Benefits of Beekeeping

There is a wide variety of reasons why you might want to become a beekeeper and raise honey bees. First of all,  think of all the delicious things you can make with honey. Then there is beeswax which can be made into candles, lip balm and cosmetics.

If you want healthy plants, bees will help pollinate the plants.  Bees are untiring workers and subsequent to the original start up costs, the bees will provide the free labor to produce the honey and beeswax that will be yours to use.  Bees will pretty much take care of themselves and require a minimum of your time.

Costs Associated With Beekeeping

Don’t expect to get a lot of honey the first year, but thereafter you should see a bountiful increase. To begin with you will have to spent several hundred dollars for your first hive, smoker, clothing and other equipment. It may take several years to recoup your investment and for you to learn what beekeeping is all about.

Are You Allergic To Bee stings?

Before undertaking this enterprise, you should have yourself checked to see if you are allergic to bee stings.

You are sure to be stung from time to time, and although it may be painful you will likely develop an immunity to the stings over time.

If you are allergic to bee stings, which sometimes may even cause a fatal reaction, you should not attempt to be a beekeeper.

What about Laws, Ordinances and Restrictions?

Many areas have laws regarding beekeeping, so you should check with your local officials to see whether you can keep bees.  Check and see if there are any restrictions or ordinances in you location that would be applicable. Another consideration should be where the bees are located in order for them to be healthy and not be a nuisance to your neighbors.

Where You Should Locate Your Beehive

Your beehives should be placed in an area that is not too windy, or too cold, or in an area that is prone to flooding. Bees can survive in maximum temperatures of 120 degrees F. if water is available and can survive in temperatures as low as -50 degrees F. for a couple of weeks.

The opening should be facing an open area and receive adequate sunlight. Your bees will need sunshine and accessible water and nectar and pollen from plants. Therefore you must make certain that flowers and trees that produce pollen are nearby. It is also imperative that you make sure the bees food source is not contaminated by pesticides.

Bee Colonies

A colony of bees usually consists of one queen bee which may lay several thousand eggs daily and as many as 60 thousand underdeveloped females which are the worker bees. These worker bees do all of the work for the colony.

There may be also be up to a thousand male bees or drones whose only duty is to mate with the queen. The worker bees have a lifespan of about six weeks, whereas the drones usually only live for a few weeks and if there is any adversity in the colony they are driven out to perish.

Other Resources:

• Best Beekeeping E-Books
• Beekeeping Supplies Near Me

As the recession deepens, frugal living has become respected once again – if only because it is a necessity now for so many Americans.

What is Frugal Living?

Living a frugal lifestyle is new for many facing job loss, reduced income, or the task of getting out of debt. Others want to embrace a more simple existence and live frugally by choice instead of necessity. and live better on less.

Frugal doesn’t always mean cheap, although it may translate into this at times.  Living in a frugal way for my family means that we don’t go on shopping sprees at big box stores — but we might save for months to buy an expensive, American-made wool blanket. We’re often frugal by saving for something made of quality materials that will last and hold up over years of use, instead of spending money on cheaper items that wear out easily and have to be replaced frequently.

Frugal Tips

Look for your highest household expenses and find ways to trim these – it’s easier to find big savings where there is big spending.

These frugal tips are from my own experience:

• Instead of using oil to heat our home, we burn anthracite coal. The savings is thousands of dollars per year.
• We rented out our home with an expensive mortgage and now pay less than $500 a month on our owner-held note for a smaller house with more land.
• Opt for a high-deductible health insurance plan with lower monthly premiums and a tax-deductible Health Savings Account option. If your typical medical expenses are low, this can be an excellent way to save hundreds of dollars a month.
• Save money gardening by growing vegetables and fruit at home as inexpensively as possible. Use free manure, saved seeds and recycled water to cut costs to the bone.

Frugal Recipes

Making frugal recipes can help you save money and even feed your family more nutritiously. When you’re cooking from scratch and making use of local, in-season produce, your food costs go down while nutrition improves.

While we don’t have an orchard on our own property, we take advantage of local pick-your-own cherries, strawberries, peaches and apples, in the spring, summer and fall. I home can and preserve plenty for the winter months, meaning that I pay local, in-season prices on our year’s supply of fruit. It sure beats buying peaches by the pound in November … and wondering where on earth they were grown.

We buy grass-fed beef by the side or whole steer and not only is it healthier for my famiy, it is less expensive than buying most natural, organic or even regular beef in the grocery store.Having this on hand means I can whip up frugal recipes quickly any night of the week.

As you transition to frugal cooking, start and maintain a frugal recipes collection that incorporates your family’s preferences with locally available items and budget ingredients.

Small-scale and home dairy farming is an important part of many homesteads and family farms. After years of decline, small dairy operations are making a comeback, due largely to the growing popularity of pasture-based and raw dairy products. A single cow can greatly increase a family’s self sufficiency through the production of dairy products, as well as calves that can be sold, raised for meat (steers) or added to the dairy operation (heifers).

Home Dairy Farming

The home dairy brings with it a large measure of self-reliance and sustainablilty, but also a measure of sacrifice and dedication. Jersey cows, popular for small-scale and grass-based operations, need to be milked at least once a day, every day, when producing milk. Some farms milk twice a day, but all cows need at least one daily milking. The milk must be filtered, chilled and stored immediately after milking and something must be done with the bounty, whether it is consumed, made into butter and cheese, or sold.

Family Milk Cows

Family milk cows provide an excellent source of protein and fat and other essential nutrients, in the form of milk and cream. They are considered the cornerstone of many family farms and homesteads.

Home Cheese Making

Making cheese at home is an excellent way to preserve milk from the family cow, as well as enjoy delicious and nurturing dairy products throughout the year. In many states, homemade cheeses may be sold directly to consumers, adding another income stream to the family homestead.

Planting season is upon us!!! It’s like a race to see who can get out of the starting gate first!

We have the raised beds on the lot in shape for planting! We also just planted some herbs up at the house; dill, basil and rosemary; which we got from the 26th Annual Asheville Herb Fest on May 1st – 3rd. In the two large raised beds at the house we have random lettuces, water cress, garden cress, beets, chard, collards and kale planted. This is all sprouting and coming up quickly! Except for the chard. I personally feel like that bed is a dud….

Chicks! These three were supposed to be a Heritage breed..but they are looking more and more to be Bantams… Oh well!

We do the “lasagna” style of getting our garden beds read for the season, AKA Layers! Cardboard, wood chips (Free 99!), coffee grounds, leaves, stump grindings, then top soil.

Here’s the progression:

Wood chips. Vital. These will decompose quickly! Also, to get them for free or really cheap, contact a local company that cuts down trees. They will be more than happy to get rid of their chips!

Leaves from the previous fall – collect everyone’s and put in the compost! I guarantee you will NOT regret it!

Stump Grindings. I found sooo many amazing worms in this stuff! I got it from our local tree chopping company for FREE!

The final product. Topsoil on top of all the layers I have no doubt that we will have some amazing produce out of these beds!

The ducks decided to help out with the garden beds as well!!! They did such great work! Probably eating all my harvested worms!

We lost hives this winter. Thankfully we have a hive left! They are super duper busy bees!

Who doesn’t want some awesome worms in their gardens!

Well that’s all for now! We will be posting more updates in the near future! Onward with Urban Farming!

I started on this whole journey of cramming agriculture into the context of cities after becoming involved with a policy effort to allow backyard chickens in Asheville.  I was fortunate enough to be in an urban planning program at the time and was able to look at the things that I had grown up with (keeping chickens and growing food) as something that could be beneficial even in urban areas.

What I’ve found since I started is that I wasn’t prepared for the tremendous amount of work that it can be coupled with the emotions that come when things don’t always work as expected.

As we muddle through the winter, waiting to transition into the growing season when things are pretty and less muddy and there’s more visible productivity, one of the things that I’ve struggled with is the inevitability of loss and the ever looming potential of failure.  Just today, this was brought home when I opened up a bee hive (which appeared to be thriving just weeks ago) to find that the hive had been lost.  A few days ago, when cleaning up after our new baby quail, I found that one didn’t make it.

A few weeks ago, during the height of the cold, we had to move a young hen to a new part of the farm, while the other hens braved the cold, she was unable to take the stress of the move and the loss of her companions (one rooster had to be rehomed, one choose to brave a night outside the coop and met death at the mouth of an unknown predator)  And at the beginning of the winter, we had to euthanize a duck (who we had hatched from one of our own eggs) after she was unable to recover from a leg injury.  This isn’t even accounting for all the untold plant losses which we’ll discover in the spring as a result of the record cold.

Urban farming can be particularly traumatic because the micro-scale highlights the intensity of life.  The animals usually have names (although I haven’t named our bees), and they’re individually counted before they go to bed each evening.   The “farm” becomes an odd hybrid of hobby and work… of raising livestock and keeping pets.  It’s bizarre to think that for the first time in my life, I grew attached to a box of some 30,000 bees to the degree that I was saddened by their passing.

Even something as simple as a dead tree becomes more intensely meaningful when you’re made aware of your dependence on it (I’ve spent the last two year cultivating a fig tree only to have the trunk explode during our latest cold snap).  Each time something dies, be it mammal, bird, insect, or plant, I’m forced to wonder if it’s my own lack of caring that some how caused its passing.

As a result of this adventure, I’ve become more aware of the successes of agriculture (you know the simple things – eggs that have their full shells, plants that actually grow, animals that produce more value than they eat, etc.).  I’ve also become painfully aware of societies lack of knowledge regarding the failures of agriculture.  When we go into a grocery store, no matter how green and sustainable it is, we are surrounded by the misnomer that agriculture is a win-win proposition (farmers grow food, we buy it).  The reality is much more complex than that, agriculture is not only hard work… it’s emotional work that forces us to deal with the idea of loss and not succeeding on a routine basis.

So… as I continue on my journey, I have to learn to deal with loss and negative emotions as something inevitable in my struggle to learn what the hell I’m doing.  I have to learn that success doesn’t come in isolation; it’s the culmination of experience and learning to embrace the opposite of success as I work to put systems into place that brace for the mistakes of the past.

So an update on my original post where we were trying our hand at microgreens indoors. For all intents and purposes, the experiment has worked out great. There were a few hiccups, but thus far, we’ve had source from which to supplement our fresh greens for about a month now.

This picture, taken on December 2 (about 14 days after planting) shows how things started out.

These early pictures were shot before the application of any fertilizer. It’s hard to see from the picture, but the greens (with the exception of the Mibuna) came up pretty spindly (with the lower stem structure actually prutruding from the soil). Also while everyone recommended using covers, I caution use vented covers or leave the covers off for a few hours a day (at least in this climate where our humidity is most always in excess of 50%).  Letting too much moisture form created some minor surface fungus problems which were corrected by allowing the soil to dry some.  The greens were ready to eat at this stage, but there wasn’t much substance to them, so they were more of a flavoring agent than anything substantial. The microgreens need to be watered each night, although that had to be adjusted depending on the humidity level.

At about 3 weeks, I started applying Bio Vega twice weekly (also purchased on clearance for less than $10 at morninghomestead.com). The price tag for Bio Vega is high, but you only use about 8mL per gallon of water, so you get about 125 gallons of ready to use fertilizer per liter of concentrate solution. I also started out using a mister for watering, but after about 4 weeks, I found it necessary to switch to a small watering can in order to prevent leaf rot.

At this point (about 6 weeks in), we’ve moved beyond microgreens and into the baby greens phase (with the exception of the Arugula which is full grown).  We’ve been harvesting about once a week and four flats has produced quite a bit of leafy material. We usually harvest about a gallon bowl of greens each time. They are best quickly sauteed and added into soups or used as a condiment on tacos.

Some of my lessons learned include:

• Be very careful of watering levels, this is more art than science, so you have to spend some time adjusting to the growth medium.
• Harvest carefully, if you cut below the main stem, you get tough, unchewable bits.  If you harvest about 1cm above the main stem, most of the greens will regenerate.
• As you can see in the picture, some of the leaves yellow… It’s not a huge deal and I feel this is normal as the lower leaves die off as the plant grows.
• My best experience has been with the Bak Choi, it grows quickly and has the most substance (but it is the least flavorful). The Fenugreek also grows well, but it has a bitter, sprout like flavor so it can only be used sparingly.
• If you are going for baby greens, then use more conservative spacing between the plants, they are difficult to harvest if packed in too tightly.

So not too much to this post. I went to go take care of our ducks and chickens on “the lot” (which is a vacant lot located one house down a hill from ours in a strange little gully) this weekend and snapped this picture.  As I went to step over the fence, I noticed the weird looking duck pictured below. He was actually quite polite around the whole ordeal and very non-confrontational.

The chickens roosting above him sleep on the fence every night until I come to tuck them in and the ducks were in their (open) house about three feet away. He had no interest in eating the birds and the ducks (who freak out about the wind blowing too hard) were not phased leading me to believe this wasn’t his first visit.  I waited a while until he lumbered off.

Personally, I struggle with trapping them and moving them since obviously by the size of him and his crossed eyes (I’ve always been told their eyes cross as they age), he’s been living in the neighborhood for a while. I’ve heard several sources claiming that opossums kill chickens, but from experience, I’ve never seen it. We actually have a baby opossum that runs wild in the upper yard and he’s not done anything other than terrorize the front yard.

So in working on the microgreens, and just container gardening in general, a concern that I’ve developed is an appropriate means of recycling the growth medium. Many times, I’ve found that after I grow something in a container, the substrate is too matted with roots and other biomass to be put to immediate use… so off to the composter it goes.

Fortunately/unfortunately, we use a relatively quick method of composting consisting of 55 gallon trash cans and black soldier fly larvae. Pictured below just to freak people out. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but we were converting about 5-10 lbs of food scraps daily to a secondary compost product (in case your wondering – chickens love black soldier fly larvae).  The little specs you see up the sides of the trash can are the black soldier fly larvae.

The issue with our current composting process was that it went far too fast and it produced a sludgy by-product that had to be worked into the soil separately with other more stable substrates (namely leaves, straw, and wood mulch). It was by no means suitable for indoor use. Thus under our current compost regimen, we would lose our soil substrate to become general garden soil after each crop tray (a very expensive prospect over time). I wanted to develop a method that was capable of handling less intense composting needs (such as our trays of used soil) in a way that would allow for it to be cycled (quickly) back into indoor use.

After researching composting techniques a little more, I decided to make an indoor vermicomposter using a combined design from two videos (Video 1 and Video 2). The overall cost is around $50 ($20 for containers and creening, $30 for around 1000 red wigglers).

I had trouble finding the worms initially, but Villagers (an urban homestead shop) was nice enough to refer me to Garden Tea Company (who not only sold worms, but delivered them to me at work at no additional charge). We prepped the vermicomposter using a combination of shredded newspaper, leaves, and vegetable scraps over the weekend (wetting it generously using a mister and leaving it time to sit).

Today, when our worms arrived, we were able to add the worms to their new home. Updates to come on how they like living with us. The biggest concern at the moment is any smell issues as well as being able to maintain the temperature necessary.