning as the fog and drizzle feel very English, although the pine trees do not. My cousin and I have been reminiscing about our big family Christmases, and he has promised to send me pictures of my uncle in his apiary. I never knew he kept bees. I remember the mushroom cellar, wood working shop, the kitchen renovation that took years to complete (I think of him every time I look at our abundance of almost-finish projects!), the incredible garden, and the many other ever-changing interests that made him such an amazing person, but I don’t remember bees. It’s nice to feel connected to him in one more way.

Talking of apiaries, our hives are all thriving. I peeked in two of the small hives yesterday and both have a little sugar left on the candy boards. I doubt the bigger hives have any, but we are less worried about their ability to provide for themselves. The forecast is for temperatures in the high 60s until Christmas, so I’m debating putting one feeder bucket out and then refilling candy boards for the hives that have them. I’ll try lifting the hives to assess how much honey they have left, but will only take lids off long enough to swap out candy boards. I’ll also put a trial tray of pollen substitute and powdered sugar out. The bees either flock to it or ignore it, so I’ll just dump one cup onto a tray that is protected from the rain.

Now that the great basement debate is over, we look forward to starting the foundation for our house in 2018. Ideally we’d finish it and start framing, but I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment if we don’t get that far! There are so very many things that impact what we can accomplish here, but we are overall very happy with our progress. We hope to finish burning the wood piles over winter break, doing some tractor work on the deck and starting some raised beds that may or may not become hoop houses. This year’s batch of magnolia seeds are germinating in the greenhouse in the city and I’ll have a new round of lavender, rosemary, and shrub cuttings to plant by spring break. That reminds me — I have a bag of daffodil bulbs from the Tractor Supply clearance shelf to get in the ground, so I should stop blogging and get to work.